General Discussion

applegrove

(118,832 posts) Sat Feb 10, 2018, 02:30 AM Feb 2018

The White House's weekly 'immigrant crime' tally includes non-crimes and nonimmigrants

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/politics/wp/2018/02/09/the-white-houses-weekly-immigrant-crime-tally-includes-non-crimes-and-non-immigrants/?__twitter_impression=true

By Philip Bump at the Washington Post

"SNIP......

Last summer, Trump traveled to Long Island to excoriate the scourge of MS-13, a gang associated with the Salvadoran community that was founded in Los Angeles in the 1980s. There had been a spate of violence associated with the gang in the area, and Trump was quick to link that violence to MS-13 and link MS-13 to immigrants and link immigrants to crime broadly. He pointed to 42 people who had been implicated in violent activity through MS-13, which he implied was representative of a group of 150,000 people who had entered the country under former president Barack Obama.

So the “immigrant crime” email included two articles from The Post about MS-13 activity. The first was a story titled, “‘Vying for control’: How MS-13 uses violence and extortion in America’s jails.” The other was titled, “Stabbing of 16-year-old Md. student was MS-13 related, prosecutors said.”

The latter article details a violent incident at a school in Maryland in which several students tried to rob another student, resulting in the victim being shot after a struggle. The State’s Attorney who linked the event to MS-13 did not explain that link, but the two teenagers arrested, Zanaya Bryant, 17, and Anthony Hollingsworth, 18, are not described anywhere as immigrants from El Salvador — or anywhere else.

The former article describes broadly the process by which MS-13, like other gangs, struggles for control in penal institutions. Reporter Michael Miller speaks with two inmates from El Salvador but also describes violent activity by other prison gangs not associated with an immigrant community.

.......SNIP"