President Donald Trump speaks at Suffolk Community College on July 28, 2017, in Brentwood, New York. Trump and his attorney general are escalating the war on drugs by tying it to their ongoing war on immigrants. (Photo: Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
Speaking before a large crowd of law enforcement officers on Long Island on Friday, President Trump invoked the MS-13 gang in yet another attempt to paint his administration’s crackdown on immigrants as an effort to control gang violence. MS-13 is notorious for using brutal intimidation tactics to maintain control of illegal drug and smuggling markets from Long Island to Central America, and Trump seemed to know that the gang’s sensational reputation could be used to scare people.
“They’re animals,” Trump said of MS-13. He also urged police not to be “too nice” when arresting suspects and boasted about deporting immigrants.
In 2016, violent crime rates remained near the bottom of a 30-year downward trend, with spikes in violence sequestered to a few individual cities. However, in the world according to Trump, violent crime is on the rise across the country, and gangs made up of immigrants and drug dealers are to blame. Never one to be deterred by hard data, Trump said on Friday that “American towns” must be “liberated” from the grips of criminals “one by one.”
“Can you believe that I’m saying that?” Trump said. “I’m talking about liberating our towns. This is like I’d see in a movie: They’re liberating the town, like in the old Wild West, right?”
Angie Junck, the supervising attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, told Truthout that Trump continues to exploit tragedy in furthering his political agenda. Murders and disappearances do occur at the hands of gangs such as MS-13, but Trump’s heavy-handed response does nothing to promote local solutions to the problem. Instead, it makes communities less safe: Many victims are the same people authorities want to deport.
“People are fearful to come out and speak with police, and…