Senator Chuck Grassley Claims that Increased Numbers of MS-13 Members are Penetrating the US Due to Biden’s Lax Border Policies
Jose Nino
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Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley recently sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ), commenting on the increasing levels of illegal immigration under the Biden administration’s watch, with a particular focus on the total number of known MS-13 Gang members who have been apprehended at the border. According to a report by John Binder of Breitbart News, Grassley shockingly revealed that the number of MS-13 members who have been caught making attempts to illegally cross into the U.S. has sharply decreased.
The Iowa Senator believes that the lack of MS-13 apprehensions could cause major problems for US security.
“Consequently, MS-13 may actually be an even bigger threat now than ever before, given CBP’s apparent failure or inability to accurately identify and apprehend MS-13 members amid the record-high numbers of people entering the US through the southern border right now,” Grassley observed. He continued:
In the past four years, 2017-2020, Customs and Border Protection apprehended an average of 294 MS-13 gang-members a year. In those same years, 2017-2020, Customs and Border Protection found or arrested over 3 million illegal aliens, averaging about 750,000 people a year. This year however, with the increasingly open border between the US and Mexico, CBP has already encountered or arrested over 1.2 million illegal aliens, which represents a significant increase above previous years’ averages.
However, even though the total number of people illegally entering the United States has increased, CBP has only apprehended 71 MS-13 trying to enter the US this year, which represents a 75% decrease from previous years’ average. The obvious logical conclusion is that MS-13 members are successfully avoiding identification and sneaking past Border Patrol into the country, as agents focus their time and attention on dealing with unaccompanied children at the border or asylum seekers. In fact, one Border Patrol chief in Texas said exactly as much, stating that MS-13 members are using the high number of migrants entering the US to blend in and sneak past agents.
Yet, even if CBP is not catching all MS-13 members trying to sneak into the country, they are still catching some of them when they are able to successfully identify them. On April 13, 2021 Border Patrol agents arrested a female MS-13 member from El Salvador who was traveling with another undocumented alien who had previously been convicted of murder in Houston. Only a few weeks later, on April 27, 2021, agents also arrested an MS-13 member who was a convicted felon with an outstanding warrant near Yuma, Arizona. Additionally, here in the capital region, local police in Gaithersburg, Maryland arrested an MS-13 member after he lured a 15-year-old girl into an apartment and tried to rape her in May of this year.
Grassley pushed DOJ officials to give him an update on the Joint Task Force Vulcan (JTVF), a task force with the mission of taking on MS-13. The Trump administration created this task force as part of his mission to strengthen US border security and protect the country from transnational criminal actors.
“Does Joint Task Force Vulcan still exist,” Grassley inquired. “If not, who made the decision to shutter JTFV? If JTFV does still exist, who is currently in charge of it? What was JTFV’s budget prior to President Biden’s inauguration? What is JTFV’s budget now (if JTFV still exists)?”
Indeed, the previous Trump administration took immigration much more seriously than the current administration. MS-13 is no joke. It’s the most prominent street gang in the West Hemisphere with its origins in 1980s Los Angeles. According to estimates from Insight Crime, MS-13 has “roughly 50,000 and 70,000 members who are concentrated in mostly urban areas in Central America or locations outside the region where there is a large Central American diaspora.”
Open borders lead to the importation of Third World problems, such as gang activity, rampant crime, and an overall decline in the standard of living. All of this can be avoided if there is nationalist leadership in DC which takes immigration policy seriously and starts securing our border.
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