The “M” and the “S” Carlos had etched in his arms with a homemade tattoo gun when he was a teenager in Guatemala City were part of a different life. During his adolescence in the mid-1990s, Carlos, who asked that his real name not be used, hung out with deportees from Los Angeles who had been subsumed into Southern California’s gang culture and brought 18th Street and Mara Salvatrucha from Los Angeles to Central America. Carlos and his brother joined the Normandie Locos clique of Mara Salvatrucha, also known in the United States as MS-13, and got tattoos marking their membership in the gang. They joined because it made them popular with girls, Carlos said, and most of his childhood friends were part of the clique as well.
Guatemalan law enforcement took a hard-edged approach in the late 1990s, and Carlos was shot in three separate incidents by police officers in Guatemala City. His brother was killed by police in September 2000, according to a sworn declaration Carlos later submitted to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office.
After his brother’s death, Carlos said, he was tortured by Guatemalan police. “The police put ‘the hood’ on me, which meant that they put a tire tube over my face until I was about to pass out,” he wrote in the declaration. “They tied my hands and feet together and beat me.”
According to Carlos’s account, after his release, he decided to flee to the United States. He spent a month traveling across Mexico and arrived in California in March 2001, with no visa. For two years, he worked as a day laborer, living on the streets, in shelters, and in parks in the Westlake area of Los Angeles, where Guatemalans and Salvadorans have flocked since the 1980s.
During his first few years there, Carlos said he had no contact with the Los Angeles Police Department, an assertion supported by law enforcement records. That changed on April 30, 2004, when he was stopped by officers from the Wilshire station narcotics unit. Police took notice of the tattoos on his arms and asked him if he was a gang member. Carlos said he told the officers that he had been involved with MS-13 in Guatemala but had nothing to do with them in Los Angeles.
“Admitted membership to MS-Normandie for nine months with a moniker of Moreno,” reads the corresponding entry in Carlos’s file in CalGang, a statewide database of suspected gang members. Officers took photos of his face and tattoos and served him with a copy of the gang injunction, a highly controversial “nuisance abatement” program common in California and other states that restricts an individual’s ability to be in certain areas or associate with certain people deemed to be gang-involved.
Later that same night, Carlos was spotted on the street after 10 p.m. by two police officers, at least one of whom was among the officers who had stopped him earlier. They arrested him for violating a curfew provision of the MS-13 injunction. Over the next year and a half, Carlos was arrested two more times for violating the gang injunction by being around other documented gang members, although he claims the men he was accused of associating with had been detained separately and were completely unknown to him.
Officers from Maryland’s Prince George’s County anti-gang unit photographed an MS-13 gang member’s tattoos for the police database, April 20, 2006.
Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
The third time he was arrested, in August 2005, Carlos pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor, spent 30 days in jail, and was placed on probation. After his release, he returned to work and completed his probation. However, the gang unit continued to stop Carlos, searching him roughly 20 times, according to his declaration. He was never re-arrested.
In March 2011, Carlos was on his way to the gym when he was stopped by two LAPD gang officers. “They told me, ‘These men want to talk to you,’” recalled Carlos, who said the officers were accompanied by two men in plainclothes. The new faces, agents with the Homeland Security Investigations office within Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, were conducting a joint gang enforcement operation with the LAPD. “They asked me if I had any legal status, and I said I did not want to answer without a lawyer,” Carlos claimed in his declaration.
When ICE agents interviewed Carlos, they repeatedly asked him when and why he joined MS-13. “I explained again that I was no longer a gang member and had never been one in the United States,” Carlos stated in his declaration.
After the interview, Carlos was transferred to the now-shuttered Mira Loma Detention Center. At this point, he was facing deportation back to Guatemala, which he had fled a decade earlier.
Carlos’s history is no exception. Over a decade of gang enforcement operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement has resulted in more than 40,000 “gang-related” arrests and 8,000 firearms seized, according to the agency. By lumping hangers-on, friends, family members, and other people who know documented gang members as “associates” — a lesser category of classification that signifies some contact or knowledge of gang activity — ICE inflates the number of gang-related individuals in its arrests.
Sean Garcia-Leys, a law student at UC Irvine Law School’s Immigrant Rights Clinic, has represented undocumented immigrants charged with immigration violations at the Adelanto Detention Facility near San Bernardino, California. “The vast majority of people at bond hearings are people representing themselves, who have no idea that the Constitution’s confrontation clause means, ‘You can’t say that about me,’” Garcia-Leys said. “That’s not something that’s going to come out of someone who’s representing themselves at immigration court.”
Claude Arnold, a former deputy assistant director of operations for ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division, outside a command post in Irvine, Calif., on March 4, 2015.
Photo: Ken Steinhardt/OC Register/ZumaPress
Law enforcement and immigration officials in the U.S. maintain that transnational gangs like Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street are serious threats to American communities. Spawned in 1980s Los Angeles, the gangs, largely made up of Central American immigrants, were rounded up and deported in droves by American law enforcement in the 1990s. The gang databases now used by immigration officials and state law enforcement grew out of California’s effort in the 1990s to digitize police reports, field identification cards, and other evidence noting gang involvement.
Federal law enforcement relies heavily on local and state agencies for intelligence on gang members, according to Claude Arnold, a former deputy assistant director of operations for ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division.
As a young immigration officer fresh out of college in Phoenix during the 1990s, Arnold witnessed firsthand how the Phoenix Police Department maintained an electronic repository of gang information complete with nicknames and photographs optimized for facial recognition. “The keys to gang policing are debriefing the gang members in the street, debriefing them after arrests, and gathering intelligence to determine the complexity of criminal involvement,” Arnold said. “In order to be effective, you have to do bottom-up enforcement. You’re nowhere if you’re not collecting raw intelligence from gang members on the street, and local gang officers do that more than anyone.”
In the late 1990s, law enforcement noticed a migration of gang members and activity from Chicago and Los Angeles, traditional gang areas, to other regions in the Midwest. “When LA cracked down and California passed a three-strikes law, we started seeing LA gangbangers pop up in Phoenix,” Arnold said. Using the example of Nebraska, Arnold described how “hardcore 18th Street” gang members from Los Angeles were turning up in Omaha.
During his time with ICE, Arnold designed Operation Community Shield, a gang enforcement program launched in 2005. Undocumented gang members could be deported even if they had no criminal history, and if they returned to the U.S., they would be charged with a felony. “You have to apply the scorched earth methodology to gang enforcement — really zero tolerance,” Arnold said.
As part of Operation Community Shield, ICE adopted one of the anti-gang strategies pioneered in California and implemented a nationwide gang database. Known as ICEGangs, the immigration database contains information on an unknown number of “suspected and/or confirmed gang members.”
Immigration lawyers and advocates contend that being classified as a gang member in immigration proceedings directly impacts a defendant’s ability to plead his or her case. Homeland Security attorneys often characterize gang members as threats to public safety, placing their I-213 forms — the equivalent of a charging document in immigration court — in color-coded folders to connote the risk, and ask judges to withhold bond. Gang involvement is also one of the criteria used to deny appeals for stay of deportation through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a federal process that allows undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States.
The consequences do not stop at the border: Carlos’s lawyer, Pinheiro, says ICE shares information on gang-affiliated deportees with authorities in Central America or Mexico. There, deportees “face an alarming likelihood of extra-judicial murder in their home country” from law enforcement or feuding gangs, according to a report by UC Irvine’s School of Law.
In California, the state’s gang database has come under fire in recent years over claims of inaccuracies, disproportionately documenting young men of color as gang-involved, and not providing any way for most to verify or challenge gang classification. In 2013, the state legislature passed a law that provided juveniles with the right to be notified of and challenge their inclusion in CalGang. A similar effort for adults is currently making its way through the state capitol in Sacramento.
Screen grab of a GangNet file on an alleged gang member. Redacted by The Intercept.
Source: SRA International Inc.
Under rules laid out by the Obama administration, which are intended to allow some undocumented residents to remain in the U.S., individuals listed as gang members are a high priority for deportation. Gang classification from either the ICEGangs or CalGang database is used by government attorneys during hearings to request the undocumented detainees not be granted bond, since they present threats to public safety. At bond hearings in immigration court, detainees appear before a magistrate judge and do not have the right to appointed counsel.
Garcia-Leys, of the UC Irvine Immigrant Rights Clinic, experienced this firsthand. “I was representing one individual in his hearing who had been on a gang injunction and had already had a bond hearing and was denied bond, partly on the basis of his gang membership,” he said.
His client, who was from Oxnard, California, had been included in the Colonia Chiques/Southside Chiques gang injunction. Garcia-Leys then got a copy of his client’s I-213, which is filled out by immigration officials when an alien is detained. “So I took a look at it, and in capital letters, it said that my client was a gang member,” he said.
Garcia-Leys and two UC Irvine law professors researched the use of gang classification in immigration hearings and discovered that without supporting evidence, the information on his client’s I-213 form was largely disregarded by the court because his client couldn’t review and challenge the facts supporting that classification. Garcia-Leys successfully won bond for his client. (The bond didn’t ultimately guarantee protection; when the client couldn’t raise bond, he was deported.) But Garcia-Leys and his colleagues wanted to find out how the gang classification got to court in the first place. “Obviously the DHS attorney had done no research, she just had this printout that said this client was a gang member. So how did that happen?”
Garcia-Leys says his client, much like Carlos, was no longer a gang member. “No one had any idea how or why DHS was alleging he was a gang member,” he said.
Immigration lawyers saw this situation play out during innumerable other cases.
ICE did not respond to specific questions or Freedom of Information Act requests for the number of people documented in ICEGangs. However, ICE press releases show the agency obfuscates the number of genuine gang members arrested in its raids by lumping together gang members and “associates.” (ICE says that 2,802 individuals deported in 2014 were classified as suspected or confirmed gang members; in 2015, that number was 1,040.)
During Project Shadowfire, a five-week gang sweep that ended in March 2016 and resulted in 1,133 arrests across the United States, “more than 900 transnational criminal gang members and others associated with transnational criminal activity” were arrested, according to ICE. During another gang sweep that ended in March 2015, called Project Wildfire, 976 “gang members and associates” were arrested by ICE agents out of 1,207 total arrests.
For those representing undocumented immigrants, like Sean Garcia-Leys, these numbers reflect an overreach. In mid-2016, Garcia-Leys and his fellow students summed up their findings in a 30-page policy report that includes the stories of four Latinos who were represented by the UC Irvine Immigrant Rights Clinic while they grappled with deportation or applying for deferred action amid gang allegations. The report recommended the creation of notification and independent appeals processes for gang documentation.
“We realized at this point, this is probably happening all the time to people who don’t have attorneys,” Garcia-Leys said.
An ICE Fugitive Operations team member fingerprints a man in Santa Ana, Calif., on Sept. 27, 2007.
Photo: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
While in immigration detention, Carlos was confronted with evidence that he and his attorney claim was inaccurate; they argued it portrayed him as a greater threat to public safety than his criminal history reflected. ICE accused Carlos of being a gang leader for MS-13 — of which there is no documentation in Carlos’s criminal records or CalGang file, which he shared with The Intercept. He was assigned to the high-security section of the Mira Loma Detention Center, where he served four months.
Pinheiro believes Carlos’s case is a prime example of what happens when unverified, unchallengeable gang classifications by local law enforcement are shared with immigration authorities. “Once that street terrorism code is on the arrest, it triggers attention by ICE,” Pinheiro said.
She has had clients with nothing but a juvenile vandalism arrest for graffiti — but with gang allegations on their record — picked up and placed in deportation proceedings years after the fact.
Carlos argued he feared grievous harm or death if he returned to Guatemala, where he said two of his cousins, along with his brother, had been killed by police. While in immigration custody at Mira Loma, Carlos said an officer told him that if he didn’t cooperate as a jailhouse informant, he would be deported and killed by police in Guatemala, like another recent deportee. The immigration agent, Carlos claimed in his declaration, “said he would do the same with me, and that I ‘would not survive’ if I returned to Guatemala.”
Pinheiro was only able to get Carlos’s criminal history through the Los Angeles Alternate Public Defender’s office. She described the lack of discovery proceedings in immigration court as macabre.
ICE relies “on the fact that most of these people won’t ever have access to counsel” and therefore includes inaccurate or overstated evidence, Pinheiro said.
Pinheiro was able to prove inconsistencies between Carlos’s criminal and immigration records (local police listed his moniker as “Moreno,” while ICE had recorded yet a different alias) and demonstrate he had reason to fear for his life in Guatemala. Carlos was awarded relief on his removal case under the convention against torture.
“The fact that they never found anything to charge him with speaks to the fact that he isn’t a gang member,” Pinheiro said.
I have to wonder:
What evidence of gang membership or affiliation would satisfy these attorneys?
Would they approve of real gang members being deported? “Carlos was awarded relief on his removal case under the convention against torture” the story says. Well, no gang members returned to any country would be safe from rival gang members, would they?
The details of the story indicate that Carlos would be in his mid or late 30s. He, his brothers and “most of his childhood friends” joined the infamously criminal and murderous MS-13 gang “because it made them popular with girls, Carlos said.”
Is this the really the kind of person we want to welcome and protect like a refugee in the US? I agree that the people wrongly accused of gang membership should be allowed to offer evidence that they are law abiding and that their records should be changed if they are wrong.
I think the details of this story can be read two ways: they offer evidence for what the writer says, but at the same time, these details also show how the interests of the American people get lost in immigration cases.
We have no reason to want any more Carloses here. But we do no thing to prevent it. After 20 years of gang members coming into the US our borders are still porous, we still do not have any kind of system tracking entrances/exits through our airports to prevent visa overstayers from taking up permanent residence here.
In other words, we are still crazy, still allowing all kinds of people from overseas to come in here and stay, still denying ourselves the ability to pick and choose who WE want to be here.
spot on except for…
This sounds ideal but the real is that these gang ahos have too much info to be allowed a clean break. You cannot simply say i quit, go about your business (?) in the US and allow your compadre runnamucks to continue wreaking havoc on our country. IF they want a clean break, they would have to demonstrate loyalty by going under cover and evidencing the US of their remainders others what is the point? Barring that would have every gangjacker coming here and wreaking havoc until such time the heat is on and suddenly they quit. That scenario alone wold take down America.
I dont want them here. They want a nice place to live, let them fix their own country. To do that, Hellery needs to stop advocating for assassinations and coups and never be president of the US.
Enforce immigration laws. Stop this nonsense of promoting law breaking.
We see so many stories about the immigrants (both legal and illegal) who come here in which their problems are presented, analyzed and proposed solutions are offered. These solutions usually involve the US agreeing to allow people to come or allowing people to stay, often people who cannot speak English well and probably will cost taxpayers a lot more in government benefits than they ever make in taxes.
Meanwhile, the many possible stories about immigration from other points of view are not usually covered.
Why don’t we see stories about how neighborhoods have been transformed as thousands of like Carlos have come to the US? Why don’t see stories examining the total cost of government benefits that we will pay for someone like him (a high school dropout, I assume) once he is legalized — and how many of his overseas family members he will likely bring over eventually, costing us hundreds of thousands more in medical costs and retirement benefits than they ever paid in taxes.
There’s not just one side to immigration — there are many sides.
It’s past time to see this complex issue portrayed in all its complexity. It’s just not about the fate of individuals or more things the US can do for people from other countries who choose to come here.
immigration is one thing – it’s by invitation.
invasion is an entirely different matter.
I think we are all well-aware that invasion is a problem — and a massive one. If not, would any of us be posting comments on this site? Mother, mother, mother, there’s far too many of … Uh I forget the lyrics. My point is basically that knowing and doing something about it are two different things but immigrants don’t lie, invaders do.
The thing that frustrates me is that it seems like there’s a cheap, simple solution here: Nicaragua. They already host tens of thousands of Salvadoran immigrants scattered throughout the country under a partial resurgence of Daniel Ortega’s ideas, but they are actually a less industrialized, “poorer” country. (Though with the income inequality in El Salvador, I don’t know if that means anything at the level of an ordinary person) Obvious answer is we pay the Nicaraguans a decent sum, not an Israel scale sum, but something their poor country will notice much more than we would, in order that they can build more communities to house honest Salvadorans fleeing the nightmare. Done right, America should win by having fewer illegals, Nicaragua should win with money and increased infrastructure, and El Salvador should win by having people more emboldened to fight the gangs knowing they have a ready and reliable refuge when things go wrong.
how about we buy the country, fix it, and rent it back? i despise rental habitat but i am not opposed to a rent-to-own deal.
Lulz @ Ali Winston for playing the victim card for poor Carlos from Guatemala, the former gang member frustrated because he not given the same treatment as other undocumented migrants!
Waaaaaaah… ICE doesn’t chase after my undocumented sister like they do me even though I quit MS-13! I swear officer! You have to believe me Ali Winston! I’m speaking truth, Ali. Power to the people! Write a story about this travesty of justice!
The reason Carlos did not want us to know his first name is because he probably didn’t want to be associated with cry me a river Ali Winston. He’d get shot by his fellow gang members for crying like that.
for information on reading the GANGNET interface, see here
http://www.csra.com/legacy/media/gangnet/GangNet8_WhitePaper2013.pdf
caution – pics not blurred
Gosh, and I thought the poster was exaggerating when he made the comparison to Stormfront.
Apparently, TI really is being invaded by “white nationalist” neo-Nazis.
Maybe the site needs to be put on the watch lists at the Justice Department and the Southern Poverty Law Center. ;^(
1. instead of attacking people on this board, use the freedom of speech that America allows and make YOUR case.
2. Adolf Hitler was a socialista like you, and an extremist, not a nice guy.
3. America is not a dumping ground.
4. You want to rescue every dis-satisfied person on the planet, buy a bigger house.
5. you are totally clueless.
BY THE WAY – upon digesting more of your ill conceived comment, i firmly do not believe that you know what socialism is. Why dont you use some of your socialist sharing time and educate a dummy like myself what it is, please.
thank you in advance.
I will never have any sympathy for illegals in America, never. Illegal immigration is just another tool to destabilize US society and the middle class.
I wish the best for Mexico in their battles with corrupt governemnt, but Americans have their own corrupt governemnt to deal with.
I am anti-globalist, I think the world is far better with its distinct cultures AMERICA included. America was a far far greater nation, socially speaking in the 60’s and 70’s. It disgusts me that Mexican’s, Israeli’s, African’s, all have cultures that can be celebrated without being called racist. And we all know Israel and Mexico are extremely racist. But the ZioMedia loves to use white guilt as a weapon to make Americans work against their own self interests.
I could not care less what the media or the Nazi politically correct say, I will take them seriously when they hold Israel to the same standard they hold us. ICE could do anything its needs to to spot the invasion, though my first desire would have them arrest those Americans who hire illegals in the first place.
These Latinos are simply tools, we see how many of them support a war monger like Clinton, and hate Trump because he wants to build a wall?! At some point we need leadership that puts Americans first, we have had the PC globalists for decades now, and we see where that has taken us.
americans have no idea how racist mexico and mexicans are.
really.
they have no clue.
the ZioMedia loves to use white guilt as a weapon to make Americans work against their own self interests
reconquista. groupo beta. Like israel wants to kill Palestinians and steal their land, Mexico wants to drug Americans and steal our land by occupation.
iraq was a god damned con job. i called it out in 2002. i said it would backfire. my friends thought i was being traitorous for opposing the wmd claims. I am accustomed to people being stupid or ignorant because they are victimised and i forgive them. But if there was a country to declare war on, IT’S MEXICO. As President i would declare war on mexico and i would readily encourage all illegals to leave the country, and, I WOULD TAKE THE FIRST 5 MILES OF LAND FROM THE BORDER AND MAKE IT A DMZ.
There are 250,000,000 people south of our border in poverty looking for their brazen opportunity. We built america, they want to steal it. They dont want to improve their own countries. Why is that?
The predatory wealthers and their whores dont mind the invasion because it is their way to break our will and treat working people like disposable diapers.
please explain as succinctly as possible, what is AMERICA’s distinct culture.
They did, and continue to do, bad things. Slippery ICE. And if I were on the receiving end, I would be extraordinarily pissed off (and make sure I had the evidence to prove it). Worried for this guy and hoping he finds a way to move on instead of letting it destroy him.
I only hope he find his way back to Mexico, and bring his whole familia with him!
I am so sick to death of people who criticize ICE or other law enforcement who are doing a job that no one in power actually wants done.
And the idea that the American governemnt basically has no right to a border, yet those who flock here want all the goodies that same governemnt have to offer. Your mentality would be the death to any nation, I just hope YOU are personally affected by the politics you cling.
Thanks! Because our country needs more stuff like this going on: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/08/10/dea-travel-record-airport-seizures/88474282/
Don’t you get that it is overstep, plain and simple, and dirty as fck? I have never been against a proper reading of the law (see my older posts). What I AM against is abuse of power, egregious abuse, and the apparently endless/limitless reach of a quasisystem/set of systems so completely off the rails that it can get away with anything for any reason it can make up, and if they cant find a way legally to abuse someone (as porous as the laws are) they will fabricate and twist everything merely to argue that they are righteous. People should never be used like that and I personally believe he should have a chance to have a life. Or do you believe a person’s very existence becomes a crime? If that is so, why not just kill everyone, chop off hands, participate in mob justice/lynch mobs, and give in to our most brutish human natures once and for all? Why bother letting him live if his life, according to you, is worthless? Or is it because he isn’t “from here”? Are you? “The white man” was never nonproficient at genocide. Nor was he even American.
According to Carlos’s account, after his release, he decided to flee to the United States. He spent a month traveling across Mexico and
—————-He should have stopped IN MEXICO if he were really “fleeing”.
Yeah, but they’re really harsh when dealing with illegal immigrants!
Was he here legally on a visa?
No? Send him back.
Sorry, but whether he is involved in gang activity is neither here nor there. We have made border-jumping nothing less than an officially sanctioned, shadow visa program.
Yeah, and the question is, who is issuing the “visas”? The thing I don’t like about so-called amnesty programs is that they are actually reward programs, since they don’t merely “forget” who crossed the border illegally in the past when looking at naturalization applications. And who gets rewarded? Who controls what coyotes are allowed to work what part of the border?
Which brings up another question: This guy was in MS-13, shows up in an MS-13 dominated part of Los Angeles. Anyone care to take a guess what group controlled the coyotes or tunnels that got him across the border?
Were not DHS fusion centers suppose to act as a central point of data collection and distribution?
People who wear Confederate Flag tattoos are considered “white supremacists” and lone wolf terrorist threats.
Americans can have political opinions. Foreign terrorists should be purged.
Well said, the double standard is oh so common. If you are for a border, the brand you a “racist nationalist”. Its all about control. Mass immigration is a tool to destroy a cohesive society and the middle class.
Los Angeles Police Department has an interesting page on why young people join gangs, they list:
Identity or Recognition
Protection
Fellowship and Brotherhood
Intimidation
Criminal Activity
Note, however, that these are the same reasons young wealthy college students at Yale join clubs like Skull & Bones.
However, police ignore crimes committed against poor people in poor neighborhoods (see the Grim Stalker serial murder case, as a good example of how deaths of poor black women are unlikely to be investigated by police); joining a gang in such circumstances is just self-defense.
The point is, Skull&Bones gang members have killed far more people by their actions than any street gang in the United States ever has.
“The point is, Skull&Bones gang members have killed far more people by their actions than any street gang in the United States ever has.”
Absolutely. They’ve even killed more than the really big, organized street gangs, like LAPD.
Which suggests another reason for gang membership: “The cops have one, why can’t we?”
Too bad this article is not about “Skull and Bones”. Typical politically correct non sequitur arguments.
I hope you get to meet face to face with LA gang members and no LAPD there to save your ass. The very idea of defending gangs, like its just something Americans need to embrace.
Americans are harmed by both Skull and Bones and MS-13, they are NOT mutually exclusive, quite to the contrary. Our open borders are a direct consequence of the filth that have ruled this nation.
The more the comment threads on TI come to resemble Stormfront, Faux News, or YouTube comments, the less attractive they are to people with functioning brains and a smidgen of compassion.
Mean-spirited and dumb as a box of rocks — it’s an ugly combination.
Don’t go Doug — we need you!
Did you come up with that “Faux News” on your own? It’s really witty. Glenn why have you not found a staff position for Doug yet? Get on that!
Stormfront is a very informative web site. It’s a place for people with a high IQ and a backbone. Too bad, Mr Salzmann, your perceptions aren’t in sync with the facts they present.
frumious bandersnatch. littlejohns.
Well said. I don’t like it when people like “Salzmann” try and bully people instead of simply making an argument. Often today many bullies are paid trolls, globalists, Zionists, meant to do on the web, what they have done to the media for the last 50 years or so: manipulate and control.
If you have debated a Hitlery supporter, you know the meaning of low IQ, certainly in the realm of politics. The powers that be don’t want an informed populous, I mean would we be fighting wars in the Middle East, backing NATO’s aggression with Russia, backing Israel with weapons and tax dollars, opening our borders, bailing out banks…?
Americans have been manipulated for decades to work against our own self interests. The ZioMedia, Hollywood, Wall Street, want us ignorant and misinformed. Mass migration is a great example of this.
No we just get Zionist BS from you who don’t have a problem with gangs in America, just how we deal with them.
I wonder how you critique Israel’s wall and how it deals with immigration, America’s is extremely liberal by comparison and by design.
American society is gangster society, basically at all levels, a consequence of the lack of the impartial rule of law for all members of society. The police tend to form the largest, best organized gang in any city, but their real leaders are local politicians and wealthy elites. Similarly, the FBI is a federal gang that protects Wall Street interests above all else, and that’s why FBI executives always end up with cushy Wall Street jobs.
Yes, I know, the popular conception of ‘gang’ is a group of poor people who band together for self-protection and revenue generation via criminal activity. Racial segregation is the norm, just as poor neighborhoods are racially segregated. Since police focus most of their efforts on protecting wealthy neighborhoods, gangs often take on quasi-governmental roles such as dispute resolution, exacting revenge (aka ‘street justice’), etc. This is also how Brazilian favelas operate. Another aspect is that in American prisons, racially segregated gangs are tolerated by the prison authorities because inter-gang rivalries are easily exploited to control the overall prison population. Given the huge size of the U.S. prison population, there is open flow of gang members into and out of prison (except for the ruling gangs that run the prison complex, i.e. the prison guards). Hence, the prevelance of this form of gang in poor communities.
But consider: If a group of rich people form a ‘gang’, well, they have the police for protection and are called “the Chamber of Commerce” or something similar, such as “the Republican Party” or “the Democratic Party.” They specialize in so-called “white collar” crime, such as tax evasion, financial fraud, election fraud, bribery and rigged government contracts, etc. to generate revenue, and they are protected from prosecution from such activities, as seen in the 2008 economic collapse (although they may be punished for ripping off other wealthy elites, as Bernie Madoff was, they are never punished for ripping off low-income groups). Yes, sometimes the FBI goes after local politicians (but never Wall Steet CEOs); just as local police may target local gangs (but never the Mayor’s circle of associates).
In all cases, the social conditions which promote formation of gangs are all linked to an absence of the impartial rule of law. Gang members engage in illegal activities with impunity, be they Crips or Nortenos or police officers or FBI agents or Mafiosi or politicians or members of the ruling family of Saudi Arabia. Any individual who objects to their criminal amoral unethical behavior is retaliated against by the gang.
Sure, there’s an alternative, called “civilization,” which is fundamentally anti-gang. The novel concept of ‘the rule of law’ was that all people would be subject to the same laws, be they alpha-chimps or beta-chimps, billionaires or poor people, aristocrats or serfs. The United States, however, would you call this a civilized country?
Nice concept – but today, the United States has turned away from individual freedom and the impartial rule of law in favor of elite gangsterism, mass surveillance, empire-building, a multi-tier justice system which gives light sentences to elites – a prison state mentality. In this system, wealthy elites get one set of rules, nominal ‘citizens’ get another set of rules, and immigrants a third set of rules.
Groupification is an inevitable process when people have to compete for life support and a likelyhood when people have to compete for comfort. And this because people have been deprived of equal power in all respects.
The US, being comprised of lackie lazy lame hierarchal pecking order persons have doomed the country. The time for correction to a society of individuals passed US by in the mid 80’s.
The confluence of socialisation styles of leaders, participants, and followers has not been addressed by rule of law for the good of all as the current primitive barbaric reliance on law of property is not fit for human consumption.
Only a new continental congress with re-written declarations and a firm commitment and a new currency system implemented locally will free people from the constraints of abnormal demands of conformity and corruption. Because without this re-formation, either an open revolt or a depraved society are ineviteable.
The situation we find ourselves is not by accident, but by design. The powers that be, Zionism, elites, bankers, MIC, all desire a world without borders (Except Israel, they get borders). Mass migration does not work for Americans but it certainly works for those listed above. Of course it offers cheap labor, ready soldiers (who won’t ask questions, so scared they will be kicked out and deported) , ignorant voters, Clinton would not be where she is if not for poorly informed Latino voters, but most of all its a tool to destroy American society. This many migrants, speaking one language (and given every opportunity to NOT learn English, in that everything is now in both languages) is extremely destructive to a society as a whole. But the tools of those in power the media, entertainment industry and education, have worked tirelessly to dumb down the American people and insure our ignorance and disunity. Mass immigration is the best example, the media is so pro-open borders it is hard to imagine what a balanced media on the issue would sound like. And what it has created is a one sided argument where those for open borders are “good, caring, real Americans”, and those wanting limitations are considered “evil racists, white supre…blablabla”. When was the last time the media reported about the costs of mass migration to jobs in America, or to the social safety net? Nope just 24/7 badgering that we need to have open borders or become Nazis. Interesting how this same ZioMedia never looks at Israel with the same criticism.
i know this quite well.
i would guess that with Hellery as president she would open the floodgates to the 250,000,000 people south of the border to invade the US. Then after trashing America out more not building the wall, flee to israel behind their wall and sleep with her buddy netty.
reconquista. groupo beta. 1 million crashers a year since 1975.
i want a refund.
“Carlos said he told the officers that he had been involved with MS-13 in Guatemala but had nothing to do with them in Los Angeles.”
—
Interesting … what the hail was Carlos doing moving into LA? and in particular – Westlake, where the MS-13 gang trolls about?
Gangsters are gangsters for life, period. Carlos is a prime example of why America needs strong borders.
“MARKED FOR LIFE” …as if the world needs to shower this guy with pity. Please.
“Gangsters are gangsters for life, period.”
Actually, there’s no evidence, at all, for that assertion.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that it’s the rare bigoted asshole who reforms and redeems himself.
you have not lived amongst them? i have. If you want to put all, ALL, your time and money into re-forming people who didnt grow up right, did grow up wrong, be my guest. But i wont be spending my tax dollars on it. And abortions are a woman’s choice.
Move into gangland, get an apartment, you’ll save money too.
See? Gangsters may want to reform, given the opportunity, while bigoted assholes are perfectly pleased with themselves as they are.
As for your sacred tax money, I guess you prefer more of it on “enforcement” and punishment, both total failures, than to spend less of it resolving the issues that give rise to the problems. You have plenty of company; we’re a stupid and vengeful society.
See? Gangsters may say they want to reform but who said that? A gangster. Own a pitbull? You can always trust a pitbull when he says he’s your friend.
“As for your sacred tax money, I guess you prefer more of it on “enforcement” and punishment, both total failures, than to spend less of it resolving the issues that give rise to the problems. You have plenty of company; we’re a stupid and vengeful society”. How do you figure MORE enforcement, how could there be any less?
Speak for yourself, you sound pretty stupid and vengeful. The very idea that American want secure borders and gang filth out of the country is somehow out of bounds by the likes of Salwitz, is pretty outrageous. But they have always tried to bully Americans into doing what is not in our best interest.
They are the number one reason I will vote for Trump, to slap down all the BS things like DS spew from their mouths. You will note its never about what is good for America, because mass migration certainly is not, its some “greater good” that always seems to benefit the wealthy and never the American people.
WOW, no evidence of recidivism in gangs, are you sure about that “Salzmann”?
Ah the if you want borders you are a “bigot’, sorry asshole, but the constitutional command that the United State government ‘shall’ protect the border states against (a) invasion and (b) domestic violence related to a failure to secure the border,”
Salz…is an American hater, it does not like America to have pride or a healthy society, instead we are supposed to welcome MS-13 gangsters. I only ask what Israel is allowed to have. Interesting how they are never questioned for their borders, at least not by the American ZioMedia.
The same US Constitution protects the right of association, which would include gang membership.
But I suppose those who only pay attention to what reinforces their prejudices forget that part.
ah, sounds like you just contradicted yourself. First you claimed the authority of the Constitution of the United States and then you went and crossed yourself by making a false claim regarding association without also reconciling that with the part where the constitution applies to CITIZENS. You know, “citizens”.
Not a citizen? get out of my country.
No problem. As an American Individual opposed to gangsterism, lucky for gangfickers i am not in charge of dealing with them. I have a ZERO tolerance policy for these types. The only problem with deporting them is that they will want to return. Frankly, the world has no place for them.
You missed a big part of the story: the fellow is NOT with a gang anymore, was never a member of a gang in America, and doesnt want to be in a gang. Do you believe people can’t grow up or change beliefs?
This is another example of police abuse of process and possibly racism too.
My observation is that people either grow to become individuals or be as groupies – similar to but decidedly different than employment dependency membership. Can a hard core groupie become an individual? Some of them become Jesus groupies but that is not the same.
It is a flaw, a fault, with the US operating environment that individualism is not nurtured and promoted. It is a sick system. Only emphasis in the arts in early childhood can fix that.
Changing a belief is pretty much a hat trick. Police are not trained to discriminate. I personally do not believe that a person should be allowed to be a policeman without a 2 year college education with emphasis in subjects that matter, especially in preservation of american democracy and rights of individuals.
the groupification of america is killing the american way.
And then there are those groupies who claim to be individualists just like all the other individualists in their group.
He is an illegal alien. How can doing ANYTHING be a police abuse of process?
Its an abuse of process that his illegal ass was not tossed out each time he stepped into our country.
You may be happy to give my country away to infected foreign illegal invaders, but there are a lot of us that do not agree.
Could you imagine migrating to any other nation on earth with the story, I sued to be in a gang but not any more…well sure come on in!
That is the BS the anti American globalists shit bags would have us believe. I believe America was far greater in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s and started a drastic decline in the 90’s. Mass migration is destroying the social fabric of this nation, something that does not bother some, because they hate American society. To be sure I am no fan of it today either, but what is today is a product of the Zionist manipulation. You look at the media entertainment, Hollywood, Wall Street, and now Washington, nothing they do is to strengthen American society, its all about divide and conquer.
Doesn’t the US Constitution enshrine freedom of association?
By what criteria is MS13 determined to be more dangerous than any other criminal gangs, such as the GOP, DNC, LAPD, CIA, militia groups, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto, etc?
indeed the US has serious issues. The worst “types” of associations seek to prey upon others. Like the goldsuckers who should be in prison doing hard labor. Monsanto? should be disbanded. Police, weed out the bad ones. DNC & GOP, disbanded. America is a nation of INDIVIDUALISM and as president, i would enforce that even if it killed me.
The people need to redeclare some founding documents so we can live as individuals, not groupee whores like hellery clinton.
“As President, I would require everyone to be an ‘individual’ just like me. If they do not agree with being an ‘individual’ just like me and those I surround myself with, I will kill them for not conforming to my ‘non-conformist’ standard.”….
Is the absurdity of my restating your position beyond your ability to comprehend?
If America is a nation founded on ‘Individualism’, then why does the Constitution define the role of Government as being to “WE the PEOPLE of the UNITED States, in order to form a more perfect UNION, establish justice and ensure domestic tra quility, provide for the COMMON defence, promote the GENERAL welfare, and to provide the Blessings of Liberty to OURSELVES and OUR posterity…”?
The words I highlight in all caps seem to not imply ‘individualism’, but a recognition that a society requires people to work together, for a nation to be successful….
Perhaps if your ‘individualism’ allowed for critical thought, instead of just parroting what is, in all frankness, groupthink that could not withstand individuals capable of thinking ior themselves, you would make a bit less of a mockery of yourself.
“Is the absurdity of my restating your position beyond your ability to comprehend?”
quite.
WE means EACH AND EVERY, TOGETHER AND SEVERALLY.Perhaps you should take a course in law to understand the conjugations of ONE?
You sir, seem quite lost in the concept of togetherness. So let me help you with the parable of the branch vs 100 sticks. You know that one?
Jumped the shark with this one.
the zionistas have met one of their matches – ie.. ms13 like Palestinians armed to the teeth. I suppose if the USG were really smart, they could deport ms13 to wallstreet and get back what America was robbed of and continues to be robbed of. lloyd blankfein vs ms13, the title fight, physical savages vs money savages. It’s a fair match.
Thank God – another fine young man saved by the judicial system. I assume he now resides happily with the author of this piece…
The use of gang injunctions is indeed highly problematic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_injunction
That said, we should ask how many illegal immigrants we want to have in the U.S. Is 11 million enough? Should we make it 22, or 33? and if we’re going to deport somebody, who should we deport — the person who fled El Salvador to avoid joining a gang, or the one who joined, and came here, and happened to be living in the one little part of California with an active gang injunction against MS-13?
I mean correct me if I’m wrong, but the way I read the Wikipedia article it seems like each gang is under a specific injunction. The areas can run into square miles, which is a major concern, but they aren’t statewide. If he weren’t living cheek by jowl with the main mass of MS-13 members, the injunction wouldn’t even be applicable. And as I understand it, he could just move – not even to a different state or a different city, but just out of that part of that city. Is that right?
So we have the word of an admitted “former” MS-13 member, in MS-13 territory, that he’s not part of all that, and on that basis, we should not apply ordinary immigration law because his number shouldn’t have come up.
That, I’d say, is a hard sell. Stuff like that gets Donald Trump elected. Do we want to have an idiot playing with the nuke button, or would we prefer to avoid getting totally carried away about the rights of gang-affiliated illegal immigrants?
That said, elementary common sense DOES encourage us to leave gang members an out. To start with, we should seize tattoo removal from the medical racketeers and allow anyone who does tattoos to get and use equipment to remove them, without special regulations. Why do we let freaks run around slitting tongues and tattooing eyeballs and spreading hepatitis without any regulation, yet claim that this “right to free expression” doesn’t extend to scrubbing the crap off their former victims. I mean, tattoos would be a tragedy just for the inexcusable defacement of the lovely ladies we run across at the supermarket, without even bringing in this gang nonsense.
Then we should by all means encourage people on the gang lists to go through some process officially repudiate gang membership and scrub their records or at least some substantial part of their restrictions. That includes granting them some free stuff like tattoo removal to make it more convincing – I think it’s worth scrubbing tattoos off even the illegals, if it means they are really not thinking of themselves as members after that. The whole mystique of the gangs is that their membership is for life. We need to shatter that magic, make it laughable.
But the best thing is to end drug prohibition altogether, and take the wind right out of the gangs’ sails.
(Honestly, no, I don’t think this is going to happen – I think the gangs are going to win and one of them is going to rule half the country from an imperial throne in Washington. But it’s what should happen, and someday people will wish it had)
So we have the word of an admitted “former” MS-13 member, in MS-13 territory, that he’s not part of all that, and on that basis, we should not apply ordinary immigration law because his number shouldn’t have come up.
Gangs don’t just choose an arbitrary part of a city in which to set up, they go to where their victims/potential recruits are. These are generally low income areas and those struggling to make rent in such places certainly don’t have the option to just up sticks and move.
The question, at least in these cases, isn’t “Who should be deported?” but “How should people be deported?” I believe they should have access to the same basic rights in the justice system as anyone else.
Donald Trump has NO incliniation to nuclear war, NONE. ZERO.
Hellery does…
Hillary is more likely to stumble into a war than calculatingly start one
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brenner/is-hillary-a-warmonger_b_10440976.html
“oops. did i just back russia into a corner? ha ha ha ha. we win hehehehe. Hey, what is russia doing bombing our nuke sites in poland and romania? just because my man netty can bomb iran doesnt give russia that right!! i’m mad. they cant do that. i can nuke them before they nuke us… i’ll show them who’s boss.”
THAT! IS TEMPERMENT AND THAT IS HELLERY HOE CLINTON.
Trump would say “whadya, nuts? geez. oh well”. and that would be it.