Immigration, Crime, and the Death of an American Paradise

By Nicholas Stix
Volume 28, Number 1 (Fall 2017)
Issue theme: "The Refugee Crisis And Its Impact on the West"


When I was growing up during the 1950s-1970s in Nassau County’s Long Beach, Long Island was the place for which New York City’s white working and middle classes fled the city.

New York City was then falling to the onslaught of what is now called “diversity”—racist blacks and Hispanics, and the attendant crime, de-policing, and slummification.

People who cared about their children fled New York City, to the nicest neighborhoods in the nicest towns they could afford. I had a middle-aged, middle-class, Canadian-Irish aunt in Huntington in Suffolk. Less fortunate whites landed in towns like Brentwood and Elmont, whom folks in Huntington would have looked down on. (Brentwood was then notorious as the home of the world’s largest psychiatric hospital, Pilgrim State.) However, compared to crime- and racism-ravaged New York City, those places were paradises.

There were counterparts to New York City and Long Island all over the country.

“Liberal” journalists and social science professors condemned the outflow as “white flight,” a code phrase for racism.

Forty years later, paradise was long lost. Long Island and its suburban counterparts were increasingly resembling the banlieues outside Paris.

In 2016, people began stumbling across corpses in Brentwood, Central Islip, and Elmont. “They keep finding bodies.”

The bodies were the corpses of young, Hispanic “immigrants” who had been brutally murdered by the Salvadoran gang, Mara Salvatrucha, MS-13 for short. MS-13 is one of the largest and most cut-throat transnational gangs in America. (“Mara” is Central American slang for gang; “Salva” is short for Salvador; and “Trucha” is short for “clever” or “alert.” The number 13 was added, because m is the thirteenth letter in the alphabet. [http://www.insightcrime.org/el-salvador-organized-crime-news/mara-salvatrucha-ms-13-profile, Insight Crime: Investigation and Analysis of Organized Crime, last updated on March 9, 2017.])

In one case, a black American teenager, Nisa Mickens, 15, was murdered merely because she was in the company of her friend, Kayla Cuevas, 16, a Hispanic girl who had been targeted for death by the gang.

On July 19, 2017, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy D. Sini announced the arrest of 17 MS-13 members for murder and mayhem. Eight of the arrestees, PC Sini added, were illegal aliens.

The gang had committed no fewer than 19 murders in Suffolk County alone, just since January 2016.

The murder victims included:

Brentwood

• Jose Pena, 16 (June 3, 2016)

• Kayla Cuevas, 16 (Sept. 13, 2016)

• Nisa Mickens, 15 (Sept. 13, 2016)

(Pena, Cuevas, and Mickens were all classmates at Brentwood High School)

Central Islip

• Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla, 29 (January 30, 2017)

• Justin Llivicura, 16 (April 11, 2017)

• Jorge Tigre, 18 (April 11, 2017)

• Michael Lopez Banegas, 20 (April 11, 2017)

• Jefferson Villalobos, 18 (April 11, 2017)

The Suffolk murders were notable for their savagery. In the case of four men who were lured to a public park in Central Islip, allegedly by two female MS-13 “associates,” who offered the victims easy sex, a dozen MS-13 members who had lain in wait suddenly fell upon them, armed with machetes, knives, and bludgeons, and slaughtered them in a hail of blood and sadism of such ecstasy as to suggest a primitive, religio-sexual ritual.

The gang members exult in such primitiveness, covering their bodies in tattoos suggesting a stone-age tribe.

The Salvadoran MS-13 is every bit as savage as the Somalis, whom profiteering do-gooders have inflicted upon us. (The demand to join the gang among Central American “immigrants” has been so great that MS-13 now permits Hondurans to join as well.)

How did MS-13 manage to come to Long Island and establish itself, taking over large swathes of towns, with 700 members in Nassau County alone, and another 400 in neighboring Suffolk County (according to the Long Island newspaper, Newsday)? For that matter, how had it already managed to take over chunks of America?

Salvadorans had virtually no foothold in America, prior to their country’s 12-year civil war from 1980 to 1992. Hundreds of thousands flooded illegally into America, many of whom were illegally protected by the criminal, so-called Sanctuary Movement. (Thus, the Marxist Sanctuary Movement has much blood on its hands for America’s Central American gang problem.)

President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Immigration Act of 1990, under which Congress granted hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Globalists everywhere cheered the Act’s enactment.

Instead of expelling the refugees once the civil war had ended, every few years Congress would re-authorize their parole, and find pretexts such as natural disasters to extend TPS to hundreds of thousands of additional Salvadorans, with no intention of ever repatriating them.

During the 1980s, Salvadorans founded MS-13 in Los Angeles, and over the course of a generation of presidential and congressional fecklessness, spread the gang all over the country.

In summer 2014, President Obama sent word to Central America’s violent “Northern Triangle” of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, inviting people to send their teenaged and grown sons north to America. The “children” (teenagers and men anywhere from 14 to 30 years of age) were to surrender to border agents at or just across the border.

Instead of enforcing the law and deporting the new illegal aliens, the border agents took them to processing stations that had been created just for this purpose. The illegals were fed and housed, but were not even checked for diseases or parasites. As Attorney General Jeff Sessions complained to Fox News journalist Tucker Carlson in El Salvador in August 2017, instead of returning the illegal aliens to their home countries, immigration officials asked the boys and men where in America they would like to go, and then secretly took them there!

This was all illegal. The number of crimes Obama committed in just this campaign, which lasted until he left office, is mind-boggling. It often appeared that Obama’s plan, having been mentored by Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn — influenced by “community organizer” Saul Alinsky — was to turn America into a permanent Marxist racial dictatorship. They intended to reduce the descendants of America’s founders to a pauperized, disenfranchised minority.

The media, federal bureaucrats, and refugee resettlement racketeers gave Obama propaganda cover, speaking of “children” who were “vulnerable” to being recruited by MS-13, rather than admitting that they were no children at all, and that many of them were already members of MS-13, or another gang. Obama’s bureaucrats dubbed them, “Unaccompanied Minors” (UAMs). Obama and his supporters acted as if the Central Americans he was illegally bringing into the country were somehow “refugees.”

When the Republican-controlled Congress did nothing to curb Obama’s criminality (e.g., beginning impeachment proceedings, or cutting his purse strings), he reportedly stopped waiting for the illegals to even cross the border.

On July 18, 2015, illegal alien/gang activist Victor Manuel Ramos, who was ostensibly a news reporter at Newsday, asserted,

“Hundreds of Central American children are seeking to come to Long Island and other parts of the nation on a new path carved by President Barack Obama for minors ‘at risk of harm’ in their home countries, according to a federal agency and a local resettlement group.

“Children from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala who prove they are fleeing danger will be placed on flights to airports where their parents will meet them.”

[http://www.newsday.com/long-island/central-american-minors-may-use-new-way-to-come-to-u-s-1.10656697 Central American minors may use new way to come to U.S., by Victor Manuel Ramos, Newsday, Updated July 18, 2015 10:20 P.M.]

First of all, none of the illegals in question were “children.” Second, there was no way for the illegals to “prove” they were “fleeing,” rather than spreading violence. Third, this wasn’t a matter of “hundreds,” but hundreds of thousands or millions of Central American illegal aliens whom President Obama sought to import. And fourth and most importantly, there was no legal “new path.” Obama was talking as if the illegals in question were refugees. “Refugees” are people who flee war, civil war, or persecution. American immigration law does not grant “refugee” status to people, merely because they are from violent countries. Much of the world is violent, and such a legal standard would grant over four billion foreigners automatic “refugee” status.

Just as Victor Manuel Ramos and his Open Borders Lobby comrades had re-defined the legal term “illegal aliens” as “undocumented immigrants,” “unauthorized workers,” or simply, “immigrants,” they were now re-defining illegal aliens as “refugees” and “asylum seekers.”

But it’s not just radical leftwing outlets like Newsday. Purportedly conservative media outlets such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are the other wing of the same plane. Republican media like the aforementioned two outlets believe in open borders for the sake of cheap labor and class war, while radical leftwing outlets like Newsday do so for cheap votes and Communist revolution.

At times, one can find “reporting” at Fox News that is as ridiculous as what one finds from the other side of the aisle.

“MS-13, also called Mara Salvatrucha, is believed to have been founded as a neighborhood street gang in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s by immigrants [sic] fleeing a civil war in El Salvador. The gang grew after some members were deported to El Salvador, helping turn that country into one of the most violent places in the world.” [http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/07/19/ms-13-initiation-killings-lured-to-park-by-girls-and-hacked-to-death-with-machetes.html# MS-13 ‘initiation killings’: Lured to a park by girls and hacked to death with machetes</a> by Travis Fedschun, Fox News, July 19, 2017.]

In the above-quoted paragraph, “immigrants” should read as either “illegal aliens” or “refugees.” And the notion that prior to America helping Salvadorans, their country was not one of the world’s deadliest, is both obscene and head-thumpingly stupid. Why, after all, were they fleeing El Salvador?

One day later, the same Marxist propaganda got essay-length treatment in a Washington Post op-ed by a Harvard “expert.”

“We are not importing Central American problems. Rather, it is the U.S. that has exported violence, time and again, to Central America.” [Deporting people made Central America’s gangs. More deportation won’t help. By Daniel Denvir, Washington Post, July 20, 2017.]

Travis Fedschun and Daniel Denvir were parroting the longtime, Marxist position that America has no right to enforce its laws against non-white criminals, whether American or foreign. Another Marxist rhetorical strategy, is to assert that enforcing the law against Marxists’ clients will only provoke worse criminality on the street (whether America’s or El Salvador’s means nothing to these propagandists), or that the gang will simply commit crimes from prison. It ain’t over ’til the criminals win. [http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/28/us/ms-13-gang-long-island-trump/index.html>MS-13 members: Trump makes the gang stronger by Dan Lieberman, Davide Cannaviccio, Patricia Pedraza and Nick Scott, CNN, Updated 7:34 AM ET, Fri July 28, 2017.]

The solution to such smoke screens is massive deportations of illegal aliens from El Salvador and other North Triangle countries, and federal executions of MS-13 murderers.

How Big is MS-13?

I have tried without success to determine the size of MS-13 in America. Amy Thoreson of the Transnational Anti-Gang (TAG) Task Forces (previously named the “MS-13 National Gang Task Force”) told me, “We don’t like to estimate” the numbers.

Newsday reports, “Authorities have identified 712 members of the gang in Nassau, of whom 345 are active, according to Acting Nassau County Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter.

“The gang has about 400 members in Suffolk County, according to Police Commissioner Timothy Sini.” [http://projects.newsday.com/long-island/ms-13-long-island-know-gang/ MS-13 on Long Island: What we know about the gang, Compiled by Newsday staff | Newsday, Updated: July 18, 2017.]

New York State has 62 counties; the U.S. has over 3,100 counties and county equivalents. Nassau and Suffolk are nowhere near MS-13’s biggest strongholds.

The last time the FBI gave a public count, in 2006, it estimated that MS-13 had 10,000 members on American soil. I believe that today that number would more likely be at least five times as high. The clamor to join the gang is so loud that it has liberalized its rules, and now also admits Hondurans.

Consider that:

• MS-13 has thousands of members in its Los Angeles-area headquarters alone;

• Law enforcement sources estimate that the gang has at least 1,100 members, split between a mere two suburban Long Island counties;

• MS-13 has taken over parts of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and the state of Maryland;

• Other MS-13 strongholds include New York City, San Antonio, Newark, and our nation’s capital;

• Since summer 2014, hundreds of thousands of new teenaged boys and men have entered America illegally from El Salvador and violent, neighboring countries; and

• MS-13 operates in at least 42 states and the District of Columbia.

To give an example of how pervasive MS-13 is—and the mere presence of Salvadorans is a proxy for the presence of gangs—I looked up the tiny hamlet of Loch Sheldrake, New York (pop. 1,180), where I attended Sullivan County Community College from 1976 to 1978.

At the time, there were virtually no Hispanics in town. Today, the top three groups, in terms of “most common origin,” are:

1. Salvadoran;

2. German; and

3. Mexican.

[https://datausa.io/profile/geo/loch-sheldrake-ny/#category_heritage Data USA: Loch Sheldrake, NY, last accessed: August 21, 2017.]

Unlike other transnational gangs, there is constant, daily coordination between MS-13 leaders in El Salvador and America.

“Immigration” Activists and Profiteers

Groups that claim to speak in the interests of “immigrants” (read: illegal aliens) prove to be the greatest American enemies of actual immigrants, and enthusiastic supporters of MS-13 and other criminals. (The legal term “immigrants” refers to foreign nationals who enter the U.S. through a port of entry with a valid legal passport and visa.)

The biggest “voluntary” (private) refugee resettlement agencies were founded under the auspices of Catholicism, Judaism, and Lutheranism. However, their leaders long ago gave up any religious faith, and are now various stripes of Marxist (including reconquista) profiteers in the refugee resettlement racket.

In November 2008, seven white teenagers in Patchogue, Suffolk County, stabbed “immigrant” Marcelo Lucero to death. To add insult to injury, none of Lucero’s killers was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.

Although illegal aliens kill Americans every day in this country (mostly via DUI vehicular manslaughter), to listen to Catholic Charities activist Carmen Maquilon, the Lucero murder was the only killing in Suffolk County over the past nine years. Maquilon has repeatedly produced psychodrama episodes ever since to politically exploit the murder, which media activists like Newsday’s Victor Manuel Ramos and his editors use as cover for pro-illegal alien propaganda. [https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Marcelo+Lucero%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8]

I could not find any record of Maquilon denouncing MS-13 or any other immigrant gangs (e.g., the Eighteenth Street Gang). (I left three messages for Maquilon, but she never responded.)

The three biggest voluntary, “non-profit” refugee agencies in the New York metropolitan area, Catholic Charities, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, are making millions of dollars in annual profits off of illegal aliens and fraudulent refugees. You won’t hear them denouncing the gangs here, either.

How You Can Support Unaccompanied Children — Lutheran Services

The page is an advertisement from the site, Lutheran Services Georgia. At the top of the page is a cute boy of four or five years of age on monkey bars. Just under the title is a picture of three adorable little girls from about four to nine years of age. The pictures and accompanying text couldn’t be more deceptive.

LEARN : Supporting unaccompanied children begins with awareness of their situation. In the midst of so much misinformation and discrimination towards these children, spreading accurate information and compassionate perspectives on the crisis is crucial. Check out and share the following resources with those looking to learn more.

“It Was Either This or Be Murdered” [https://www.lsga.org/blog/how-you-can-support-unaccompanied-children> How You Can Support Unaccompanied Children, Lutheran Services Georgia, July 30, 2014.]

A press release from HIAS speaks of illegal aliens from Central America as “asylum seekers,” who are part of a “global refugee crisis…”

HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield is in cahoots with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. [https://www.hias.org/hias-welcomes-introduction-secure-northern-triangle-act “HIAS Welcomes Introduction of Secure Northern Triangle Act,” HIAS, Jul 06, 2016.]

In 2015, such hysterical propaganda tactics were used to generate a moral panic in Europe that threatens to reduce the continent to part of the Islamic Caliphate.

Assemblyman Phil Ramos is a political supporter of MS-13:

“Phil Ramos, a Democrat in the state assembly who represents Brentwood, a town that is 68 percent Latino, questions what Ms. Rodriguez will be able to accomplish in meeting Mr. Trump. [Evelyn Rodriguez is the mother of murder victim, Kayla Cuevas.]

“‘I’m glad that they are listening to her. I’m just doubtful that their listening will produce anything progressive. If the president wants to send more money to our schools and create more economic development, that is certainly welcome. But to come here and create a nexus that fits a narrative that you want to use as red meat for your base, that is absolutely not welcome here.” [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/nyregion/her-daughter-was-killed-by-a-gang-she-has-a-message-for-trump.html “Her Daughter Was Killed by a Gang. She Has a Message for Trump,” By Liz Robbins, New York Times, July 27, 2017.]

Assemblyman Ramos would have President Trump subsidize criminals, instead of arresting them! Ramos’ statement was identical to Chicago politicians’ response to the President’s offer of federal help in fighting the Windy City’s gang problem.

MS-13 supporters routinely overplay their hands, arguing via hoary cliché that enforcing the law against MS-13 would “tear families apart,” because apparently every Salvadoran family has at least one MS-13 member in it. Thus, we cannot enforce any laws—or else we must “tear apart” families. Hmm. [https://www.google.com/search?q=%22tear+families+apart%22+%2B+MS-13&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8,]

Finally, the biggest group of unsung supporters of MS-13, consists of America’s police chiefs.

While it was heartening to hear Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy Sini testify on June 20, 2017, during a congressional hearing held by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) about the importance of routing MS-13, something’s wrong with this picture. Sini spoke as if his only “immigrant” law enforcement problem were the gangs. Everyone is careful to express their sympathy to the “immigrant” population victimized by MS-13. But they’re all crooks! And the population deserving of sympathy is that of American citizens who do not profit off of illegal aliens, but who are constantly pickpocketed to pay for “services” for criminals.

In 1979, the Los Angeles Police Commission instituted municipal ordinance “Special Order 40,” which LAPD Chief Daryl Gates signed. S.O. 40 violates federal immigration law, in forbidding officers from inquiring into the immigration status of suspected illegal aliens. Once a person was suspected of breaking a non-immigration law, LAPD offices were to determine a suspect’s immigration status, but as I learned in 2007, under Chief William Bratton, the LAPD <a href=http://www.vdare.com/articles/lapd-we-dont-get-into-immigration-status-of-christmas-story-directors-killer>was even violating its own illegal ordinance</a>! It was arresting illegal aliens for crimes up to and including gross vehicular manslaughter, without inquiring after the suspects’ immigration status. The LAPD’s top officers had decided to nullify the nation’s immigration laws.

Over time, police departments all over the country followed in the criminal LAPD’s footsteps. Smart chiefs like Bratton figured out how they could use illegal city ordinances like S.O. 40 to re-define crime, and thereby make it seem as if they were doing a much better job than they actually were.

Police would cede sovereignty over “immigrant” neighborhoods to brutal, illegal alien gangs like MS-13, who would victimize and terrify the illegals over whom they ruled, while the gangs warned the illegals that if they went to the police, the gang would kill them and their families. With the crime victims not reporting crimes, Bratton, et al., could issue fraudulent statistics reporting incredible drops in crime.

Thanks to corrupt chiefs like Bratton, illegals also got a free ride with immigration and immigration-related crimes like:

• Felony re-entry, after having been deported;

• Working illegally;

• Identity theft;

• Tax evasion;

• Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) fraud;

• Driving without a license; and

• Driving without auto insurance.

When Los Angelenos complained about Bratton’s refusal to enforce the law against illegal aliens, the carpetbagger from Boston notoriously told them that if they didn’t like it, they should “leave the state.”

Bratton also made up the fairy tale whereby, if police enforced the immigration laws, no illegals would come forward to report crime. Such a culture of lies upon lies enabled the further bald-faced lie, whereby illegal aliens are more law-abiding than the typical American. Sure, if you define away all their crimes!

In the words of the late congressman Sonny Bono, “What part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?”

There is no reason to tolerate any Salvadorans on American soil. That there are some kind Salvadorans—and I personally know some—is irrelevant. Rational, just government policy cannot be made based on sob stories.

There is yet another big reason for banning Salvadorans from America: Barrio 18 (the Eighteenth Street Gang). This transnational Salvadoran gang and MS-13 rival operates in 120 American cities in 30 states, and has anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 members on American soil. [http://nypost.com/2017/08/04/the-gang-so-terrifying-it-rivals-ms-13/ “The gang so terrifying it rivalsMS-13,” by Andrew O’Reilly, Fox News, The New York Post, August 4, 2017.]

Salvadorans (and their Northern Triangle neighbors) are culturally incompatible with America:

El Salvador is presently the murder capital of the world;

Anytime one permits people to come to America “fleeing violence,” one is importing violence. That is because there has never been an adequate mechanism, with which to vet people from primitive cultures; violent criminals routinely claim to be fleeing violence, and are coached in their home countries on how to “get over” on American officials;

The refugee racket is staffed with people—at “voluntary” (private) and federal agencies alike—who are hostile to Americans’ well-being, have no interest in vetting “refugees,” and thus cannot be trusted;

Salvadorans have absolutely nothing to offer Americans;

Such societies naturally tend to collectivist violence, such that being in a gang is the norm, notwithstanding rehearsed arias about having fled pressure to join a gang;

The same incentive that makes a gang attractive to a male from a primitive society makes it a cancer on a civilized society: It is a force multiplier, which makes every individual much more powerful than he would be alone; and central to a civilized society is that it is overwhelmingly dominated by citizens who do not live by violence; that those who are violent are segregated; and violent criminals are kept out, for a civilized people is “easy pickins” for primitive “refugees”; and

Murder is their national pastime.

About the author

Nicholas Stix, a New York-based freelance journalist and frequent contributor to VDARE, founded A Different Drummer magazine (1990-93), which he continues online, and has written for numerous publications, including The New York Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, Middle American News, Toogood Reports, Insight, Chronicles, Campus Reports, the Weekly Standard, Front Page Magazine, Ideas on Liberty, and National Review Online.