Immigration and Border Security policy. Thank you very much. Please. What a group. This is a very talented group of people. Well, i thank you very much. We need talent for what were doing, believe me. Were here to discuss the tremendous threat of ms13, one of the most violent and vicious gangs anywhere in the world. Weve really never seen anything quite like this, the level of ferocity, the level of violence, and the reforms we need from congress to defeat it. Im honored to be joined by dhs secretary neil sen, top officials and federal Law Enforcement and our local sheriffs, great, great sheriffs. Were also joined by congressman peter king. Peter, thank you. Congressman lee zeldin, lee, good to have you. Martha, martha mcsally. Good, i hear youre doing well out there. Thats what the word is. Congresswoman barbara comstock, thank you, barbara, nice to have you. And congressman Michael Mccaul whos been an expert. Ms13 recruits through our broken immigration system, violating our borders and it just comes right through whenever they want to come through. They come through. Its much tougher now since weve been there. But we need much better border mechanisms, and much better Border Security. We need the wall. Were going to get the wall. We dont have the wall, were never going to solve this problem. Ive gone to the top people. Many of these people are at the table right now, including this group. And without the wall its not going to work. During my state of the union, i called on congress to impose the loopholes that have allowed this deadly gang to break so easily into our country. My administration has identified three priorities. We went through and looked very closely. Weve identified three priorities for creating a safe, modern and lawful immigration system, securing the border, ending chain migration, and cancelling the terrible visa lottery. Weve been discussing it, talking about it in congress, talking about daca and how we can work that out. And i think the democrats dont want to make a deal. Well find out. As Congress ConsidersImmigration Reform, its essential that we listen to the Law Enforcement professionals in this room today. So im going to turn it over to secretary neilsen, well begin a discussion, and you folks might want to stay for a little while. Secretary . Mr. President , thank you for hosting this round table today on ms13. As you know, its the first gang dangerous enough to be classified as a transnational criminal. Weve talked at length of the destruction and violence it causes in our communities. Were here today to hear from a variety of folks who work every day to combat this. Its my privilege to be here of the men and women of dh sprks and doj who make it their job every day to fight this and other violence. And also, members of congress, we thank you for your support of dhs and doj. Thank you all. If your recently announced framework, as you know, you asked congress to close loopholes you just talked about. When we talk about ms13, we have two or three main loopholes. The first is we have an inadmissibility problem. When they come to our border, i have to let them in. I cannot keep them out by virtue of being in a gang. Once we detect these things are unique to our country. No other country has this. This is unique to our country. Its got to change. So the framework that proposed will close these. I remain hopeful to work with congress on your behalf and administrations behalf to close these and other loopholes to secure our borders. So without going into further detail id like to turn it over to john cronin. He will walk us through a bit more of ms13. As you know, mr. President , as you just stated, one of the most significant Public Safety threats that our communities face comes from ms13. Ms13 has more than 30,000 members worldwide. But the gang has a particularly massive and troubling presence on United States soil. The numbers are staggering. An estimated 10,000 ms13 members are living in our country. Theyre primarily composed of immigrants or descendants of immigrants from el salvador and they have infiltrated our entire country. Ms13 members in 40 states and the District Of Columbia. It is estimated there are upwards of 2,000 ms13 members in los angeles, between 800 and 1,200 in dallas and houston. 2,000 in long island, 800 and 1,000 in boston. And 3,000 members right here in the d. C. Metropolitan area. And mr. President , as you just said, ms13 is probably the most ruthless and violent gang terrorizing our streets today. One of their mottos is means kill, rape, control. And mr. President , it is a motto that ms13 lives by. Ms13 members engage in indiscriminate violence, they commit rape, extortion, murder, often just for the sake of it. They recruit children to be their murderers. They gang rape young girls, sell them for sex. They attack their victims with chains, bats, machetes, firearms. A photo up there, mr. President , of a shotgun and a machete that was recovered from ms13 members who were stopped by the police as they were on their way to murder a student at a high school in woodbridge, virginia. In january of last year a 15yearold girl from a suburb of d. C. Was stabbed 13 times with knives and a wooden stake by ms13 members. Her killers filmed her murder so that they could show their leaders back in el salvador. And her body was then bar barically dumped next to railroad tracks. You know the story of two teenage girls who were best friends and were savagely murdered by ms13 thugs in september 2016. You had their parents as guests at the state of the union. A year before that, four ms13 members in boston lured a 15yearold boy where they took turns stabbing him to death. The four murder ers passed around two knives as they methodically ended his life. The next photo, mr. President , are the remains of someone suspected of being a rival gang member. Ms13 members lured their victim into the woods of central long island where they beat him with sticks and a fire extinguisher and then cut his throat with a pocket knife. Once dead, the savages sadistically stuffed his body into that Drainage Pipe where it went for months without being discovered. In october of 2013, ms13 members murder someone they believe to be a snitch in a park in falls church, virginia, stabbing him with knives and slashing him with a machete. When they were done they buried the body in a shallow grave in the park. A few months later in the very same park, ms13 members murdered a recruit who had violated murdered a recruit who violated gang rules. They severed his head and they buried his body as well. Thats the first of the two shallow graves used to bury the two bodies and the second of the two graves. Shallow graves used to bury two bodies in a park just about 10 miles from here. We cannot and we will not let our neighborhoods be overrun by Violent Crime. And that is why dismantling violent gangs and specifically ms13 is a top priority of the department of justice. Like i said, mr. President , ms13s motto is kill, rape, control. The attorney general Jeff Sessions has said before, the department of justices motto is justice for victims and consequences for criminals. And we, too, are living by that motto. The department of justice is devoting the resources necessary to ensure that our citizens are no longer being held hostage by murderous savages like ms13 members. And it is working. Last year, the department secured convictions against more than 1,200 gang members. We charged the most federal firearm prosecutions in a decade. We brought the most cases against violent criminals in at least a quarter of a century. And we also are enhancing the capacity of the northern triangle countries, el salvador, honduras and guatemala. So they can combat ms13 themselves. This past summer, attorney general sessions visited el salvador, where he met with the El Salvadoran attorney general melendez to discuss joint efforts to dismantle ms13 at its roots. Soon after that meeting, 700 gang members were charged in el salvador. Mr. President , in total, our work with our Central American partners has resulted in arrests and charges against more than 4,000 suspected ms13 members. And we will not stop. The department of justice will be surging more federal prosecutors, hundreds of federal prosecutors to the field with specific directions to focus on Violent Crime and immigration. And we will continue to use our robust criminal statutes to arrest violent criminals for whatever crime they commit, murder, racketeering, kidnapping, Drug Trafficking and get them off our streets. But, mr. President , because ms13 is based and operates in el salvador, and ms13 largely directs its Murderous Mission from prisons in el salvador, it is not enough to enforce our Domestic Violence crime laws against gang members in the United States. To effectively combat transnational organized crime, we also need enforcement of our immigration laws. The reason ms13 is so massive in our country, the reason why they have 10,000 members in 40 states and the District Of Columbia is because many of those gang members have illegally entered our country. Now, the department of justice and our state authorities can continue to prosecute scores of ms13 members located in the United States, but when we fail to enforce our immigration and human smuggling laws, when we have loopholes in our immigration laws and when we have porous borders and insufficient enforcement of our immigration laws, ms13 can simply replenish its jail population by sending more and more gang members across our borders. And that is why the department of justice under the attorney generals leadership is also focused on stopping the flow of criminal aliens entering our country. The attorney general has directed his prosecutors to renew their focus on immigration offenses, especially for offenders who have a nexus to gangs or drug cartels. The attorney general has sent additional prosecutorial resources to the southwest border and he has created Border Security coordinators in each United States attorneys offices. They have been tasked with enforcing our immigration laws with a special emphasis on criminals like ms13 with a nexus to the southwest border. And lastly, mr. President , on the smuggling front, the department of justice is working with the department of Homeland Security to identify smuggling routes and to investigate and prosecute ms13 Smuggling Networks. Mr. President , the department of justice, along with the department of Homeland Security and our federal and state Law Enforcement partners, is committed to taking all lawful measures to end this scourge of terror to our communities. Thank you, john. This is actually removing thousands of them out. Some into the prisons, but literally thousands of people are removed out but they come back as fast as we take them out. Different ones. Not even the same ones. Different ones. But they come back. And we need these immigration laws changed. Were just not going to be able to continue to do this. They just come in so fast, so easy, and then you have catch and release. You catch people and you have to release them right away. Not another country in the world has the stupidity of laws that we do when it comes to immigration. If we dont get them changed this isnt politics, this isnt republican and democrat, this is common sense. So it has to be it has to be taken care of. Okay. Sir, its my privilege to introduce you to angel melendez, the special agent in charge of our i. C. E. Office in new york city. Im extremely proud of everything our hsi office does all of them, but new york in particular leads the fight against ms13 and they truly day to day put their lives in danger. He does a terrific job. Angel. Mr. President , good afternoon. This is quite the privilege to brief you on some of our efforts. One of the things that is very important to address when were talking about ms13 is that this is a war. Were at war. A war in their countries against the command and control. Its an issue that were facing at the borders. Once it goes beyond the borders, its a war that were battling on the streets. With our local and Law Enforcement partners. The most important the most important piece to any strategy in addressing ms13 is collaboration, intelligencesharing and Immigration Enforcement. Collaboration across the spectrum, across the continuum with countries such as the northern triangle countries where we do have vetted teams of Foreign NationalLaw Enforcement officials working side to side with hsi and cvp in those countries. Locally, we do the same thing. Weve been able to effectively implement a unity of effort within the department of Homeland Security where all of its agencies, all of its components that have a direct nexus to Immigration Enforcement and to controlling the borders are working together to face ms13. One of the things thats we look at is elicit pathways. How do they get here . Who brings them here . And what weve been able to see is that ms13 is not an organization that has their own smuggling apparatus. So they do utilize other organizations that are completely experts are complete experts in the smuggling aspect. Last year we were able to convict an individual who was responsible for a Smuggling Network of special interest aliens coming in from pakistan through brazil to central america, mexico and the United States. Its that same type of elicit pathway that ms13 exploits, and we continue to work with our attorney patterns and our state and local partners and dhs partners to be able to identify those pathways. Capacity building and nationsharination informationsharing is extremely important. If we take the fight in their own territory, its less of a fight that we have to face here. But not withstanding that, once theyre here, we have to address it. So they came across the border. Now we have to look at how can we curtail recruitment . So when we look at the numbers, and im just going to talk about numbers as of and this is posted on the website already for the office of Refugee Resettlement. In 2017 alone, 2017 alone, 40,810 unaccompanied alien children were placed for resettlement. These arent the total amount of uacs that were detained at the border, these were the ones that were referred to be resettled within the United States. When you look at the demographics, it turns out to 21,881 of them are from northern triangle countries, they are in the right age for gang recruitment between the ages of 13 and 17 and they are males. I am not saying, and i want to be clear, that 21,000 of these unaccompanied alien children are gang members. What im saying, understanding ms13, is that theyre looking at these 21,000 unaccompanied alien children that came into the states as potential recruits to continue to fill in their ranks. Another aspect, another thing that weve been able to look at is across certain operations that weve been able to manage throughout the last couple of years, 30 is a consistent number that weve seen of ms13 members that have been arrested that are that came into this country as unaccompanied alien children. Specifically in new york, another another point of interest that weve been addressing or weve been looking at is the special immigrant juvenile program. 63 of the unaccompanied alien children had filed for this immigration status that provides them a road to a green card, to lawful permanent resident and eventually even to citizenship. This alien is able to apply to cis for this state. Now one of the things that weve seen is we dont know whats in the family court records. So we cannot utilize any information provided in those proceedings to validate with the information that we either have because of the encounter at the border or because of the process over in the local office. Finances. Finance is another important aspect of ms13. Weve been able to identify a very complex integral scheme of the way they move their money. Were not no way, shape or form are we talking money cartel type money, were talking about money theyve utilized to be able to finance not only their movements but their daytoday operations. Money that is coming from the states back to the command and control in the northern triangle. One of the most important tools that we have in our arsenal is the designation of ms13 as a Transnational Criminal Organization by the department of justice. The department of treasury i correct myself. I have and i have to say it, i have a i have numerous pages of talking points of things that i can talk about, but i want to give you, mr. President , our perspective from the field. When you have agents going out identifying based on intelligence and conducting targeted enforcement operations, they apprehend these individuals that were able to determine that are ms13 members and once they are presented to the immigration judge for detention purposes, we explain that these individuals are a threat to society and they are ms13 members, but we cannot provide all the information that we have because in many instances the information that we have is part of an ongoing criminal investigation. These individuals are being released. Then we have to utilize their resources to focus on these individual whos have been released. So from our perspective from the field, there are many things that could be accomplished within immigration immigration law. But i can tell you from my perspective of what im seeing on a daytoday basis, we have agents going out, we have agents arresting and then we have these individuals who were arrested being released again. Through our efforts since 2005, i. C. E. Has