New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, who favors open borders and sanctuary city type policies, announced the deployment of a new Gang Violence Prevention Unit. The unit consists of ten State Troopers, who are being deployed to the top ten high-risk Suffolk County schools that currently serve as ground zero for gang activity and recruitment. The specialized gang violence prevention unit will pro-actively work with educators at the schools to help identify early warnings of gang recruitment and violence.
Governor Cuomo, who has openly blasted President Trump’s proposed immigration policies, announced the deployment of this specialized unit that will work closely with the Suffolk County Police Department in developing an anti-gang curriculum. The unit will deliver the curriculumwhich to students to better educate them about the dangers of gangs. The unit will also attempt to cultivate a relationship with students. It will also launch an “Educate the Educators” program to better equip teachers and faculty with the necessary skills to better recognize the early warning signs of gang involvement and recruitment.
The announcement comes on the one-year anniversary of the brutal murders of high-school students Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas by MS-13 gang members. The horrific deaths of Mickens and Cuevas drew national outrage after six MS-13 gang members used baseball bats and a machete to brutally murder the victims in a gang revenge killing,
The murder of Mickens and Cuevas later resulted in a 41-count indictment charging 13 members of the MS-13 gang with racketeering, murder, attempted murder, assault, obstruction of justice, arson and other charges. Authorities said ten of those charged were in the U.S. illegally — coming from either El Salvador or Honduras. Two of those charged in the indictment are fugitives accused in a separate murder which occurred in 2016—the murder of fellow MS-13 member, who violated gang protocol.
Governor Cuomo recently expanded access to state intelligence and law enforcement assets in the fight against MS-13. In April of this year, 25 additional state troopers were deployed in MS-13 hotspots having the highest concentration of gang violence and vulnerability to recruitment. Six additional new investigators to the FBI-led Long Island Gang Task Force are also participating. The Task Force comprises more than 30 members of federal, state, and local law enforcement partners.
Breitbart Texas reached out to multiple police gang experts nationwide who specialize in illegal alien gangs. They voiced concerns over the strategy being used in New York by Governor Cuomo.
The main concern is that stepped-up police enforcement along with gang prevention programs are very important. But, as long as the governor and other local politicians continue to push open borders and a sanctuary environment, these policies will continue to provide a steady flow of recruits for street gangs and other transnational criminal organizations.
Most gang experts believe that the presence of illegal alien gangs in U.S. communities is due to decades of failure on the part of our federal government to secure our southern border and policies that allow such criminals to find sanctuary on U.S. soil.
Additionally, the surge of unaccompanied minors since 2012 from primarily El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala provided some of these gangs with a steady flow of new members to bolster their ranks.
Robert Arce is a retired Phoenix Police detective with extensive experience working Mexican organized crime and street gangs. Arce has worked in the Balkans, Iraq, Haiti, and recently completed a three-year assignment in Monterrey, Mexico, working out of the Consulate for the United States Department of State, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Program, where he was the Regional Program Manager for Northeast Mexico (Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Durango, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas.) You can follow him on Twitter.