[Occupymendocino] 4/trump-uses-ms-13-to-sell-draconian-overhauls-of-border-issues-journalist-says

[Richard Karch]

https://www.npr.org/2018/02/15/585937834/trump-uses-ms-13-to-sell-draconian-overhauls-of-border-issues-journalist-says

TERRY  GROSS, HOST: 
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. You've probably heard President Trump say terrifying things about the predominantly Salvadoran gang MS-13 and how it's terrorizing people in some communities in the U.S. Here's the president six months after taking office, speaking at Suffolk County Community College on Long Island.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Since January 16 - think of this - MS-13 gang members have brutally murdered 17 beautiful young lives in this area - on Long Island alone. Think of it. They butchered those little girls. They kidnap. They extort. They rape and they rob. They prey on children. They shouldn't be here. They stomp on their victims. They beat them with clubs. They slash them with machetes, and they stab them with knives. They have transformed peaceful parks and beautiful, quiet neighborhoods into blood-stained killing fields. They're animals.

GROSS: In Trump's State of the Union address, he said that many MS-13 gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors. That led into his description of his plan to overhaul the immigration system. My guest Jonathan Blitzer writes that the president has become obsessed with MS-13 But he might actually be strengthening the gang by talking about how menacing it is. And the anti-immigration policies Trump's administration is putting into effect are hurting many of the same people who were targeted by MS-13.

Blitzer is a staff writer for The New Yorker who covers immigration. We're going to talk about the history of MS-13, who the gang members are, who the victims are and where this gang fits in the current story of American immigration. We're also going to talk about the uncertain future of DACA and this week's Senate debate about overhauling the immigration system.

Jonathan Blitzer, welcome to FRESH AIR. Do you know how MS-13 became such an obsession of Donald Trump's?

JONATHAN BLITZER: It's an interesting question. I followed Donald Trump on Long Island during the Republican primaries in the spring of 2016. And you'd think that MS-13 would have been an issue for him then if he was so fixated on a gang. I mean, MS-13 has been on Long Island since the '90s. But all throughout the primary campaign and during all of these very dramatic public appearances that he made on Long Island to different towns, he never once mentioned MS-13 at the time. So the question of sort of when it burst onto his consciousness seems to have been with the murder of two girls in September of 2016. It kind of lined up all of Trump's favorite obsessions on the immigration issue. The girls were American citizens. They were sort of sympathetic teenagers. They were brutally, brutally killed.....

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