A 2008 report by the Congressional Research Service lists several major U.S. cities as having some of the heaviest MS-13 presence in the nation. These cities include Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area in Northern Virginia, Los Angeles, Houston, New York City, Baltimore and Nashville. Since October of last year, more than 57,000 unaccompanied minors have flooded across the Southwest U.S. border illegally, with most of them having come from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, all countries with strong ties to MS-13 and various other Latin American gangs and drug operations.
While they wait to have their cases heard by an immigration judge, most of these children are sent by the Department of Health and Human Services to be housed at temporary shelters, which are primarily run by non-profit groups and religious organizations. U.S. Border Patrol officers repeatedly have said that many of these illegal alien minors are members of gangs like MS-13, coming into the United States with easily-identified gang tattoos, but they are treated as innocent minors because of regulations in federal law.
Shawn Moran, the vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, told Fox News that members of MS-13 have crossed the Southwest U.S. border as part of the most recent surge, and are now using Red Cross phones at federal detention facilities to coordinate gang activity. At the Nogales processing center in Nogales, Arizona, the Red Cross has set up a bank of phones so that unaccompanied juveniles can call family members back home or even in the U.S., and these phones are being utilized by gang members to recruit, to enlist, to pressure people and other juveniles into joining the MS-13 gang, Moran said. And the problem is we are unable to isolate these people because they are juveniles. Our hands are tied.
Albert Spratte, a border patrol agent and union representative representing the Local 3307 in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, said some of them may not even be minors, but Border Patrol has to process them as minors if they claim to be under 18. Weve had older adults posing as teens, Spratte told CNSNews.com during a trip to the border in June. Ill be standing there like, I know youre not 17, you look older than that, he explained. But without documentation, I cant prove that. I have to treat that person as a minor.
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