[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
COMBATING GANG VIOLENCE ON LONG ISLAND: SHUTTING DOWN THE MS 13
PIPELINE
=======================================================================
FIELD HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
COUNTERTERRORISM
AND INTELLIGENCE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 20, 2017
__________
Serial No. 115-20
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Michael T. McCaul, Texas, Chairman
Lamar Smith, Texas Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Peter T. King, New York Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas
Mike Rogers, Alabama James R. Langevin, Rhode Island
Jeff Duncan, South Carolina Cedric L. Richmond, Louisiana
Tom Marino, Pennsylvania William R. Keating, Massachusetts
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Donald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Filemon Vela, Texas
John Katko, New York Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey
Will Hurd, Texas Kathleen M. Rice, New York
Martha McSally, Arizona J. Luis Correa, California
John Ratcliffe, Texas Val Butler Demings, Florida
Daniel M. Donovan, Jr., New York Nanette Diaz Barragan, California
Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin
Clay Higgins, Louisiana
John H. Rutherford, Florida
Thomas A. Garrett, Jr., Virginia
Brian K. Fitzpatrick, Pennsylvania
Brendan P. Shields, Staff Director
Kathleen Crooks Flynn, Deputy General Counsel
Michael S. Twinchek, Chief Clerk
Hope Goins, Minority Staff Director
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON COUNTERTERRORISM AND INTELLIGENCE
Peter T. King, New York, Chairman
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Kathleen M. Rice, New York
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas
Will Hurd, Texas William R. Keating, Massachusetts
Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Michael T. McCaul, Texas (ex (ex officio)
officio)
Mandy Bowers, Subcommittee Staff Director
Nicole Tisdale, Minority Staff Director/Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS
The Honorable Peter T. King, a Representative in Congress From
the State of New York, and Chairman, Subcommittee on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence:
Oral Statement................................................. 1
Prepared Statement............................................. 2
The Honorable Kathleen M. Rice, a Representative in Congress From
the State of New York, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence:
Oral Statement................................................. 3
Prepared Statement............................................. 5
WITNESSES
Panel I
Mr. William Sweeney, Jr., Assistant Director in Charge, New York
Field Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department
of Justice:
Oral Statement................................................. 6
Prepared Statement............................................. 8
Mr. Angel M. Melendez, Special Agent in Charge, Homeland Security
Investigations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 10
Prepared Statement............................................. 12
Mr. Timothy D. Sini, Police Commissioner, Suffolk County, New
York:
Oral Statement................................................. 14
Prepared Statement............................................. 16
Mr. Vincent F. DeMarco, Sheriff, Suffolk County, New York:
Oral Statement................................................. 22
Prepared Statement............................................. 24
Mr. Thomas C. Krumpter, Acting Commissioner, Nassau County Police
Department, Nassau County, New York............................ 26
Mr. Michael Marino, Commanding Officer, Gang Investigations
Squad, Nassau County Police Department, Nassau County, New
York:
Oral Statement................................................. 28
Prepared Statement............................................. 29
Panel II
Mr. Robert Mickens, Suffolk County Resident:
Oral Statement................................................. 46
Prepared Statement............................................. 47
Ms. Evelyn Rodriguez, Suffolk County Resident:
Oral Statement................................................. 47
Prepared Statement............................................. 49
Mr. Howard M. Koenig, Ph.D., Superintendent of Schools, Central
Islip Union Free School District:
Oral Statement................................................. 49
Prepared Statement............................................. 50
Mr. Patrick Young, Esq., Program Director, Central American
Refugee Center:
Oral Statement................................................. 51
Prepared Statement............................................. 54
Appendix
Questions From Chairman Peter T. King for William Sweeney, Jr.... 65
Questions From Chairman Peter T. King for Angel M. Melendez...... 65
Questions From Chairman Peter T. King for Timothy D. Sini........ 67
Questions From Chairman Peter T. King for Vincent F. DeMarco..... 67
Questions From Chairman Peter T. King for Thomas C. Krumpter..... 67
COMBATING GANG VIOLENCE ON LONG
ISLAND: SHUTTING DOWN THE MS-13
PIPELINE
----------
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence,
Central Islip, NY.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., at
Alfonse M. D'Amato United States Courthouse, 100 Federal Plaza,
Central Islip, New York, Hon. Peter T. King [Chairman of the
Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives King [presiding], and Rice.
Mr. King. Good morning. The Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, will come to
order.
The subcommittee is meeting today in Central Islip, New
York to hear testimony on the threat posed by MS-13 and the
efforts to counter this violent gang. I would like to thank the
Ranking Member, Ms. Kathleen Rice, for joining me and holding
this important meeting. Now I will make an opening statement.
Before that, though, let me thank all of you for being here
today, all the witnesses, all the law enforcement, family
members, school superintendents, community advocates. It is
really important, and also the fact that there is a turnout
here from the community that shows how vital this issue is.
The bottom line is MS-13 is a morally depraved,
transnational murderous gang which terrorizes innocent people.
The acts of violence connected to transnational gangs,
specifically MS-13, have drastically and dramatically increased
in Suffolk and Nassau County over the past several years. Just
in the last more than a year, there have been 17 murders in
Suffolk County alone committed by MS-13, and this is something
which cannot be allowed to continue. It is essential we have a
full-scale National, State, and local effort to destroy and end
the terrorism, the tyranny of MS-13. They in many ways have
turned immigrant communities into a killing field, and it is
primarily within the immigrant community that these vicious
machete killings, brutal murders have been carried out, and
these are good people who are often unheard and not listened
to.
So it is important, I think, that we bring this to the
public's attention to realize that maybe in Central Islip and
Brentwood today the fact is these are innocent human beings
being killed, it is happening on our watch, and we have to do
all we can to stop it. I want to thank all those who are here
today because they have made significant contributions in this
war against MS-13. It is important that everybody stand
together on this.
I have spoken to President Trump, who is absolutely
committed to doing whatever is necessary to devastate MS-13. As
you know, Attorney General Sessions was in here on April 28,
actually in this courthouse, meeting with many of the people
who are here today to express the full support of the Justice
Department and all the resources of the Federal Government.
I know that here in Suffolk County, the FBI, Homeland
Security's HSI, and Nassau County Police, Suffolk County
Police, Sheriff DeMarco, everyone has been working together,
and that is really important. It has been really very positive
results over the last several months. We see the sweeps and
raids where 20, 30, 40 have been arrested, and these are MS-13
members, people who are affiliated with MS-13. These are people
who are terrorizing the community.
So it is essential that the word get out that it is
important that there be cooperation with law enforcement
because the bottom line is that the police and the FBI and
Homeland Security can only do so much. The real information is
going to come from people on the ground, and that is why it is
vital that we establish that trust, that relationship, and that
people in the community, leaders in the community encourage the
people in the community to cooperate.
I remember being at a community meeting back in April with
Commissioner Sini, and he said that he knew that the people in
the room knew who the murderers were. So it is important that
those people come forward, whether it is this case or other
cases. Certainly, the murder of those four young boys back in
April attracted National and international attention.
Considering the fact that Suffolk County and Nassau County have
such low crime rates, it is really terrible that we have become
known for MS-13.
So I am going to talk about this from an ego point or a
prestige point of view about we want Suffolk County to be known
for the fact that they do have solid law enforcement and the
crime rate is low. We do not want to be attracting other gang
members, other gangs that come to Long Island. We want them to
know that so long as they are here, they are going to be on the
run, they are going to be hunted down, and they are going to be
arrested or deported, whatever has to be done to stop them.
So again, I look forward to the hearing. I look forward to
the witnesses, all of them experts.
[The statement of Chairman King follows:]
Statement of Chairman Peter T. King
June 20, 2017
MS-13 is a morally-depraved transnational murderous gang
terrorizing innocent people. Acts of violence connected to
transnational gangs, including specifically MS-13, have drastically
increased in Suffolk and Nassau County in the last several years. A
tragic sample is the September 13, 2016, murders of 15-year-old Nisa
Mickens and 16-year-old Kayla Cuevas, in Brentwood, New York. Mickens
and Cuevas were Brentwood High School students who were assaulted with
baseball bats and a machete by four MS-13 gang members.
Additionally, on March 2, 2017, 13 MS-13 members were charged
Federally with racketeering, 7 murders, narcotics violations, and other
offenses. Included in these charges were the murders of Mickens,
Cuevas, and Jose Pena. Pena was another Brentwood High School student
who was killed on June 3, 2016, but whose remains were not found until
October 17, 2016. These victims, along with 14 others dating back to
January 2016, were murdered by MS-13 in Suffolk County alone. Seven of
the 13 gang members charged on March 2, 2017, entered the United States
through the Unaccompanied Alien Children's Services Program. Just in
the past 6 weeks, there have been major sweeps in Nassau and Suffolk
counties resulting in the arrest of more than 40 MS-13 members.
In fiscal year 2016 alone, 4,985 unaccompanied children were
released to sponsors in the New York State through the Unaccompanied
Alien Children Service's Program, with 1,219 being relocated in Nassau
County and 1,472 going to sponsors in Suffolk County.
In response to this dire situation that threatens the very lives of
our children and the safety of our community, it is vital that we
examine the threat posed by MS-13 and the extent to which this violent
gang is able to exploit U.S. immigration programs and circumvent border
security measures to gain entry into the United States.
Today's hearing will feature testimony from the law enforcement and
community stakeholders focused on the threat posed by MS-13 and efforts
to combat the violent gang. The first panel will include
representatives from the Suffolk Police Department, the Suffolk County
Sheriff's Office, the Nassau Police Department, the FBI and Homeland
Security Investigations. All of these agencies have participated in
major investigations into MS-13 gang activity on Long Island.
Our second panel will feature the family members of two of the
victims of MS-13 violence. Although their testimony today will speak to
the impact this violence has on their families and their community, we
will never be able to understand the depths of their loss. They are
showing true courage and resilience in sharing their stories here
today. We will also receive testimony from the superintendent of the
Central Islip school district and an attorney who works with the
immigrant community on Long Island.
Both of these panels reflect the broad cross-section of the
community required to respond to the threat posed by MS-13 and other
transnational gangs on Long Island and across the Nation.
This hearing marks an important step in our efforts to improve the
homeland security of the United States. By examining the threats posed
by MS-13 and other transnational gangs, and the ability of these
violent organizations to penetrate our borders, we can begin to
understand the measures we must take to ensure that border security
screening programs are comprehensive, effective, and secure. These
efforts must include bipartisan cooperation from Congress and support
from the administration as a unified front against the threats facing
our Nation.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and drawing upon their
expertise, insights, and experiences to look for improvements that can
be made to strengthen our programs and policies and work together as a
community to combat and defeat MS-13 and other transnational gangs.
Mr. King. With that, I yield to the Ranking Member, Ms.
Rice.
Ms. Rice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing, and thank you to all of our witnesses for coming
today. We are fortunate to have two diverse panels of witnesses
with unique perspectives and insights on how we can both combat
gang violence on Long Island on the one hand, and on the other
empower young people with the knowledge, support, and resources
they need to reject gangs in their communities.
We are here today to examine a very real and serious threat
to public safety on Long Island. MS-13 and their rival gangs
are criminal organizations who commit brutal acts of violence
and have taken too many lives to name in the few minutes I have
for this statement. They are organizations that revel in
violence, crave fear, and terrorize the communities in which
they live and operate and recruit their members.
Many of the members of MS-13 are, in fact, immigrants and
children and descendants of immigrants, and over the past few
months it has seemed to me that President Trump and Attorney
General Sessions have sought to use the threat of MS-13 to
justify their push to build a wall on the Southern Border and
round up and deport millions of immigrants, including those
whose only crime is being in this country without paperwork.
This is not the time nor the place to debate those
policies, but I bring it up only to say that what too often
gets lost in this highly-charged and divisive debate is the
fact that many, if not most, of MS-13's victims are also
immigrants. The families who fear that their son might be
targeted, targeted by, or pressured to join MS-13 are immigrant
families. The communities that are terrorized by MS-13 are
often immigrant communities. I think it is safe to say that
immigrants want these gangs to be dismantled and brought to
justice as much as anyone else, if not more.
As the former Nassau County district attorney, I have seen
first-hand how vicious and unrepentant these gangs are. I have
seen MS-13 members laugh at the judge as they were sentenced to
life in prison or deportation. I believe all violent criminals
should be punished to the full extent of the law. I believe
that violent criminals who are in this country illegally should
be deported and prevented from ever coming back.
I believe that dismantling violent criminal organizations
like MS-13 must be a priority for law enforcement officials and
lawmakers at all levels. I also know for a fact that the vast
majority of immigrants in this country are not criminals. They
are, in fact, more likely to be the victims of crime than the
perpetrators, and I know that you cannot take on a gang like
MS-13 without the help of immigrant communities. You need
members of the community to talk to you, provide information,
report crimes, and for that they need to trust you. They need
to know that stepping forward to help will not lead to them
being detained and deported and ripped away from their
families.
I have met with many immigrants in my district over the
past 6 months, documented and undocumented, and there is a very
real and palpable sense of fear right now in Long Island's
immigrant communities. I am concerned that this sense of fear
and alienation first of all may make immigrants, particularly
young immigrants, more vulnerable to be targeted by MS-13 for
protection and recruitment purposes; and second, could make
immigrants less likely to cooperate with authorities, both of
which would significantly undermine our efforts to eliminate
gangs like MS-13 from our communities. I would appreciate any
thoughts or insight our witnesses can provide about those
concerns.
I would like to thank all of our law enforcement witnesses
on the first panel and congratulate you for the successful
operation last week that resulted in the arrest of 39 MS-13
members and affiliates, as well as 6 members of other street
gangs.
Finally, I want to offer my condolences to Mrs. Rodriguez
and Mr. Mickens, and thank you for having the courage to
testify today.
I want to thank all the witnesses on our second panel for
the critical work that you do, whether helping prevent young
people from joining gangs like MS-13 or being a voice for our
immigrant communities. I know your work as parents, activists,
and educators may seem to go unnoticed at times, but I assure
you we are aware and truly grateful for your efforts.
I look forward to a frank and productive conversation
today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
[The statement of Ranking Member Rice follows:]
Statement of Ranking Member Kathleen M. Rice
June 20, 2017
We are fortunate to have two diverse panels of witnesses with
unique perspectives and insights on how we can both combat gang
violence on Long Island, on the one hand, and on the other, empower
young people with the knowledge, support, and resources they need to
reject gangs in their communities.
We're here today to examine a very real and serious threat to
public safety on Long Island. MS-13 and their rival gangs are criminal
organizations who commit brutal acts of violence and have taken too
many lives to name in the few minutes I have for this statement. They
are organizations that revel in violence, crave fear, and terrorize the
communities in which they live and operate and recruit their members.
Many of the members of MS-13 are, in fact, immigrants and children
and descendants of immigrants. And over the past few months, it has
seemed to me that President Trump and Attorney General Sessions have
sought to use the threat of MS-13 to justify their push to build a wall
on the Southern Border and round up and deport millions of immigrants--
including those whose only crime is being in this country without
paperwork.
This is not the time or the place to debate those policies. But I
bring it up only to say that what too often gets lost in this highly-
charged and divisive debate is the fact that many if not most of MS-
13's victims are also immigrants. The families who fear that their son
might be targeted by or pressured to join MS-13 are immigrant families.
The communities that are terrorized by MS-13 are often immigrant
communities. And I think it is safe to say that immigrants want these
gangs to be dismantled and brought to justice as much as anyone else,
if not more.
As the former Nassau County district attorney, I've seen first-hand
how vicious and unrepentant these gangs are. I've seen MS-13 members
laugh at the judge as they were sentenced to life in prison or
deportation.
I believe all violent criminals should be punished to the full
extent of the law. I believe that violent criminals who are in this
country illegally should be deported and prevented from ever coming
back. I believe that dismantling violent criminal organizations like
MS-13 must be a priority for law enforcement officials and lawmakers at
all levels.
I also know for a fact that the vast majority of immigrants in this
country are not criminals--they are in fact more likely to be the
victims of crime than the perpetrators. And I know that you cannot take
on a gang like MS-13 without the help of immigrant communities. You
need members of the community to talk to you, provide information,
report crimes--and for that, they need to trust you. They need to know
that stepping forward to help will not lead to them being detained and
deported and ripped away from their families.
I have met with many immigrants in my district over the past 6
months--documented and undocumented--and there is a very real and
palpable sense of fear right now in Long Island's immigrant
communities. I'm concerned that this sense of fear and alienation,
first of all, may make immigrants--particularly young immigrants--more
vulnerable to be targeted by MS-13 for protection and recruitment
purposes. And second, could make immigrants less likely to cooperate
with authorities--both of which would significantly undermine our
efforts to eliminate gangs like MS-13 from our communities. I would
appreciate any thoughts or insight our witnesses can provide about
those concerns.
I would like to thank all of our law enforcement witnesses on the
first panel and congratulate you for the successful operation last week
that resulted in the arrest of 39 MS-13 members and affiliates, as well
as 6 members of other street gangs.
Finally, I want to offer my condolences to Ms. Rodriguez and Mr.
Mickens and thank you for having the courage to testify today.
And I want to thank all the witnesses on our second panel for the
critical work that you do--whether helping prevent young people from
joining gangs like MS-13, or being a voice for our immigrant
communities. I know your work as parents, activists, and educators may
seem to go unnoticed at times, but I assure you we are aware and truly
grateful for your efforts.
Mr. King. Thank you, Ms. Rice.
We are pleased to have two panels of distinguished
witnesses before us today on this important topic. All the
witnesses are reminded that their written testimony will be
submitted for the record. To the extent you can, we ask you to
try to limit your opening statement to 5 minutes. I am not
going to enforce it strictly, but to the extent you can, it
will be appreciated. It will give us more of an opportunity to
have a give-and-take in the question-and-answer session.
Our first witness is Mr. William F. Sweeney, Jr., the
assistant director in charge of the New York Field Office of
the FBI. He has been with the FBI since 1998. He has an
extensive record on both criminal and National security
investigations, and he came to New York as the special agent in
charge and the assistant director in charge of the field office
in October 2016, which I believe was the same week of the
Chelsea bombing. So it was really a baptism by fire, but he
does an outstanding job, extremely cooperative I know with my
office and with the Congress generally.
So with that, Mr. Sweeney, I thank you for being here
today, and you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM SWEENEY, JR., ASSISTANT DIRECTOR IN
CHARGE, NEW YORK FIELD OFFICE, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Mr. Sweeney. Thank you, sir. Good morning, Representative
King, Ranking Member Rice. Thank you for the opportunity to
discuss gang violence on Long Island and our efforts to combat
the threat posed by MS-13.
The FBI assesses there has been a surge in MS-13 activity
and recruitment in the United States over the past 2 years.
While MS-13 is not the largest street gang in the United
States, they are increasingly the most violent and well-
organized.
In terms of organization, origin, and structure, and a
comparison to other gangs, MS-13 is atypical in their approach
to crime and structure. Clique leaders in the United States
coordinate with one another, as well as the leadership in El
Salvador. This is not something we normally see with other
groups. Members capitalize on the ability to extort individuals
living in the United States who still have family in Central
America, threatening to harm them.
Using fear as a method of extortion, the gang often targets
small business owners, individuals who do not want to join a
gang, and gang members who no longer want to be a part of MS-
13.
MS-13 gained notoriety for the brutal nature of their
crimes, and their motivation is generally rooted in a desire to
kill for the sake of killing. Going back to January 1992, the
FBI announced the Safe Streets Violent Crime Initiative,
designed to allow each field office in the FBI to address
violent street gangs, drug-related violence through the
establishment of FBI-sponsored, long-term, proactive task
forces.
The Violent Gangs Safe Streets Task Force became the
vehicle through which all Federal, State, and local law
enforcement agencies joined together to address violent crime
plaguing their communities. The FBI's Safe Streets Gang Unit
administers 169 of these task forces Nation-wide, staffed by
approximately 800 agents, roughly 1,375 State and local law
enforcement personnel, and 58 agents from Federal agencies.
The Safe Streets Task Force concept expands cooperation and
communication among Federal, State, and local law enforcement
agencies, increasing productivity and avoiding duplication of
investigative effort.
Here in New York, your task force is called the Long Island
Gang Task Force, and it is part of that Safe Streets network.
Since 2003, this task force has been protecting the communities
on Long Island from the threat of gang violence. The leadership
of that task force, some of which sits at the table with me and
some behind me, is currently composed of agents and officers
from the FBI, the Suffolk County Police Department, the Nassau
County Police Department, the Nassau County Sheriff's
Department, the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department, Suffolk
County Probation, Rockville Centre Police, New York State
Police, Hempstead Police, and the Bureau of ATF.
This model allows us to bring all essential stakeholders
together to address the most violent crimes in the community.
Since 2010, your task force has arrested over 200 MS-13
members, resulting in the successful prosecution of members
involved in more than 35 homicides. A majority of these members
have been convicted on Federal racketeering charges for
participating in murders, attempted murders, and assaults. We
will continue to surge resources to work this threat. We have
increased the participation on our task force by adding
personnel from the New York State Police, and we have enhanced
our intelligence capabilities by developing an intelligence
fusion group, where all the analysts sit together from these
agencies.
We have also enhanced our relationship with the Suffolk
County Police Department to include our mutual agreement that
all MS-13 homicide investigations in Suffolk County will be
investigated jointly by the task force and the Suffolk Homicide
Squad.
The FBI also works closely with our transnational anti-gang
task force based in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. These
groups, called TAGs, were set up by FBI agents who lead vetted
teams of national police and prosecutors, coordinating with the
legal attaches in those countries and coordinated back here at
home. Through these TAGs we reap the benefits of local
intelligence, which allows us to apply a national and
international approach to the problem. We are currently focused
on identifying MS-13 leadership in the United States. We are
working to establish an international standard for
understanding the elements of the gang structure, its members,
and associates.
Using overseas resources to identify and target individuals
and organizations that negatively affect our local field
offices here and our local communities has proven successful.
In fact, the partnership led to the capture of top-10 fugitives
I believe back in 2013 and 2014.
MS-13 remains a top priority for the FBI as we assess that
they will continue to expand and employ intimidation tactics
while engaging in increasingly violent crimes. The
relationships we have established with partners, both at home
and abroad, will continue to prove essential in identifying,
combating, and eliminating the threats posed by MS-13.
Chairman King and Ranking Member Rice, thank you again for
the opportunity to discuss the MS-13 threat. Mr. Chairman, we
are grateful for the leadership you and the community have
provided to the FBI, and we thank you for your continued
support, and I look forward to answering any questions you may
have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sweeney follows:]
Prepared Statement of William F. Sweeney, Jr.
June 20, 2017
Good morning Chairman King, Ranking Member Rice, and Members of the
committee. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss gang violence on
Long Island and the FBI's efforts to combat the threats posed by MS-13
and dismantle their network.
Street gangs continue to affect communities across the United
States and show no signs of decreasing memberships or a decline in
criminal activity. According to the FBI's 2015 National Gang Report,
street gang membership increased in approximately 49 percent of
jurisdictions from 2013-2015.
More specifically, the FBI assesses there has been a surge in MS-13
activity and recruitment in the United States over the past 2 years.
We're here today to discuss this particular threat and our efforts to
combat gang violence in MS-13 territories on Long Island.
While MS-13 is not the largest street gang in the United States, it
is increasingly the most violent and well-organized. Their leadership
is based in El Salvador and Honduras, but we believe there could be up
to 10,000 members currently living in the United States, primarily
immigrants from Central America.
In terms of origin and structure, and in comparison to other street
gangs in the United States, MS-13 is atypical in their approach to
crime and organizational structure. Clique leaders here in the United
States coordinate with one another, as well as leadership in El
Salvador. This isn't something we typically see with other street gangs
in the United States, whose primary leadership is home-based. MS-13
gang members in El Salvador and the United States remain in contact
with one another; they frequently discuss targets, members who have
fallen out of favor, and ways to expand their operations.
Members also capitalize on the ability to extort individuals living
in the United States who still have family in Central America,
threatening to harm family abroad. Using fear as a method of extortion,
the gang often targets small business owners and restauranteurs,
individuals who don't want to join the gang, and gang members who no
longer want to be active.
The brutal nature of MS-13 crimes has gained notoriety throughout
the United States, and their motivation is generally rooted in a desire
to kill for the sake of killing. The attacks on their victims are
gruesome, typically up close and personal. They often involve
mutilation and dismemberment and are sometimes recorded. Because of
this, MS-13 crimes often receive a significant amount of media
attention.
Law enforcement encounters unique challenges when addressing the
MS-13 threat including the limitations of some traditional enforcement
strategies; the group's propensity for gruesome violence; their
established international network; and their transient nature. What
also concerns us is the age of the average MS-13 member and associate.
Typically much younger than those connected to other street gangs, MS-
13 members and associates often lack direction, taking cues from the
gang instead of relying on a productive family structure. In addition,
those emigrating from El Salvador to the United States are known to be
exposed and desensitized to extreme violence at an early age.
Another concern for law enforcement is the increase in the use of
technology and social media by criminal groups such as MS-13. We've
found that gangs are exploiting new technologies largely for the
anonymity that messaging applications afford. Many resort to the use of
these technologies with the hopes of thwarting law enforcement efforts.
In January 1992, the FBI announced the Safe Streets Violent Crime
Initiative, designed to allow each field office to address violent
street gangs and drug-related violence through the establishment of FBI
sponsored, long-term, proactive task forces focusing on violent gangs,
crime of violence, and the apprehension of violent fugitives. The
Violent Gang Safe Streets Task Force became the vehicle through which
all of the Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies joined
together to address the violent crime plaguing their communities. The
FBI's Safe Streets and Gang Unit administers 169 Violent Gang Safe
Streets Task Forces Nation-wide, staffed by approximately 800 FBI
agents, 1,375 State and local law enforcement personnel, and 58 other
Federal law enforcement agents. The Safe Streets Task Force concept
expands cooperation and communication among Federal, State, and local
law enforcement agencies, increasing productivity and avoiding
duplication of investigative efforts.
Here in New York, the FBI's Long Island Gang Task Force (LIGTF) is
part of the Safe Streets Task Force network. Since 2003, the task force
has been dedicated to protecting the communities on Long Island from
the threat of gang violence, and considers MS-13 to be a top priority.
The task force, currently composed of agents and officers from the FBI;
Suffolk County Police Department; Nassau County Police Department;
Nassau County Sheriff's Department; Suffolk County Sheriff's
Department; Suffolk County Probation; Rockville Centre Police
Department; New York State Police; Hempstead Police Department; and the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, is a model that
allows us to bring all essential stakeholders under one roof to address
the most violent crimes crippling our neighborhoods.
Since the establishment of the task force, the largest and oldest
Federal gang task force on Long Island, hundreds of MS-13 members,
including dozens of clique leaders, have been convicted on Federal
felony charges in the Eastern District of New York. This has allowed us
to dismantle some of the most violent cliques in the area.
Since 2010, the task force has arrested over 200 MS-13 members,
resulting in the successful prosecution of members involved in over 35
homicides. A majority of those MS-13 members have been convicted on
Federal racketeering charges for participating in murders, attempted
murders, and assaults. Since 2016, MS-13 is believed to be responsible
for more than 20 homicides in Suffolk and Nassau Counties.
Over the past few months, we've continued to surge resources to
work the threat, both internally and with respect to our partner
agencies on the task force. We've increased participation on our task
force by adding officers from the New York State Police, and we've
enhanced our intelligence capabilities by developing an intelligence
fusion group, which is composed of intelligence personnel from the
represented agencies. We've also strengthened our relationship with the
Suffolk County Police Department, to include our mutual agreement that
all MS-13 homicide investigations in Suffolk County will be
investigated jointly by the LIGTF and the Suffolk County Police
Department's homicide squad. Throughout the country, the FBI continues
to uphold the task force model as we confront threats with the help of
our various law enforcement partners, in particular, our colleagues
from Homeland Security Investigations.
As the domestic representative for the Director of National
Intelligence for FBI field offices in Newark, Philadelphia, New York,
Albany, and Buffalo, I've gladly accepted the responsibility of serving
as a delegate for senior field representatives throughout the
intelligence community (IC) in leading the endeavor to create a
coordinated and effective IC enterprise in defense of our homeland and
homeland security efforts. This is an opportunity for us to engage in
dialog with our colleagues while ensuring a higher level of cooperation
as we continue to integrate our intelligence efforts.
Additionally, from an international perspective, the FBI's
Transnational Anti-Gang Task Forces (TAGs) continue to work with our
partners to eradicate gangs and gang violence Nation-wide. Established
in El Salvador in 2007 through the FBI's National Gang Task Force,
Legat San Salvador, and the United States Department of State, each TAG
is a fully operational unit responsible for the investigation of MS-13
operating in the Northern Triangle countries of Central America--El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras--and threatening the United States.
This program combines the expertise, resources, and jurisdiction of
participating agencies involved in investigating and countering
transnational criminal gang activity in the United States and Central
America. These groups--headed by FBI agents who lead vetted teams of
National police and prosecutors--coordinate with FBI legal attaches
assigned to those regions and with the Bureau's International
Operations Division.
Through the task force we reap the benefits of local intelligence,
which allows us to apply a National and international approach to the
problem. We're currently focused on identifying MS-13 membership in the
United States, and we're working to establish an international standard
for understanding elements of the gang's structure, its members, and
its associates. Using overseas resources to identify and target
individuals and organizations that negatively affect our local field
offices has proven successful. In fact, this partnership contributed to
the capture of two FBI Top Ten fugitives Edwin Ernesto Rivera-Gracias
in 2013, and Juan Elias Garcia in 2014. Both men were wanted for
murder. Specifically, Juan Elias Garcia was wanted for the execution-
style murder of a 19-year-old New York woman and her 2-year-old son.
Based on the success of the TAG Task Force in El Salvador, additional
TAG Task Forces have been established in Guatemala and Honduras.
In summary, the FBI has effectively used task forces in an effort
to combat the MS-13 threat, both on Long Island and throughout the
country, by combining the tools of our local, State, Federal, and
international law enforcement partners. MS-13 will continue to be a top
priority as we have determined they intend to continue to expand and
employ intimidation tactics while engaging in increasingly violent
crimes.
We further assess they will continue to capitalize on the use of
encrypted communications between members and associates, both in the
United States and abroad, which could impede enforcement efforts. For
this reason, the relationships we've established with our partners,
both at home and abroad, will continue to prove essential in
identifying, combating, and eliminating the threats posed by MS-13.
Chairman King, Ranking Member Rice, and Members of the committee,
thank you again for this opportunity to discuss gang violence on Long
Island and our efforts to combat the MS-13 threat. Mr. Chairman, we are
grateful for the leadership that you and this committee have provided
to the FBI, and we thank you for your continuing support. I look
forward to answering any questions you may have.
Mr. King. Thank you, Mr. Sweeney. That was FBI efficiency,
right on the button, 5 minutes. Thank you very much for your
testimony.
Our next witness is Angel Melendez, who is special agent in
charge of the New York Field Office for Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, HSI. Mr.
Melendez began his career in 1996 as a special agent for the
U.S. Customs Service in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He has served in
a number of leadership positions, including special agent in
charge of the San Juan, Puerto Rico HSI office. In July 2016,
he was named as the special agent in charge of the New York HSI
office.
Mr. Melendez, I want to again thank you for cooperating
with my office, for the briefings you have given me. With that,
you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF ANGEL M. MELENDEZ, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE,
HOMELAND SECURITY INVESTIGATIONS, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS
ENFORCEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Melendez. Thank you, and good morning, Chairman King,
Ranking Member Rice, and Members of the Long Island community.
As special agent in charge for U.S. ICE's Homeland Security
Investigations in New York, I would like to thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to discuss our efforts
to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle violent gang activity
across the United States. My oral testimony today will focus on
HSI's efforts on combatting transnational gang violence by the
Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, on Long Island.
Through violent crime, MS-13 terrorizes our communities. In
the last year alone, Long Island has witnessed 11 murders
attributed to MS-13. The gruesome quadruple homicide of four
Long Island teenagers at the hands of MS-13 just this April
shocked our Nation. HSI does not take this lightly now, nor
have we in the past.
In 2005, to combat transnational gangs, we initiated
Operation Community Shield. HSI has developed a multifaceted
approach to attacking violent crime alongside our domestic and
foreign law enforcement partners. To date, this program has led
to the arrest of over 7,000 MS-13 affiliates across the Nation.
HSI's ever-evolving strategy to investigate and disrupt MS-
13, particularly its pipeline, is informed by how the gang
operates. Let me touch on three critical points.
First, MS-13 exploits illicit pathways in Central America
to further its mission to rape, control, and kill. HSI, through
its unique border authorities and international footprint, is
targeting these illicit pathways. In New York, we established
an extra-territorial criminal tribal strike force which, in
partnership with DOJ, investigates foreign-based human
smuggling networks.
Second, MS-13 is increasing its membership and recruitment.
Within the last few years, more than 5,000 unaccompanied alien
children from the Northern Triangle countries have resettled in
Long Island. Once here, MS-13 can prey upon the vulnerability
of these and other children who may lack family and community
ties. In fact, schools have become ground zero for MS-13
recruitment. Children may face retribution from the gang for
refusing to join and become part of its ranks. Rapidly, they
transform into the lethal MS-13 gang members that they once
feared.
Third, MS-13 cannot survive without money. Investigations
have revealed that MS-13 maintains a sophisticated financial
network that supports its nefarious activities. As we have
learned, MS-13 generates illicit income through extortion,
prostitution, the collection of membership dues, and illicit
trafficking. HSI was instrumental in having MS-13 designated as
a transnational criminal organization by the Department of the
Treasury in 2012. This designation is an additional tool that
allows us to effectively attack MS-13's financial
infrastructure.
In addition to focusing on the MS-13 pipeline, HSI targets
members for criminal prosecution and removal. Since October
2014 to the present, HSI, along with its partners, have made
842 criminal and 273 administrative arrests of MS-13 gang
affiliates across the country. In the same time frame, HSI New
York, along with its partners, have made 109 criminal and 55
administrative arrests of MS-13 gang affiliates in Long Island
alone.
With the invaluable partnership of the police departments
and sheriff departments of Suffolk and Nassau Counties, HSI has
kept its proverbial finger on the pulse of MS-13 activity
across Long Island. In response to the recent uptick in
violence executed by MS-13 across Long Island, HSI New York,
partnering with ICE's enforcement and removal operations,
initiated Operation Matador. It brings together our DHS and law
enforcement partners in a unified approach to combating MS-13's
growth. It integrates our key Homeland Security capabilities--
enforcement, interdiction, intelligence, border security,
removal, and also public safety. In the last 5 weeks since
launching Matador, this initiative yielded 45 arrests of known
or suspected MS-13 affiliates.
Although we have made strides in attacking the MS-13
problem, we have limited resources and must continue to be
proactive as we forge ahead with this critical mission.
Committed to working alongside our law enforcement partners,
HSI continues to disrupt MS-13 through enforcement of criminal
and civil immigration statutes, as well as active gang
investigations in Long Island, throughout the United States,
and throughout the world.
Chairman King, Ranking Member Rice, I thank you again for
the opportunity to appear before you today and for your
continued support. I would be pleased to answer any questions
you may have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Melendez follows:]
Prepared Statement of Angel M. Melendez
June 20, 2017
Chairman King, Ranking Member Rice, and distinguished Members: As
special agent in charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in New York, I would like
to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss
our efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and investigate violent gang
activity within the United States. The official statement I have
submitted and my oral testimony today will focus specifically on HSI's
focus on combatting transnational gang violence by the Mara
Salvatrucha, or MS-13, on Long Island.
ICE has the most expansive investigative authority and largest
force of criminal investigators in the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS). ICE's National and global footprint enables us to leverage our
broad statutory authority to uphold public safety and support border
enforcement. And the key to our success against gangs like MS-13 is our
multifaceted approach to attacking violent crime with our State, local,
Tribal, and foreign law enforcement partners.
During his first 2 weeks in office, President Trump signed a series
of Executive Orders (EOs) that laid the policy groundwork for the
Department and ICE to carry out the critical work of securing our
borders, enforcing our immigration laws, and ensuring that individuals
who pose a threat to National security or public safety cannot enter or
remain in the United States. These EOs establish the administration's
policy of effective border security and immigration enforcement through
the faithful execution of the laws passed by Congress.
The heightened enforcement of our Nation's immigration laws in the
interior of the United States is critically important to the National
security and public safety of the United States. Aliens who illegally
enter the United States, or even those who overstay or otherwise
violate the terms of their visas, have violated our Nation's laws and
can pose a threat to National security and public safety. This is
particularly true for aliens who engage in criminal conduct in the
United States.
As directed by the President's Executive Order 13773, Enforcing
Federal Law with Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and
Preventing International Trafficking, ICE will continue to give a high
priority and devote sufficient resources to dismantling TCOs and
subsidiary organizations. ICE will continue to focus on cooperative
work and data sharing with other Federal agencies, as well as work with
foreign counterparts by sharing intelligence and law enforcement
information when appropriate and permitted by law.
ms-13 activity in new york
MS-13 are primarily immigrants or descendants of immigrants from
the Northern Triangle--El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Through
kidnappings, murders, and other violent crime, MS-13 terrorizes
communities. Since the beginning of 2017, New York has seen an uptick
in gang violence, with 11 murders attributed to MS-13 alone. The
gruesome murders of four Long Island teenagers at the hands of MS-13
just this April shocked our Nation.
HSI does not take this lightly. To disrupt the MS-13 threat, HSI
has uncovered and pieced together MS-13's sophisticated communication
and financial network. As we have learned, MS-13's primary source of
income is generated through extortion, prostitution, membership dues,
and illicit trafficking. Targeting MS-13's assets, HSI was pivotal in
having MS-13 designated as a transnational criminal organization by the
Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
disrupting the ms-13 pipeline
HSI's ever-evolving strategy to investigate and disrupt MS-13 is
informed by how the gang operates. Let me touch on three critical
points:
First, Illicit Pathways
MS-13 exploits illicit pathways throughout Central and South
America to further its mission to ``rape, control, and kill.''
HSI, through its unique border authorities and vast international
footprint, is targeting these illicit pathways. HSI New York
established an Extraterritorial Criminal Travel Strike Force, which, in
partnership with Department of Justice (DOJ), investigates foreign-
based Human Smuggling Networks that pose a threat to the United States.
Just this May, ICE implemented a three-phase plan to target the human
smuggling organizations that MS-13 exploits to bring unaccompanied
alien children into the United States.
Second, Recruitment
Illicit pathways go hand-in-hand with MS-13 increasing its
membership. Once these children are smuggled into the United States,
they become prime targets for enlistment into the gang. Since the
beginning of fiscal year 2015, more than 5,000 unaccompanied alien
children have resettled in Long Island. MS-13 preys on their
vulnerability; some of these children may lack familial relationships
or community ties. In fact, reports suggest that MS-13 attempts to
recruit in some schools and pressures children into joining with the
threat of retribution.
With the invaluable partnership of local law enforcement, HSI has
kept its proverbial finger on the pulse of MS-13 activity across Long
Island.
Third, Financing
MS-13 cannot survive without money. Investigations have revealed
that MS-13 maintains a sophisticated communication and financial
network that supports its nefarious activities. As we have learned, MS-
13 generates illicit income through extortion, prostitution, membership
dues, and illicit trafficking.
operation community shield
In 2005, ICE initiated Operation Community Shield (OCS), a cross-
border effort to combat transnational criminal organizations. HSI
locates, investigates, and arrests gang members to get them off our
streets. Whenever possible, ICE will pursue and effectuate removal
orders to remove gang members from the United States.
OCS is the primary platform through which HSI executes its anti-
gang initiatives, including Specialized Urban Response--Gang
Enforcement (SURGE) operations. From March 26, 2017 to May 6, 2017, a
Nation-wide SURGE operation led to 1,098 criminal arrests and 280
administrative immigration arrests. In the course of those operations,
HSI seized 238 firearms, nearly $500,000 in currency, and over 271
kilograms of illicit narcotics.
Since this operation started in 2005, HSI and its partner agencies
have made over 57,000 gang-related criminal and administrative
immigration arrests. 7,000 of these arrests were affiliated with MS-13.
From fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2017 (as of June 4, 2017), HSI
has made over 8,000 gang-related criminal arrests, leading to over
2,600 convictions. During this same time period, HSI made 1,117
administrative immigration arrests of gang members.
Much of this enforcement activity targets MS-13. From fiscal year
2016 to fiscal year 2017 (as of June 4, 2017), HSI made 602 criminal
arrests of MS-13 gang leaders, members, and associates that resulted so
far in 153 convictions. And during this same time period, HSI made 170
administrative immigration arrests of MS-13 members. HSI has 87
domestic and international gang investigations targeting MS-13 in Long
Island and throughout the country.
federal, state, and local law enforcement partnerships
In response to the recent spate of extreme violence perpetrated by
MS-13, HSI New York initiated Operation Matador (OPMAT). This
interagency DHS endeavor is designed to combat the proliferation of MS-
13 recruitment, membership, and criminal activity.
The framework underlying OPMAT integrates various missions--
enforcement, interdiction, intelligence, border security, and
ultimately, public safety.
OPMAT is able to disrupt MS-13 through five key attributes:
1. Intelligence gathering;
2. Actionable lead development;
3. Targeted enforcement;
4. Criminal and Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization
(RICO) investigation development; and
5. Community outreach to at-risk youth in the affected cities.
As a result of this on-going operation, to date, HSI has made 35
criminal and administrative arrests; 30 of them are known or suspected
MS-13 members. It bears repeating that our law enforcement partners are
crucial to OPMAT's success, including the Nassau County Police
Department, Suffolk County Police Department, and the New York Police
Department (NYPD).
operation matador
In response to the recent uptick of extreme violence perpetrated by
MS-13, HSI-NY's latest endeavor is Operation Matador. It brings
together our DHS partners in a unified approach to combatting MS-13's
growth by integrating key missions--enforcement, interdiction,
intelligence, border security, and ultimately, public safety. As a
result of this on-going operation, to date, HSI has made 35 criminal
and administrative arrests; 30 of them are known or suspected MS-13
members.
conclusion
Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today and
for your continued support of ICE and its law enforcement mission. ICE
is committed to investigating MS-13 gang violence and disrupting the
MS-13 pipeline.
I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
Mr. King. Thank you, Mr. Melendez. Thank you very much.
Our next witness is Suffolk County Police Commissioner
Timothy Sini. Commissioner Sini was appointed by commissioner
of the Suffolk County Police Department in January 2016. He
serves as a representative on the White House's Office of Drug
Control Policy for the New York-New Jersey region on the HIDTA
team. He is also the executive director of the Suffolk County
Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. He previously served as
the assistant deputy county executive for public safety, and he
began his career in the United States Attorney's Office in the
Southern District of New York.
I have to say, I have worked very closely with Commissioner
Sini on this over the last several months, this whole MS-13
issue, and he has provided me with some very invaluable
intelligence information.
So with that, Commissioner Sini, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY D. SINI, POLICE COMMISSIONER, SUFFOLK
COUNTY, NEW YORK
Mr. Sini. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Ranking Member
Rice. I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to
appear before it today. Chairman, I want to thank you for your
attention to this issue and your general support of law
enforcement. It is very much appreciated. Ranking Member Rice,
it is very reassuring to have an effective prosecutor in
Congress to be looking at this issue. So I thank you for the
opportunity.
I am going to keep my opening remarks quite brief. I
submitted detailed testimony. I also testified before the U.S.
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Operations.
I thought what I would do is detail the strategy that we
are employing here in Suffolk County and the region, talk about
some of the ways in which the Federal Government can further
assist the local municipalities who are addressing this issue
in the trenches, talk about some of the strategies that I
talked about before the Senate, and give an update as to where
we are since the Senate testimony.
But essentially the name of the game, and everyone at this
table will tell you, is gathering intelligence and identifying
known MS-13 gang members. It is important to be targeting these
gang members relentlessly, and without the intelligence, we
cannot do that. So collecting intelligence is the first step,
and then creating priorities and strategic subject lists and
targeting known MS-13 gang members relentlessly.
In Suffolk County, we utilize our gang officers stationed
in our precinct, as well as members of our Firearms Suppression
Team and other police officers to do street enforcement
targeting these particular MS-13 gang members, and that does a
lot of different things at once. It suppresses crime, which is
why you have seen such a dramatic reduction in crime in
affected areas--Brentwood, Central Islip, and other areas. But
it also collects intelligence and generates evidence that can
be used later on in larger cases that can effectively dismantle
this gang.
All the while we are doing that street enforcement--and I
should take a step back and say that in connection with that
street enforcement, the Suffolk County Police Department has
made over 220 MS-13 arrests since September 2016. Since Nisa
and Kayla were murdered, we have arrested over 220 MS-13--we
have made over 220 MS-13 arrests of approximately 160
individual MS-13 gang members. So that targeting has been
occurring at record clips.
All the while we are working with our Federal law
enforcement partners, particularly the FBI through the Safe
Streets Task Force, to work RICO cases, to build RICO cases.
RICO is a very effective Federal statute that allows us to
dismantle gangs such as MS-13. It carries stiff penalties, it
acts as an umbrella where we can bring in a large number of MS-
13 gang members to prosecute, and it is a great way to go after
the leadership as well.
Of course, since September 2016, in conjunction with the
FBI Safe Streets Task Force and the U.S. Attorney's Office for
the Eastern District of New York, we have brought a 13-
defendant indictment which included the murders of Nisa and
Kayla, as well as Jose Pena Hernandez. So RICO is a very
effective tool.
In addition, we are working with the Department of Homeland
Security to make sure that we are targeting individuals, active
MS-13 gang members for detention and removal, when appropriate.
Oftentimes, we are in the position to arrest and criminally
prosecute individuals, and that is the best-case scenario, to
bring cases against these individuals, hold them accountable,
take them off our streets. Sometimes law enforcement is not in
the position to make a criminal arrest, for a variety of
different reasons, and the Department of Homeland Security is
in a position to use its immigration tools, its civil tools to
take these active MS-13 gang members off the streets and take
dangerous individuals off the streets and commence removal
proceedings against them. So it is another tool that we are
using here in Suffolk County.
We are, of course, enhancing our police presence in
affected areas as well, and we are utilizing intelligence to
increase our police presence in affected areas, and we
partnered recently with the New York State Police to
dramatically increase our presence, and I think that is being
recognized by the communities and also contributing to the
decrease in crime.
Law enforcement will continue those strategies and continue
to fine-tune those strategies, and we will weed out the
dangerous gang members from our streets. But it is important,
too, that we work on the other side, we work on the gang
prevention and intervention side, because if we are weeding out
dangerous gang members from our communities but MS-13 is
increasingly recruiting, we are not going to solve this
problem. So we have to fight it on both ends. We are moving
forward with several different gang prevention programs in our
communities, but more needs to be done on that front.
When I testified before the Senate, I asked very
specifically--I discussed very specific proposals that I
thought would help in our fight, and those are the following:
More AUSAs right here in this building. This office does
not have sufficient AUSAs to prosecute the number of cases that
we need to do. So I would again reiterate my request for
additional Federal assets in the form of additional AUSAs for
the Long Island Criminal Division.
Improved intelligence sharing. Since I last testified, I am
pleased to say that both the FBI and the Department of Homeland
Security are launching intelligence centers specifically
relating to MS-13. In addition, I have been asked to join a
team that is being organized by the Department of State to work
with foreign nations, including El Salvador, to establish a
fusion center outside the country. So I think we are making
tremendous headway on that front.
Third, additional Federal funding to offset patrolling
costs. The Suffolk County Police Department has a grant in the
queue right now for half-a-million dollars that would help us
offset patrolling costs that target affected areas, areas that
are affected by MS-13. So I would reiterate that request.
Additional Federal funding for gang prevention programs, I
would reiterate that request.
A hard look at the implications of the UAC program. These
are some of the most vulnerable children in our communities,
folks who are coming here unaccompanied, first time in the
United States, being placed in our communities, and there is
very little Federal oversight or resources connected to that
program. Again, I am happy to see that the Congressman
introduced HR-2459 to take a hard look at that program and
figure out ways to decrease the vulnerability to those
individuals to gang recruitment.
I do indeed look forward to answering any questions by the
committee. Again, I want to thank the committee for its
attention to this very important issue.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sini follows:]
Prepared Statement of Timothy D. Sini
June 16, 2017
executive summary
My name is Timothy D. Sini, commissioner of the Suffolk County
Police Department. I appreciate the opportunity to provide testimony
regarding MS-13 in Suffolk County, New York, and ways in which we can
work together to effectively eradicate this gang from our communities.
Although Suffolk County remains one of the safest counties in the
Nation, we have recently experienced an increase in MS-13 gang
violence. Specifically, since January 1, 2016, there have been 17
homicides in Suffolk believed to be linked to MS-13. In order to
eradicate MS-13 from our communities, we must employ a multi-pronged
strategy that includes:
collaborative efforts to collect and share intelligence
regarding the gang;
relentless targeting of known MS-13 gang members for arrest,
prosecution, and removal;
Federal prosecutions of MS-13 gang members and its
leadership under the RICO statute;
enhanced and targeted police presence and patrols in
affected areas; and
significant investments in gang prevention and intervention
strategies, with a particular focus on the Unaccompanied Alien
Children (``UAC'') population.
introduction
Suffolk is New York's fourth-largest county situated some 20 miles
east of New York City, covering 911 square miles and 1,000 miles of
coastline on the eastern end of Long Island.
Suffolk has a diverse population of approximately 1.5 million
residents. According to the latest Census data, the population is 84.9
percent white and 8.4 percent African American, with 18.6 percent of
the population identifying as Latino or Hispanic ethnicity. The median
income is $88,663, and 7.8 percent of the county's residents live in
poverty.
The Suffolk County Police Department is one of the 15 largest
police departments in the country, with approximately 2,500 sworn
officers and 1,000 civilian employees. We are responsible for all
police services in the five western towns of Suffolk County, and a wide
variety of investigative and law enforcement support functions
throughout the county.
Contrary to recent sentiments in the National media, Suffolk
remains one of the safest counties in the United States. We are
currently experiencing the lowest crime rate since we began collecting
reliable crime statistics in 1975. Specifically, in 2016, Suffolk
County had 34 murders/manslaughters, 84 sex crimes, 540 robberies, 893
aggravated assaults, 1,734 burglaries, 15,522 larcenies, and 1,070
motor vehicle thefts. In 2017, we are continuing to drive crime down to
historic levels, with a year-to-date 12.9 percent reduction in violent
crime, 10.8 percent reduction in property crime and 10.9 percent
reduction in all index crimes.
Despite these historic reductions in crime, we have recently
experienced an increase in gang violence connected to Mara Salvatrucha
or the MS-13 gang--designated in 2012 by the U.S. Department of the
Treasury as a ``transnational criminal organization.'' In 2016 and year
to date in 2017, Suffolk experienced an increase in homicides compared
to 2015, which is the only category of index crimes to rise. This
increase is directly attributable to a rapid resurgence in MS-13
violence in identified areas of the county and is an inverse trend to
all other crime categories.
Specifically, since January 1, 2016, of the 45 homicides that
occurred in Suffolk, 17 of those are believed to be linked to MS-13. We
currently have approximately 400 MS-13 gang members identified in the
county, organized in approximately nine cells called ``cliques.'' Many
of these cliques have connections to other jurisdictions, including,
but not limited to, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Nassau County (Long
Island), and New York City.
ms-13 gang members in suffolk county
Identified MS-13 gang members are concentrated in several hamlets
in Suffolk County with the largest number in a community named
Brentwood, which is a community of more than 60,000 residents.
According to the latest Census data, Brentwood's population is 48.4
percent white and 16.4 percent African American, with 68.5 percent of
the population identifying as Latino or Hispanic ethnicity. There are
more than 20,000 students in the Brentwood school district. The second-
largest concentration of MS-13 gang members is in Central Islip, which
is a community of approximately 35,000 residents. According to the
latest Census data, Central Islip's population is 43.6 percent white
and 25 percent African American, with 52.1 percent of the population
identifying as Latino or Hispanic ethnicity.
In Suffolk County, active MS-13 gang members are predominantly
males ranging in age from 16 to 29. The median age of recent MS-13
arrestees is 18, however we have become aware of associates as young as
10 years of age.
Most MS-13 gang members have connections to El Salvador, Guatemala,
or Honduras. Of a sampling of 143 active gang members plus 11 MS-13
victims, 89 entered the United States illegally and currently do not
have legal status (58.8 percent) (39 of whom are Unaccompanied Alien
Children (``UACs'')), 48 are of unknown immigration status, and 17 have
legal status (temporary or otherwise). I endeavor to provide updated
data during my testimony.
crimes committed by ms-13
In Suffolk County, MS-13 engages in a variety of criminal activity,
including, but not limited to, assaults, murder, drug dealing,
extortion, robberies, and burglaries. Intelligence indicates that many
MS-13 gang members hold wage-paying jobs, and are not focused primarily
on income-generating crimes such as drug dealing, differentiating them
from other street gangs in Suffolk County. Rather, MS-13 has engaged in
violence for the sake of violence, to increase the notoriety of the
gang and to cause the community to fear the gang and its members.
However, that is not to understate the extent of other criminal
activity committed by the MS-13 gang in the Northeast region.
In 2016, the most frequent reported crime connected to MS-13 was
assault. The signature weapon used by MS-13 is the machete. For
example, on July 17, 2016, members of MS-13 brutally attacked an
individual in Brentwood with a machete, causing severe wounds to the
individual's face making him unrecognizable. MS-13 gang members
perpetrated this brutal assault because they believed that the victim
was associating with a rival gang.
MS-13 members also commit murder, often targeting victims who they
perceive as disrespecting the gang. Since 2013, 27 murders in Suffolk
County have been attributed to MS-13, occurring in 7 different
communities. This represents approximately 21 percent of all murders
occurring since that time. Moreover, approximately 38 percent of
murders occurring in Suffolk County in 2016 and 2017 combined are
believed to be connected to MS-13. In many of the cases, multiple
assailants are involved in the crime.
On September 13, 2016, members of MS-13 brutally beat two girls to
death in Brentwood--Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas. Both were Brentwood
High School students, and were 15 and 16 years of age, respectively.
Shortly before her murder, Kayla had argued with an MS-13 gang member
in school. In collaboration with the FBI, the Suffolk County Police
Department arrested the perpetrators of that crime, and they are
currently being prosecuted by the United States Attorney's Office for
the Eastern District of New York.
Those murders sparked a gang eradication strategy launched by the
Suffolk County Police Department and our law enforcement partners,
which to date has resulted in approximately 250 arrests of
approximately 187 individual MS-13 gang members. The initiative also
led to the discovery of the skeletal remains of three males in the
Brentwood area, all of whom are believed to have been murdered by
members of MS-13. One of those murders--the murder of a 19-year-old
male named Jose Pena-Hernandez--was also charged by the United States
Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York. MS-13 gang
members murdered Pena-Hernandez because they believed he violated the
gang's internal rules.
Most recently, in April of this year, MS-13 gang members committed
a quadruple homicide in Central Islip, Suffolk County. This was one of
the largest and most brutal mass murders committed in Suffolk County's
history. The victims were all males--two were 18 years old, and the
other two were 16 and 20 years old. Central Islip is a hamlet located
adjacent to Brentwood, and, as noted, has the highest concentration of
MS-13 gang members in the county outside Brentwood. The victims were
found in the Clayton Avenue Park in Central Islip with significant
trauma about their bodies. Their injuries were consistent with assault
by machete. The investigation of the quadruple homicide remains active.
recruitment
MS-13 sustains itself by constantly attempting to recruit new
members. MS-13 gang members recruit in our schools and communities.
They prey on the vulnerable, frequently targeting young people who
recently immigrated to this country. They often target individuals who
lack the support of close relatives and healthy social networks, using
threats and acts of violence to coerce those reluctant to join. Several
factors lead individuals to become members of MS-13, including, but not
limited to, social alienation, the need to be part of a group, a sense
of cultural unity, the promise of protection, and economic gain.
MS-13 members also recruit children placed in communities in
Suffolk County through the UAC program. From the beginning of 2014
through March 2017, 4,624 UACs have been placed in Suffolk County
alone, making it one of the largest recipients of UACs in the country.
The vast majority of these children come from El Salvador, Honduras,
and Guatemala, where MS-13 has a significant presence. Many of these
children are vulnerable to gang recruitment because they are young,
unaccompanied, adjusting to a new country, culture, and language, and
seeking a sense of belonging. This is compounded by the fact that the
sponsors of these children in some cases prove not to be suitable
guardians.
In sum, while the overwhelming majority of these children live law-
abiding lives, UACs are undoubtedly a source of recruitment for MS-13.
Of a sampling of 156 active gang members in Suffolk County, 39 are
Unaccompanied Alien Children, and 7 of the 13 defendants recently
charged in a RICO indictment in the Eastern District of New York are
UACs. It is not entirely clear, however, the percentage of UACs who
came into the United States as MS-13 gang members, were recruited while
in Federal custody or were preyed upon once they reached Suffolk. In
consultation with our Federal partners, we have recently launched a new
intelligence-gathering protocol to assist in collecting that
information.
gang eradication strategy of the scpd
As a result of this recent violence, the Suffolk County Police
Department launched a multi-pronged gang eradication strategy. It
involves law enforcement efforts, as well as school-based and
community-based initiatives to reduce gang recruitment and enlistment.
The law enforcement strategy is centered on gathering as much
intelligence as possible regarding MS-13 and its members, with the
specific objective of identifying MS-13 gang members and locations
where they congregate. We use a variety of tactics to collect
intelligence, including, but not limited to, debriefing all of our
arrestees. The Department prioritizes the targeting of known MS-13 gang
members by creating strategic subject lists of known MS-13 gang
members, and then assigns police officers with expertise in gang
enforcement to particular gang members to perform targeted enforcement.
That targeted enforcement includes, but is not limited to, effectuating
street arrests of known MS-13 gang members. Since we launched this
initiative in September 2016, we have made approximately 220 MS-13 gang
arrests of approximately 157 individual MS-13 gang members. This
targeted enforcement suppresses crime, results in the collection of
intelligence, and generates valuable evidence for Federal prosecutions
down the road.
As we engage in this targeted enforcement, we are working hand-in-
hand with our law enforcement partners through the Long Island FBI
Safes Street Task Force, which is run by the FBI and consists of law
enforcement officials from numerous agencies. Working with the FBI Task
Force, and the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District
of New York, we strategically select MS-13 gang members for Federal
prosecution under the RICO statute, which is a highly effective tool to
dismantle gangs such as MS-13. The RICO statute carries stiff
penalties, allows us to effectively convert street crimes into RICO
offenses, and serves as a tool to cast a large net over the gang and
negatively impact its leadership.
We also work with the Department of Homeland Security in a variety
of ways. For example, we share intelligence with Homeland Security
regarding known gang members in order to facilitate the commencement of
removal proceedings against MS-13 gang members. Although it is often
our objective to arrest and prosecute MS-13 gang members for Federal
criminal offenses in order to prevent them from merely reentering after
deportation, circumstances do arise when we are not able to effectuate
a criminal arrest, and the Department of Homeland Security is able to
utilize its immigration enforcement tools to remove these dangerous
people from our streets. To date, as a result of this partnership, the
Department of Homeland Security has detained approximately 36 MS-13
gang members in Suffolk County based on gang identification and civil
violations of the immigration law. It is important to highlight that
this component of our overall strategy is surgical in nature in that it
targets only active MS-13 gang members. In addition, we automatically
notify the Department of Homeland Security when we arrest an individual
for a misdemeanor or felony who was not born in this country so that
immigration authorities can take appropriate action, if any.
Although cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security is
mission-critical to removing dangerous gang members from our streets,
the Suffolk County Police Department must also ensure that undocumented
individuals feel comfortable providing information to law enforcement.
To this end, our officers do not inquire into the immigration status of
those individuals who come to the police as a witness, victim, or
someone merely seeking police assistance. The mission of the Police
Department is to provide and maintain a safe environment for every
person in Suffolk County regardless of that person's residency or
immigration status. If individuals believe that they cannot freely
cooperate with law enforcement because of their immigration status, the
mission of the Police Department and the safety of all residents are
compromised.
In addition to targeting known gang members, and working with our
Federal law enforcement partners to remove MS-13 gang members from our
streets, we have also enhanced our police presence, both uniformed and
plainclothes, in affected areas. We recently partnered with the New
York State Police to assist us in this effort.
We recognize, however, that targeted enforcement and patrols will
not alone lead to the eradication of MS-13 from our communities. As law
enforcement weeds gang members from our communities, we need to invest
in school-based and community-based programs to reduce gang recruitment
and involvement. As noted, MS-13 preys on our vulnerable young people,
and if we do not provide the structure that these young people need to
prosper, MS-13 will.
To this end, we utilize an arsenal of community-based intervention
strategies to prevent and deter gang violence, such as custom
notifications, call-ins, and youth conflict insertions. We work closely
with our schools to identify at-risk children to intervene in effective
ways to prevent them from joining a gang or to assist them in getting
out of a gang. Suffolk County is also investing in an early
intervention gang prevention program in Brentwood and other communities
in Suffolk County. Utilizing a not-for-profit organization that
specializes in gang prevention, the program--called the CHANGE
program--will target vulnerable children who are at risk of gang
involvement and provide them with much-needed services, including, but
not limited to, social work services, psychological counseling,
educational and vocational assistance, and much more. The program also
aims to involve the family of the child so that those who have the most
influence over the child are empowered to assist him or her in avoiding
gang involvement.
As discussed in more detail below, these efforts must also address
the needs of the UAC population, as they are some of the most
vulnerable to MS-13 recruitment. As it currently stands, it is
extremely difficult for local government to address their needs because
of the lack of notification by the Federal Government to local
officials, the sheer number of children being placed in Suffolk County
and in other communities throughout the country, and the inadequate
funding of any such efforts.
how the federal government can further assist
Additional Resources
Additional AUSAs and Proposed Pilot Program
In order to effectively address this complex issue, we must
continue to arrest and prosecute MS-13 gang members under the RICO
statute to remove dangerous individuals from our streets and dismantle
the gang's leadership. In order to do so, however, local law
enforcement agencies need the support of the Federal Government to
prosecute these cases. A practical impediment to this task is the
number of Assistant United States Attorneys on staff on Long Island.
The Long Island Criminal Division, which operates out of the United
States Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York branch office in
Central Islip, is responsible for prosecuting all Federal crimes
occurring in Nassau and Suffolk counties, including violent crimes,
public corruption, terrorism, securities and corporate fraud, major
narcotics trafficking, and child pornography crimes. Nassau and Suffolk
counties are densely populated and the Long Island Criminal Division
serves a population of approximately 2.85 million people, which is 35
percent of the Eastern District of New York, and is larger than many
entire districts around the country. Many of the cases prosecuted by
the Long Island Criminal Division, including the MS-13 prosecutions,
are international and inter-State in reach.
Currently, the Long Island Criminal Division only has 11 line AUSAs
and 4 supervisors, all of whom carry full caseloads in addition to
their supervisory responsibilities, which is significantly below the
normal staffing level. At the beginning of 2013, the Long Island
Criminal Division had 18 AUSAs, including supervisors, but due to
attrition, sequestration, and budget reductions, staffing dropped to 11
AUSAs at one point. Several additional AUSAs were hired, but they have
been insufficient to return the Long Island Criminal Division to the
2013 staffing level.
Indeed, Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk counties combined) has a
population of about 2.85 million and 14 AUSAs. By comparison, Kansas
has a population of 2.9 million and 24 Criminal AUSAs plus 6 Special
Assistant United States Attorneys; Eastern District of Tennessee has a
population of 2.6 million and over 30 AUSAs; and though Nassau and
Suffolk counties comprise 35 percent of the Eastern District's
population, there are approximately 105 Criminal AUSAs in Brooklyn and
only 14 on Long Island.
The limited number of prosecutors assigned to the Central Islip
office forces these dedicated prosecutors to make decisions about how
to most effectively allocate resources by deciding which cases should
be, or should not be prosecuted Federally. In the event that more AUSAs
are assigned to the Long Island Criminal Division, the Suffolk County
Police Department, Federal agencies and the United States Attorney's
Office could enter into a pilot program whereby all MS-13 arrests in
the County are reviewed by an MS-13 intake AUSA to determine whether
any Federal charges could be brought against the arrestee. This would
increase the number of Federal prosecutions of MS-13 gang members,
taking dangerous individuals off our streets, and likely generate
significant intelligence due to the incentives in the Federal system
for defendants to cooperate with law enforcement. Such a program called
the Triggerlock Program was successfully launched in the Southern
District of New York relating to firearm offenses.
In short, the additional AUSAs will enhance the United States
Attorney's Office's ability to prosecute violent crimes committed by
members of MS-13, with the objective of continuing and increasing our
efforts to dismantle and incapacitate MS-13 within the Eastern District
of New York and beyond.
Grant Opportunities to Combat Gang Activity
As noted, a critical part of our strategy to deter and prevent gang
activity is to enhance police presence and patrols in affected areas,
also known as ``hot spot policing.'' The Suffolk County Police
Department has recently applied through the Department of Justice for
the Project Save Neighborhoods grant, which awards $500,000 to a
jurisdiction to offset the cost of such policing efforts. Awarding this
grant to Suffolk County is consistent with the Federal Government's
commitment to eradicating MS-13 from our communities. I respectfully
request that the Department of Justice award this grant to Suffolk
County, and urge the Federal Government to create additional grant
opportunities to assist local police in this important mission.
Gang Prevention Programs
It is imperative that we dedicate resources to school-based and
community-based gang prevention programs in order to reduce successful
gang recruitment. These efforts should focus on vulnerable populations,
including UACs. Indeed, such funding should be directly tied to the
UACs placed in our communities, as they are some of the most vulnerable
to MS-13 recruitment.
Intelligence Sharing
Information sharing among law enforcement agencies is a critical
part of any effective strategy in order to ensure coordination of our
efforts to remove dangerous gang members from our streets. To this end,
it would be of significant assistance to our joint efforts to create a
singular database with information relating to identified MS-13 gang
members. The database could include the gang member's pedigree
information, the clique he belongs to, his immigration status as
confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security, whether he is a UAC,
whether he is actively under investigation, which jurisdictions are
involved in any such investigation, and any other intelligence that is
sharable and relevant. The system could include automatic notifications
to local agencies when information is added regarding an individual who
is of interest to that agency. Such a database would encourage multi-
jurisdictional efforts and allow local police departments to be more
proactive in targeting known MS-13 gang members in our communities.
Since my law enforcement partners and I testified before the United
State Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Operations, I have been recently informed that such efforts are
currently under way. Those efforts include regionally and
internationally based MS-13 fusion centers.
The UAC Program
It is imperative to our mission that the Federal Government place
UACs in our communities after proper screening of sponsors followed by
measures ensuring sponsor compliance. Otherwise, we are creating an
ideal recruiting opportunity for MS-13. Such reforms might include
increased screening and compliance monitoring of sponsors, local
notification of placement to school districts and local governments,
and increased funding for post-placement services.
conclusion
I want to thank the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on
Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence
for its commitment to this very important issue, and the opportunity to
appear before it today. I look forward to working with the committee
and all its Members and staff.
Mr. King. Thank you very much, Commissioner. Thank you for
your efforts.
Our next witness is Suffolk County Sheriff Vincent DeMarco.
Sheriff DeMarco began his career as a Suffolk County Deputy
Sheriff in 1994. He was elected in November 2005 to his current
position, and he was reelected in 2009----
Mr. DeMarco. And 2013.
Mr. King [continuing]. And 2013. So that is 12 years as
sheriff. He has done an outstanding job.
I know you are not running for reelection this year, but I
want to congratulate you on the outstanding job you have done.
I wish you well.
With that, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF VINCENT F. DE MARCO, SHERIFF, SUFFOLK COUNTY, NEW
YORK
Mr. DeMarco. I want to thank Congressman King and
Congresswoman Rice and all the committee Members for conducting
this hearing on Long Island to bring attention to the threat
that criminal street gangs pose to the safety and security of
our communities and the Nation.
I would also like to thank President Trump for making the
eradication of gangs a priority of his administration.
Since time is limited, I will focus my remarks specifically
on what I think needs to be done now to prevent criminal gang
networks like MS-13 from exploiting weaknesses in our
Government programs. These are complex issues to tackle, but
solutions that fail to address the multitude of ways that gangs
have infiltrated society are destined to fail.
We must take a system-wide approach if we are to be
successful in eradicating criminal gang networks, just as the
United States has taken the lead in the world in the fight
against terrorism.
Criminal gangs are very similar to terrorist organizations,
and they capitalize on similar vulnerabilities in their
recruitment of members: Poverty, poor socialization, lack of
opportunities for gainful employment, and close ties to other
gang members. Communities like Brentwood, New York are targets
for gang recruitment because there is a high concentration of
new immigrants, including many unaccompanied minors who tend to
be more easily coerced into street gangs.
The Sheriff's Office Gang Intelligence Unit at the Suffolk
County Correctional Facility has interviewed hundreds of youth
from Brentwood and its surrounding communities. These
interviews provide significant insight into the underlying
causes of gang proliferation, such as dangerous gaps in our
Nation's border security, loopholes in our immigration system,
lack of communication with local stakeholders and the ways
these gangs have exploited government programs, like the
Unaccompanied Refugee Minors Program run by the Office of
Refugee Resettlement.
One inmate, an MS-13 member, described his trek from
Central America to the United States at age 9. His father, who
is also affiliated with MS-13 in El Salvador, made the
arrangements with el Cartel del Golfo, which is the Gulf
Cartel, to transport him across the Texas border with Mexico.
The cartel is well-known for trafficking drugs and weapons into
the United States. With the help of the cartel, this adolescent
bypassed Immigration authorities at the border and eventually
made his way to Brentwood, New York with several other family
members.
Another young male, age 17, is another MS-13 member from
Honduras. He was 15 years old when he left his native country
and traveled to Mexico by train. He reports that it took him
about 3 months to get to Mexico because he made stops along the
way to beg for food and water. Once in Mexico, he and other
adolescents were rounded up by the Mexican Mafia at gunpoint.
They were told that they would have to transport marijuana for
the Mafia or they would be killed. He was fitted with 48 pounds
of marijuana and then two guides escorted them from Sonora,
Mexico to Phoenix, Arizona. After crossing the border, he was
taken into custody by United States Immigration officials and
placed in a facility for unaccompanied minors. He stated that
he remained there for 4 months and then flew to New York to
stay with his uncle. Both were subsequently charged with
violent felonies.
I have included in my submission 10 notes from interviews
like this just to give you a sense--these are their words--
about how they were brought to this country, and about how the
unaccompanied minor program works in reality.*
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* The information has been retained in committee files.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gang members like these youths are being arrested and
prosecuted in record numbers, but it is clear that law
enforcement cannot solve this problem alone. According to a
report released by the Department of Health and Human Services,
ORR placed 930 unaccompanied minors in Suffolk County over a 6-
month period from October 2016 to April 2017. Since Federal
authorities do not communicate with local human service
agencies, law enforcement, nor do they notify school districts
when youth are placed with sponsors in the county, there is no
way to responsibly deal with the influx of minors coming into
places like Brentwood. This must change.
Unaccompanied minors are particularly vulnerable to gang
involvement, especially those who may have witnessed violence
at a young age and experienced significant trauma. Without
appropriate interventions, some of these children are destined
to engage with criminal gangs such as MS-13.
Furthermore, Federal authorities must close loopholes in
the ORR program which threaten National security and aid in the
proliferation of criminal gangs in the United States. Anyone
who sponsors a child to resettle in the United States should be
held fully accountable for compliance with all immigration
court hearings. It has been reported that sponsor families are
not always thoroughly vetted and that youth are placed in the
care of adults who do not meet legal residency requirements.
Some youth are placed in families with siblings and relatives
who are gang-involved, and they are concentrated in towns with
high rates of gang activity. This accelerates the cycle of
crime and incarceration in many lower-income communities and
hurts law-abiding residents who are struggling in their own
quest for security and personal prosperity.
Our Nation's porous Southern Border has become the gateway
for MS-13 to thrive on Long Island and in neighborhoods across
America. This is also the economic epicenter for drug and sex
traffickers, as well as a common route for weapons to enter our
country illegally. Mexican cartels and organized criminal gangs
have formed a powerful economic alliance to smuggle heroin and
other illicit drugs into the United States. Ninety percent of
the heroin that enters the country comes through Mexico, so we
must intensify security along the Southern Border. These are
real and serious problems that have been ignored for far too
long.
Finally, if we are truly serious about shutting down the
MS-13 pipeline, we must improve human services and education in
low-income communities. Federal lawmakers should strongly
consider more funding for the Gang Resistance Education and
Training Program, known an G.R.E.A.T., which the Sheriff's
Office runs in schools throughout Suffolk County, including
some in Brentwood and its surrounding communities. Young people
also need more recreational and social outlets, as well as
viable opportunities for employment, to help them better
assimilate into mainstream society so that they can resist the
lure of gang membership.
I want to thank you again for the opportunity to speak here
today, and I look forward to any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. DeMarco follows:]
Statement of Vincent F. DeMarco
June 20, 2017
My name is Vincent DeMarco and I am the sheriff of Suffolk County,
New York, and the chairman of the County's Criminal Justice
Coordinating Council. As Suffolk's chief law enforcement officer, I
lead an organization with more than 1,300 uniformed and civilian
employees responsible for protecting life and property, and I am
responsible for oversight of the largest suburban correctional facility
in New York State. It is my pleasure to be here today to provide
testimony before the Committee on Homeland Security's Subcommittee on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence.
I want to thank the Committee Chairman, Congressman Michael McCaul,
and the Ranking Member, Congressman Bennie Thompson, along with
Congressman Peter King, for conducting this hearing on Long Island to
bring attention to the threat that criminal street gangs pose to the
safety and security of our communities and the Nation. I would also
like to thank President Donald Trump for making the eradication of
gangs a priority of his administration. He and members of his
administration are proactively seeking ways to work with local law
enforcement and addressing loopholes in immigration procedures that
have long contributed to the crisis of gang violence in communities
like Brentwood, Long Island.
Since time is limited, I will focus my remarks specifically on what
needs to be done right now to prevent criminal gang networks like the
MS-13 from exploiting weaknesses in our governmental programs, which
have allowed them to take hold in our neighborhoods, as well as what
steps we need to take now, and in the future, to better immunize our
children from the influences of gang recruitment. These are complex
issues to tackle, but solutions that fail to address the multitude of
ways that gangs have infiltrated society are destined to fail. We must
take a systems-wide approach if we are to be successful in eradicating
criminal gang networks. The United States has taken the lead in the
world in the fight against terrorism, and I believe there must be a
similar effort to protect our Nation and its people from the threats
posed by criminal gangs and organized crime.
Criminal gangs are very similar to terrorist organizations. They
have a defined leadership structure, a belief system, cultural ties,
and a code of behavior that forges a cohesive bond among their
membership. Gangs also capitalize on similar vulnerabilities in their
recruitment of members: Poverty, poor socialization, lack of
opportunities for gainful employment and close ties to other gang
members. Communities like Brentwood are targets for gang recruitment
because there is a high concentration of new immigrants, including many
unaccompanied minors who tend to be more easily coerced into street
gangs. It is also a lower-income community with many hard-working
families. The Sheriff's Office Gang Intelligence Unit at the Suffolk
County Correctional Facility has interviewed hundreds of youth from
Brentwood and its surrounding communities. These interviews provide
significant insight into the underlying causes of gang proliferation,
such as dangerous gaps in our Nation's border security, loopholes in
our immigration system, lack of communication with local stakeholders
and the ways these gangs have exploited Government programs, like the
Unaccompanied Refugee Minors Program run by the Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR).
I thought I would read to you some of the notes taken by one of our
Gang Unit investigators after interviewing young MS-13 gang members in
custody at the Suffolk County jail. In the interest of time, additional
notes have been submitted separately to the subcommittee.
One young inmate described his trek from Central America to the
United States at the age of 9. His father, who is affiliated with MS-
13, made arrangements with el Cartel del Golfo to transport him across
the Texas border with Mexico. El Cartel Del Golfo is well-known for
trafficking drugs and weapons into the United States. With the help of
the cartel, this adolescent bypassed Immigration authorities at the
border and eventually made his way to Brentwood, New York with several
other family members.
Another young male, age 17, from Honduras reports that he was 15
years old when he left his native country and traveled to Mexico by
train. He told our investigator that it took him about 3 months to get
to Mexico because he made stops along the way to beg for food and
water. Once in Mexico, he reports that he, along with 13 other
adolescents, were rounded up by the Mexican Mafia by gun point. They
were then told that they would have to transport marijuana for the
Mafia, or they would be killed. He stated that he was fitted with 48
pounds of marijuana and that two guides, hired by the Mafia, escorted
them from Sonora, Mexico to Phoenix, Arizona. After crossing the
border, he was taken into custody by United States Immigration
officials and placed in a facility for unaccompanied minors. He stated
that he remained there for 4 months and then flew to New York to stay
with his uncle.
Both adolescents have been charged with serious violent felonies.
Gang members are being arrested and prosecuted in record numbers,
but it is clear that law enforcement cannot solve this problem alone.
According to a report released by the Department of Health and Human
Services, ORR placed 930 unaccompanied minors in Suffolk County over a
6-month period from October 2016-April 2017. Since Federal authorities
do not communicate with local human service agencies, law enforcement,
nor do they notify school districts when youth are placed with sponsors
in the county, there is no way to responsibly deal with the influx of
minors coming to places like Brentwood. This must change. Unaccompanied
minors are particularly vulnerable to gang involvement, especially
those who may have witnessed violence at a young age and experienced
significant trauma. Without appropriate interventions, some of these
children are destined to engage with criminal gangs such as MS-13.
Furthermore, Federal authorities must close loopholes in the ORR
program which threaten National security and aid in the proliferation
of criminal gangs in the United States. Anyone who sponsors a child to
resettle in the United States should be held fully accountable for
compliance with all immigration court hearings. It has been reported
that sponsor families are not always thoroughly vetted and that youth
are placed in the care of adults who do not meet legal residency
requirements. Some youth are placed in families with siblings and
relatives who are gang-involved, and they are concentrated in towns
with high rates of gang activity. This accelerates the cycle of crime
and incarceration in many lower-income communities and hurts law-
abiding residents who are struggling in their own quest for security
and personal prosperity.
Our Nation's porous Southern Border has become the gateway for MS-
13 to thrive on Long Island and in neighborhoods across America. This
is also the economic epicenter for drug and sex traffickers, as well as
a common route for weapons to enter our country illegally. Mexican
cartels and organized criminal gangs have formed a powerful economic
alliance to smuggle heroin and other illicit drugs into the United
States. Ninety percent of the heroin coming into the country enters
through Mexico, so we must intensify security along the Southern
Border. These are real and serious problems that have been ignored by
prior administrations for far too long.
Finally, if we are truly serious about shutting down the MS-13
pipeline, we must do more to improve human services and funding for
education in low-income communities. Federal lawmakers should strongly
consider more funding for the Gang Resistance Education and Training
Program (G.R.E.A.T.), which is run by the sheriff's office in schools
throughout Suffolk County, including some in Brentwood and its
surrounding communities. Young people also need more recreational and
social outlets, as well as viable opportunities for employment, to help
them better assimilate into mainstream society so that they can resist
the lure of gang membership.
I want to thank you once again for the opportunity to present
testimony at today's hearing and I look forward to answering your
follow-up questions.
Mr. King. Thank you, Sheriff.
Our next witnesses are from Nassau County, Commissioner
Krumpter and Sergeant Mike Marino.
Commissioner Krumpter has been Commissioner in Nassau
County since February 2014. He is going to be retiring in the
next several weeks.
Tom, I thank you for your years of service and the
outstanding job you have done.
Sergeant Mike Marino and I have been friends for many
years. We have serious fights about baseball, but other than
that we agree on every other issue, and it is great to see Mike
here. He does an outstanding job heading up the Gang Unit in
Nassau County.
So, Commissioner Krumpter, Sergeant Marino, you can divide
up your time. Again, thank you for being here today.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS C. KRUMPTER, ACTING COMMISSIONER, NASSAU
COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT, NASSAU COUNTY, NEW YORK
Mr. Krumpter. I am going to be brief in my comments.
Sergeant Marino will dive into the details of the current
status of MS-13.
Good morning, Chairman King, Ranking Member Rice. Thank you
for conducting this hearing. This is clearly a significant
issue with dire consequences.
Long Island is frequently cited as being among the safest
large suburban communities in America, but unfortunately we
have gangs that are terrorizing communities within Nassau and
Suffolk County. Unfortunately of late, Long Island has been the
focus of National stories about violent atrocities committed by
MS-13 rather than the safe communities that are really a
benchmark.
Of late, the most violent gang in Nassau County, and among
the most violent gangs probably anywhere, is MS-13. MS-13 uses
threats, intimidation, and violence in order to control and
recruit members and carry out their criminal enterprise.
Currently in Nassau County, we have identified 712 members of
MS-13, of which 345 are currently active members.
After 2 years of investigation by the Nassau County Police
Department, Nassau County District Attorney, New York State
Park Police, and Homeland Security, 41 members of MS-13 were
indicted last week on conspiracy counts, with a number of
underlying charges consisting of attempted murder. Of
particular note in this investigation, and perhaps most
troubling, is 19 of the 41 subjects indicted were unaccompanied
minors. I think it is important to remember that not all
unaccompanied minors are gang members, but we are seeing a
significant number of gang members are unaccompanied minors.
What is most important and the biggest challenge, and
Congresswoman Rice touched on this, is the trust within the
community. Because of the very way we police in Nassau County,
this case in particular, without the support of the community
as witnesses, we would not have been able to make the case. The
community came out in force and basically made it very clear,
they will not tolerate these terrorist acts by these MS-13 gang
members. Nassau County Police will not tolerate violent street
gangs. As has been stated multiple times by law enforcement
over the last several months, we are at war with these violent
street gangs.
A few words about the Nassau County Police Department's
strategy on dealing with gangs. We take a holistic approach. At
the very core of that is the community outreach that we engage
in each and every day. We look to build trust with the
communities because we recognize that without the trust of the
community, without partnering with the community, it will be
all the more difficult to address these gangs.
We use a multi-tier approach for gang enforcement. We use
suppression by plainclothes units. The gang investigation squad
headed by Sergeant Marino focuses on all gang investigations
for all crimes and focuses specifically upon gang impact cases.
We have a significant youth outreach program in Nassau County,
among the largest police athletic league in the country, with
over 40,000 participants. This is important, because it gives
other outlets and other activities for the kids rather than
becoming involved with the gangs. Like surrogate families, we
try to give them alternatives. Additionally, we run police
youth academies on a regular basis which targets at-risk youth,
and the Police Explorer Program.
As we move forward, I hope as a result of this hearing
additional human resources will be dedicated specifically, as
Commissioner Sini pointed out, additional prosecutors in the
U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District and Islip, as
well as additional Federal agents. More people, more cases.
That is the way it works.
While the focus of today's hearing is on MS-13, it is
important to realize that the focus must be on violent street
gangs. What we have learned in Nassau County is that when you
eradicate a street gang in a community, a vacuum is created and
a new gang will emerge. So it would be near-sighted to focus
solely on MS-13 as we move forward.
As we move forward, there are a number of programs and laws
that will greatly assist law enforcement. The most significant
issue that law enforcement faces going forward is going dark.
The most high-profile case in recent memory is the San
Bernardino terrorist attack where Apple Computer outright
refused a Federal court order to provide assistance in gaining
access to a phone. This problem will become more and more
problematic as we move forward, and it will make it more
difficult to engage in those enterprise corruption
investigations. MS-13 is an enterprise corruption case.
We have dedicated significant resources in the war on
street gangs, and we will continue to do so. Probably the most
problematic is the case of unaccompanied minors. Unaccompanied
minors are an issue not because of anything they have done.
What happens is there is no due diligence done as a result of
the unaccompanied minors coming into this country. If a program
is going to succeed with unaccompanied minors, it is going to
have to involve due diligence and programs so they are set up
to succeed, not left so they end up turning to gangs as a
surrogate family.
Thank you.
Sergeant Marino.
Mr. King. Sergeant Marino.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL MARINO, COMMANDING OFFICER, GANG
INVESTIGATIONS SQUAD, NASSAU COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT, NASSAU
COUNTY, NEW YORK
Mr. Marino. Good morning, Chairman King and Ranking Member
Rice. I am honored and grateful to represent the Nassau County
Police Department in providing testimony on the activities of
MS-13 within the County of Nassau and sitting among the top law
enforcement officials in the Nation.
While Nassau County is one of the safest places in the
country and we are experiencing record low crime rates, we are
not spared the violence of MS-13. There have been 12 MS-13
investigations so far this year, which is the lowest since our
inception of the unit in 2005. The National media attention to
the gruesome nature of their crimes has magnified the
perception of their activities amongst the public. We cannot
ignore the rival gangs in the county such as 18th Street, Vatos
Locos, Salvadorans with Pride, Latin Pride, and the Bloods.
When one gang is diminished, the others fill the void.
MS-13 assaults outnumber all other MS crime combined. MS-13
crimes in the county are predominantly gang versus gang, or
gang within gang. Innocent victims can occur due to
misidentification as adversaries due to style of dress,
associations or social media posts, or disrespect. These events
are often retaliatory from incidents that may have happened a
day ago, a month ago, or several years ago. GIS utilizes many
strategies, initiatives, and law enforcement techniques to
solve gang incidents.
The men and women that make up the GIS are senior expert
gang detectors. They have long relationships to the communities
and go to great lengths to protect witnesses and victims. We
investigate gang-motivated crime and gang membership-based
crime in order to increase the accuracy of our statistics and
lessen missed investigative opportunities. Our School
Administrators Gang Awareness program, SAGA, partners the
schools with the police department to foster information
sharing and provide training. This relationship has resulted in
many non-criminal interventions of gang members or potential
gang members, as the first signs of gang affiliation often
occur in schools. When you look at the education levels of gang
members, it is staggeringly low.
We encourage the schools to out-recruit the gangs in what
we deem gang replacement therapy, joining the track team,
marching band, or any other after-school activity.
On the enforcement side, we focus on our Top Shooter
initiative. We believe there are smaller subsets of those gang
members that are willing to actually fire a gun at another and
kill another human being. When we arrest the shooter, we also
remove a target from the rival gang so it gives us a multiplier
effect on reducing shooting incidents. We expand that concept
to machetes for MS-13 as well.
We also--it is important that we assess retaliatory actions
when these attacks occur. Our recent Operation 503, named for
the country calling code of El Salvador, was a joint
investigation by the Bureau of the Nassau County District
Attorney's Office, the Hempstead PD's new gang unit, New York
State Park Police, and HSI, resulting in the conspiracy
indictment of 41 MS-13 gang members, 19 of which were UACs and
one U.S. citizen.
Social media now is being used by gangs to recruit,
threaten, and intimidate. Law enforcement can use this material
as powerful evidence. Back in 2013, when Representative Rice
was district attorney, we were attempting to obtain a Title III
wiretap with the FBI but could not reach our legal threshold
until we discovered two YouTube videos, Puppies on Deck and In
the Trap, which you probably still remember the lyrics to. That
operation, Seize Down, started then and eradicated the Rollin
60's Crips from Roosevelt, and is now being prosecuted by the
Eastern District U.S. Attorney, which can serve as a model for
MS also.
Coincidentally, last Thursday the GIS conducted Operation
503 and simultaneously the Eastern District convicted and
sentenced a high-ranking Rollin 60's Crip from Operation Seize
Down to over 100 years in prison. I think almost all our law
enforcement partners, both Federal and local, were involved
between those two cases. That was a very bad day for gangs and
a very good day for law enforcement and the residents of Nassau
County.
I want to thank Commissioner Krumpter, Deputy Commissioner
Ryder for allowing me to represent the Nassau County Police
Department, and I want to thank the men and women of the Gang
Enforcement Squad in Nassau County for their hard and dangerous
work every day. I thank the committee Members and Congresswoman
Rice and Congressman King for inviting me to appear today.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Marino follows:]
Prepared Statement of Michael Marino
June 20, 2017
summary
I am Detective Sergeant Michael Marino, commanding officer of the
Gang Investigations Squad (GIS), Nassau County Police Department. I am
honored and grateful to represent the Nassau County Police Department
in providing testimony regarding the activities of the ``transnational
criminal organization'' known as Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13), as
designated by the United States Government within the county. In
addition, I will explain the duties, functions, and strategies of GIS
to investigate and combat gang crime in general and in particular MS-
13.
Although Nassau County is one of the safest places in the country
and we are experiencing record low crime rates, we are not spared the
violence of MS-13. There have been 12 MS-13 investigations for the
first half of 2017, which is the lowest number since the formation of
GIS in 2005. The National and local media attention, in addition to the
gruesome nature of some crimes perpetrated by MS-13, has magnified the
perception of their activities. A brief explanation of our experience
with the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) population, as it relates
to their gang participation and recruitment, is necessary. We cannot
ignore the historically rival gangs of MS-13 that exist within the
county such as 18th Street, Vatos Locos (VL), Salvadorians with Pride
(SWP), Latin Pride (LP), and the Bloods. A balanced and consistent
approach is necessary as one gang tends to fill the void left by the
diminished gang.
I will provide the committee with the framework of ``Operation
503'' and as much information as possible, since some components of the
investigation are continuing.
Last, tutorials on the use of social media by MS-13 to intimidate,
recruit, and threaten individuals or groups would be valuable.
Although, many of my law enforcement colleagues have correctly
detailed the facets of MS-13, a distinct perspective of the detectives
in the Gang Investigations Squad should give the committee a more
comprehensive view of the issue.
ms-13 in nassau county
Currently we have identified 345 MS-13 gang members active within
the last 5 years and 367 inactive MS-13 gang members who are
predominantly male extending in age from 15 to 30. A small percentage
of females and those outside that age range do exist. The majority of
MS-13 gang members residing in Nassau County originate from Central
American countries, are not United States citizens, and do not speak
fluent English.
This is unlike their rival gang SWP who are frequently born in the
United States and speak English. We believe SWP started in Hempstead as
a defense to MS-13 violence and has not been identified outside Nassau
County borders for many years. Historically, MS-13 has been
concentrated in the communities of Westbury, Hempstead, Uniondale,
Roosevelt, Glen Cove, and Freeport with lesser amounts distributed
throughout the county. We have encountered MS-13 gang members that have
several different types of immigration status.
Generally, MS-13 gang members are employed earning wages and do not
engage in crimes designed for profit as dealing drugs or credit card
fraud. This is a significant difference from other street gangs in
Nassau County and necessitates a more nuanced approach during
investigations.
criminal activities of ms-13
Exceedingly, crimes committed by MS-13 within Nassau County are
gang versus rival gang or gang within gang. Innocent persons can become
victims because MS-13 gang members misidentify individuals as
adversaries due to style of dress, associates, or social media posts.
Assaults outnumber all other crimes together. Over the years we also
have crime reports involving MS-13 in murder, attempted murder,
robberies, burglaries, menacing, drug possession, witness tampering,
criminal possession of weapon, reckless endangerment, criminal
mischief, making graffiti, and a variety of other lesser crimes.
MS-13 gang members have utilized knives, chains, machetes, and
firearms as weapons during many of their assaults. It is not unusual
for there to be multiple attackers during these aggressions. Often,
these events are retaliatory in nature from other incidents that
occurred a day ago, a month ago, or years ago.
On April 30, 2017, three members of MS-13 embarked on a machete
attack against persons they perceived to be rival gang members in
Westbury. The victim sustained severe and serious lacerations.
Additionally, one member fired a hand gun five times at victims, and
fortunately no one was struck by the bullets. The GIS detectives
arrested the perpetrators and recovered the firearm within 3 days. All
originally from El Salvador, two of the gang members were undocumented
and one has UAC status. This case is currently being prosecuted by the
Nassau County District Attorney's Office. Although currently rare in
Nassau County, this is a good example of the typical MS-13 gang
assaults throughout Long Island.
UAC Program
Our experience with UAC's placed within Nassau County is largely
anecdotal. Only recently have we begun to track and understand all of
the immigration statuses relating to MS-13. We believe that certainly
pluralities of UAC's are law-abiding from information obtained during
our investigations. At this time, it is difficult to determine the
percentage of UAC's who were already gang members when they entered the
country as the laws in El Salvador prohibit the exposure of criminal or
gang records of minors.
It is clear that MS-13 and the rival gangs target these children
for recruitment. They become a high-risk group because they are young,
alone in a new country, have a language barrier, and an unconventional
family structure. We have investigated cases where our UAC victims who
were not gang members did, over periods of time, succumb to the
pressure and become gang members. It is a strong recruitment tool to
pitch protection for these victims by MS-13 and their rivals. Our most
recent MS-13 investigation Operation 503 revealed 17 of 41 indicted
gang members were UAC's. Nassau County Police Department's (NCPD)
continued cooperation with our Federal partners should shed some
further light on this issue.
gang investigation squad
In 2005, the Nassau County Police Department created the GIS to
implement its gang reduction strategies. Currently under the Major Case
Bureau, GIS is a robust unit of senior detectives and sergeants
responsible for investigating and coordinating all information and
intelligence involving street gang activity within Nassau County.
Duties include the gathering and dissemination of street-gang
intelligence; the debriefings of gang members and associates;
coordination of investigations of gang-related incidents with precinct
detective squads, special squads, and other law enforcement agencies;
and conducting investigations of selected gang-related incidents.
GIS is supported by many other units within the police department
including the Intelligence Division, Detective Division, and Patrol
Division. The Intel Center has civilian gang analysts which are
critical to our intelligence-gathering efforts especially in the social
media arena. We have partnered for many years with several Federal
agencies including the FBI Long Island Safe Streets Task Force,
Department of Homeland Security, and the United States Attorney's
Office for the Eastern District of New York. On the local level, we
coordinate with the village and city police departments especially
Hempstead, Freeport, Glen Cove, and Long Beach. GIS works closely with
the Special Operations Narcotics and Gang Bureau of the Nassau County
District Attorney's Office. The New York State Police and New York
State Parks Police have had joint investigations involving GIS.
Since our inception, GIS has collaborated with our school districts
as host of the School Administrators Gang Awareness (SAGA) program.
SAGA consists of 1 or 2 yearly meetings with participating school
districts where we share information and provide gang awareness
training. Our relationship with school districts has resulted in
several successful joint non-criminal interventions of gang members or
potential gang members. This association is important as we realize the
earliest signs of gang affinity may manifest in school.
Recruitment on or near school grounds is common. GIS assisted one
school district where the close proximity of the high school, middle
school, library, and park were contributing to increased recruitment.
We helped by assisting with an environmental design that included the
use of fencing, lighting, cameras, and security personnel to create a
safer route home for the students.
The NCPD prioritizes intelligence sharing and to meet those goals
as it relates to gangs, GIS did develop the Daily Gang Intel Report
that is electronically distributed to all relevant law enforcement
personnel. Working closely with information from our Intel Division,
GIS detectives everyday assemble any NCPD police gang contact for the
previous 24 hours from a simple field stop through the most serious
crime reports and arrests.
GIS utilizes many strategies, initiatives, and law enforcement
techniques to investigate gang-related crimes. As gang-related is often
under-reported, is it important to include gang-motivated-based crime
and gang-membership-based crime. Many times, the motivation is unknown
immediately and may remain undetermined. If either the victim, subject,
or both are gang members, it should be categorized as a gang crime thus
improving accuracy of statistics and lessen missed investigative
opportunities.
Many of the detectives assigned to GIS have been involved in gang
investigations for at least a dozen years. This stability garners
support from the community as strong relationships build from
interviewing victims and witnesses. These detectives go to great
lengths to protect victims and witnesses which fosters trust within the
community.
GIS believes that a small subset of violent gang members are
willing to use firearms. We target this group with our Top Shooter
Initiative. Concentrating on removing a shooter from the gang also
eliminates a target for the rival gang. GIS has seen a multiplier
effect reduction in the amount of shootings in a neighborhood when we
arrest a shooter. This focus also increases the likelihood that we can
recover the illegal weapon. We include dangerous weapons such as
machetes in this category for MS-13.
GIS is mandated by the NCPD to assess retaliation by MS-13 and
gangs in general when an incident occurs. As most assaults are the
result of retaliatory violence, we must expeditiously attempt to arrest
the offenders and determine the necessary support resources to deploy
such as special patrols or plainclothes crime units.
As of this date, GIS has investigated 12 MS-13 gang cases for this
year. During 2016 and 2015 we investigated 31 and 32 cases
respectively. This reduction was possible due to the support of the
entire NCPD and the joint efforts of our local and Federal partners.
operation 503
``Operation 503'' was a joint investigation by NCPD, Nassau County
District Attorney's Office, Hempstead PD, New York State Parks Police,
and the Department of Homeland Security. ``503'' is the country code
for calling El Salvador by phone. The investigation looked at numerous
violent cases going back to 2013 involving MS-13. After a month-long
presentation to the Grand Jury, a Conspiracy indictment was returned
against 41 MS-13 gang members for an attempt to commit the crime of
murder in the second degree, assault in the first degree, an attempt to
commit the crime of assault in the first degree, and assault in the
second degree.
use of social media by gangs
Most people are aware of the use of social media by terrorist
groups or internet predators, however, gangs use similar tactics. There
are hundreds of thousands of gang-related photos and videos circulating
on the web. A simple search of the major social media services such as
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google, Instagram, and a host of others,
would reveal the magnitude of gang-related material. GIS has reviewed
thousands of these postings as MS-13 and other gangs promote propaganda
and glorification of gang lifestyle as a recruitment tool. The gangs
also use these platforms to intimidate and threaten their rivals which
can lead to violent retaliation.
Law enforcement can use these photos and videos as powerful
evidence. GIS was attempting to obtain a Title III wiretap but could
never quite reach the lawful threshold until we discovered two YouTube
videos depicting the Rollin 60's Crip gang with firearms and drugs.
That case dubbed ``Operation Cs Down'' started as a local investigation
and is now being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office of the
Eastern District.
We advise parents to monitor their children's computer to look for
signs of gang involvement and protect them from recruitment. It is also
prudent not to ``like'' a gang-related posting or post anything on a
page depicting any gang activities.
conclusion
The Nassau County Police Department thanks the U.S. House of
Representatives Committee on Homeland Security for their attention to
this critical issue, and the opportunity to appear before it today. The
NCPD will continue to work with the committee Members and its staff.
Mr. King. Thank you, Sergeant Marino. I know you have at
least one member back there from your gang unit.
Commissioner Sini and Commissioner Krumpter, I know that,
for instance, the 12 individuals who were indicted and charged
back in March for the killings, conspiracies, narcotics
trafficking, and 19 of the 41 who were arrested last week were
unaccompanied minors. I also know that in the last year alone,
there were 2,700 unaccompanied minors placed into Long Island.
I think in Suffolk County in the last 3 years it has been
almost 5,000.
Commissioner Sini, you and I have discussed and you said
publicly to the extent MS-13 has been able to game the
unaccompanied minors system in that often they are placed with
families who can be supportive of MS-13, or maybe threaten to
support MS-13, and those kids, in effect, are placed--and
again, this is a small minority of the overall, so I am not
trying to have a broad-brush attack on the unaccompanied
minors.
The fact is it seems to be a lack of vetting in the program
as to what family is sponsoring them, which children are going
to those families, and what is the subsequent monitoring of
those unaccompanied minors within those families and within the
school districts.
So I would like to basically ask Mr. Sini and Mr. Krumpter,
and again FBI agents, if you want to comment on that, as to
what the situation is and what can be done to improve the
vetting so we will not have that situation where such a large
percentage of those who have been arrested are actually
unaccompanied minors, which means that young people who have
only come here within the last two or 3 years.
Mr. Sini. So in Suffolk County, since 2014, approximately
between 4,500 and 5,000 UACs have been placed in Suffolk
County. The vast majority of those UACs have been placed in
Brentwood and Central Islip, but certainly numerous communities
have received UACs.
Congressman, as you mentioned, of that amount, a very, very
small fraction have become involved with MS-13, to our
knowledge. Nonetheless, it remains certainly a recruitment tool
that MS-13 has used, and it is for obvious reasons. These
children are young, they are unaccompanied, they are not here
with their parents, they are new to the country, they are
seeking a sense of cultural unity, they are scared, they are
experiencing trauma both in terms of what they experience in
their home country and their journey here to the United States
and their placement, the process of being placed in a
community, and that makes them prime time for gang recruitment.
So intelligence has indicated everything that you have
mentioned, that there has not been proper screening of sponsors
in certain instances, there certainly has been a lack of
sponsor compliance post-placement, there is no notification,
and I think Sheriff DeMarco mentioned this, there is no local
notification, whether it is to a human services organization
like the Department of Social Services, to the police
department, to the school districts. There is no local
notification of placement, and there is very little funding
connected to the program. I have only been able to identify one
service provider in Suffolk County that is receiving moneys
directly connected to UACs through the Office of Refugee
Resettlement, and that is Catholic Charities. Certainly, these
children are being serviced in other capacities, but connected
specifically to the program, I have only identified that one
program.
So, what law enforcement is asking for is simply Congress
to take a look at the program to make sure that it is being
implemented in a responsible way. We understand that this is a
humanitarian program and that these children need to be placed.
This all grew from a settlement agreement back in the `80's or
`90's. Then the whole program was codified in Title 8, and we
have a legal and moral obligation to place these children in
our communities, but we need to do so responsibly. We need to
make sure that the children are vetted. We need to make sure
that the sponsors are vetted. We have to make sure that there
is sponsor compliance post-placement, essentially making sure
the sponsors are doing the right thing by these children. And
we need to make sure that there is funding connected to
placement of children in our communities.
It is not fair to Suffolk County to take in 4,500 UACs,
some of the most vulnerable individuals, very vulnerable
individuals, without any Federal funding. So the message from
law enforcement, I think, is if we do not provide that support
to these children, MS-13 will, or another gang will, and we
need to make sure that this program is implemented in a
responsible way.
Mr. King. Since Congresswoman Rice and I are the only two
here today, I will just allow each of you to answer this
question to the extent you want, and then Ms. Rice will have
her questions. Do not worry about the time as far as answering
this question.
I would just respond on that also that I know Congressman
Israel and I, after I visited the Central Islip School District
several years ago, realized that these children come into these
schools and there is no money following them. Steve Israel and
I introduced legislation to have the Federal Government have
money follow the unaccompanied minors. It went nowhere. This is
looked upon as a regional issue, and the rest of the country,
quite frankly, was not interested. The administration was not.
I do not think this administration will be, to be honest with
you. So we have to work on it, we really do.
Mr. Sini. Congressman, I am familiar with the bill, HR-
2634, and I thank you and the Congressman for introducing that
bill. What the country needs to realize is that this is a
problem that is going to affect their community at one point.
Mr. King. Hopefully a hearing like this will have that type
of impact.
Commissioner Krumpter.
Mr. Krumpter. Yes, I believe it is at the very core of
this. I think you can draw parallels to the foster program.
When the foster program--when a child is taken into custody by
the State, they do due diligence. Not only do they do due
diligence on the home, but then they follow up with regular
visits. As far as I understand, these unaccompanied minors are
only being vetted on where they are coming from and why they
ended up here, not looking at where they are going, not looking
at the risk factors.
Commissioner Sini pointed it out: If you do not provide
them the services they need for them to succeed, the gangs are
going to become the surrogate families for these kids. That is,
in essence, what we are seeing. There is only a small fraction
of these kids that are ending up in gangs. They are a large
percentage of gang arrests at this point, based on the
population total.
But I think it is really a humanitarian program, and I
think that is what we have to focus on. It has to be focused on
resources. Resources cannot be very shallow in the amount of
resources being provided. I think we really have to ensure that
those kids are being taken care of and tracked after the fact.
You are dropping them in homes, you are dropping them in
communities that are unfamiliar. They can assimilate into
mainstream society, or they can assimilate into an MS-13 or
another gang.
Mr. King. Mike, do you have anything?
Mr. Marino. Yes, Congressman. We found from our
investigations dealing with the UACs that the difficulty
resides at the border when they come across. The constitution
of El Salvador does not allow for the criminal record or
exposure of gang activity of these particular persons. So the
only way to be screened at the border is to look for particular
tattoos or maybe an interview type of thing.
But what happens when they get to the school districts and
get put in a very bad position, a couple of hundred could show
up in any month of the year, and they have to go into an ESL
school with all these people in one class, where normally the
high school would rotate classes amongst the different
teachers. Mostly you have an ESL teacher with the same students
in the same class most of the day. So if there is an
infiltration of a particular gang member, they have the whole
day to pressure these students, and we have found that they
originally are victims. They are not in the gang. They are
victims of crime from MS-13 or other gangs, and then over time
these gang members have a very easy sell. They pitch protection
and defense, and they succumb to the pressure over time.
Mr. King. Sheriff DeMarco.
Mr. DeMarco. I want to echo what Commissioner Krumpter said
about the foster care program. My staff and I were discussing
this the other day about the need--if you are going to have a
program, a humanitarian program, which is a compassionate
program like this, you need case workers. These kids have to be
assigned case workers, or else the program is not going to
succeed.
Mr. King. Mr. Melendez.
Mr. Melendez. Yes, I would like to add, as part of my
testimony I indicated that 5,000 unaccompanied alien children
from the Northern Triangle countries, which are specifically
those countries that are strong in MS-13 presence, have been
resettled on Long Island from 2014 to April 2017.
What I want to reiterate, like all of our panel members
have indicated, not all of these unaccompanied alien children
will eventually become gang members. But the fact of the matter
is that as of today, of those individuals, MS-13 members that
we have arrested, 30 percent of them--and it is a continual
number that we see--are unaccompanied alien children. They
arrive into the United States in the Unaccompanied Alien
Children Program.
So we talk about what is going on in the resettlement
process or how they are located in the communities throughout
the United States. One of the other things that is very
disturbing is the fact that although these unaccompanied alien
children may be resettled in a certain location, and as an
example may be resettled on Long Island, not necessarily are
they on Long Island. So we have seen in some of these arrests
where individuals were not resettled on Long Island but were on
Long Island, and they came in through the Unaccompanied Alien
Children Program.
The other thing that is very important is the fact that
even if they self-admit at the border as MS-13 members, we
still have to transfer them to the custody of HHS within 72
hours, and this is something I submit to both of you that the
Immigration and Naturalization Act, the INA, does not specify
gang affiliation as a grounds for removal, that is as a grounds
for inadmissibility or to later remove from the United States.
So the fact that they are verified gang members, that alone
is not sufficient for us to remove them from the United States.
What is even more disturbing, they can come in and self-admit
and say, yes, I am an MS-13 member from El Salvador, and I am
coming into the United States, and we cannot turn them around.
So I submit that for your consideration, that the INA
should actually include as a grounds for removal gang
affiliation. It would make our work a lot more efficient in
managing the flow of these unaccompanied alien children through
our borders.
Mr. King. Mr. Sweeney.
Mr. Sweeney. Sir, I actually was not too familiar with this
program, or familiar at all, before I arrived here. I was not
familiar with this program prior to assuming this position. I
agree with everything I have heard from everybody up here. To
me, it is stunning that there is no notification to local
authorities that you have a wave of incoming youth and you have
no support network. It is, to my mind, a recipe for disaster.
If that part alone can get fixed first, I think that would give
a huge advantage, especially to the school districts, who could
at least try to plan in advance for what is coming their way.
But I would agree with everything I have heard up here.
Mr. King. Thank you.
Ms. Rice, take as much time as you want.
Ms. Rice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think that you are not going to get any disagreement from
my colleague, Chairman King, and I that this situation is, to
me, Exhibit A of the incredible failure of the Federal
Government to do their part to help local communities where
these children are coming, and I thank Commissioner Sini for
being the first one to say the obvious, which is we have these
kids here because a lot of them are fleeing similar violent
situations where they came from, and they are thinking life is
going to be better for them here, and the system fails them the
second they touch American soil.
Sergeant Marino, I know that today the focus is MS-13, but
can you just talk a little bit more about some of the other
gangs that you mentioned and what level, if any, of cooperation
is there between MS-13 and the other gangs that you
investigate, or are they all rivals? Maybe just go into that a
little bit.
Mr. Marino. Yes. MS-13 is almost always rivals with
everyone. There are some times when the Serenos 13 have been
associated with them, but that is rare in Nassau County, but it
does occur. 18th Street is their No. 1 rival both in Nassau
County and across the country. We recovered a firearm used in a
homicide that we thought would come back to the homicide in
Nassau County, but it came back to a homicide in Houston,
Texas, and the Houston P.D. was up here meeting with us, and
when we laid out our photographs of our 18th Street gang
members, there were about 12 that matched up to their photos of
the ones they have. Houston P.D. told us that they focused on
MS for so many years they lost track of 18th Street, and now
18th Street is rising in Houston.
So we have to be aware of 18th Street. They are the No. 1
rival. We have a gang called Salvadorans With Pride, which
started solely in Hempstead to defend themselves against. They
are all American-born U.S. citizens, speak fluent English, and
we did a similar program with the conspiracy. The first test
case for the conspiracy with the District Attorney's Office was
back in December on the SWP gang. So we took out one of the
main rivals, and that gang I do not think to this day has been
really identified outside of the Nassau County area.
Besides that you have the Latin Pride, the LP's, the
Novatos Locos, all that reside within, and the Bloods are
historic enemies of MS-13. Basically, the MS-13 fights with
every single gang, almost. 18th Street and SWP does show an
alliance at times, and they switch back and forth between those
particular gangs, and there are some members that have been in
both or switched out of those particular gangs.
Ms. Rice. So is it MS-13 that is primarily populated by
illegal--people who are here in an undocumented status, or the
other gangs that you mentioned----
Mr. Marino. Well, MS--just as an example, on the 41
indictment conspiracy, 19 were UACs. The rest were
undocumented, and one was a U.S. citizen, a Dominican who came
here when he was a child. Most of the MS is here in some sort
of undocumented status. Some of the other gangs can be a
mixture of that. 18th Street is also many times here with
undocumented status.
Ms. Rice. Let me ask you, how many school districts in
Nassau participate in the SAGA program? I put that question to
you, Sergeant Marino, and to you, Commissioner Sini.
Mr. Marino. Well, generally, the ones that have had the
majority of the gang issues always participate. We get some
that do not have that, participate, some that do not want to
participate. They feel it is a negative aspect. But many of
them participate in the SAGA, especially in the school zones
where these particular gangs exist.
Ms. Rice. So, let me just stop you there. So there are some
schools that do not want to participate because they are afraid
it is going to make their school look bad?
Mr. Marino. I do not think they think it will make their
school look bad. They might get the perception that they have a
gang problem there.
Ms. Rice. What if they do?
Mr. Marino. It is a difficult position for us.
Ms. Rice. So we need to get the school system, obviously,
buying into this----
Mr. Marino. For the most part, they are.
Ms. Rice. I mean, if they think that people do not know
there is a gang problem in their local school, then they have
their head in the sand. Thank you.
Commissioner.
Mr. Sini. Sure. Prevention and intervention is one of the
main focuses of the Suffolk County Police Department, as it is
with the Sheriff's Office. In Suffolk County, we have several
different gang prevention programs that work with our schools.
We have the CHANGE Program, which is in North Bellport,
Wyandanch, and is being introduced right now in Brentwood. That
is an early intervention program. The organization is a not-
for-profit called STRONG, which is a gang prevention program
that you are probably familiar with. It started in Nassau
County.
They identify children who are at risk and case manage
those children. There is a big focus on family involvement,
because obviously schools only have the children for a certain
period of time. They are going home. We have to make sure that
we are empowering the families to do right by these children.
We also have our school resource officers in each one of
our districts. They push in gang prevention programs into the
classroom. They also--and there has been a major focus on this
of late. They identify at-risk children and we conduct what are
called youth conflict insertions or basically interventions
where we identify at-risk children and try to essentially case
manage them, connect them to resources they may need and try to
get them on the right path.
Communications with the schools is critical. Oftentimes we
have information about their students that they do not know,
and oftentimes they have information about students that we
should be focused on that we do not know. It is a touchy
subject. Working with schools is sensitive. There are privacy
issues and there are other issues at play, but we understand
that collaboration with the schools is critical.
Ms. Rice. I could not agree with you more. Commissioner, I
have spent some time, obviously--we have immigrant communities
in my district, and what I hear very often is desperation on
the part of people living in immigrant communities, some
documented, some not. They talk about how young girls are being
kidnapped by gang members and they are afraid to come forward
because they are afraid they are going to kind of be brought
into the system and sent to a place that they do not call home
anymore.
You know, young boys are joining the gangs, as we have all
been talking about, because of whether it is a cultural
affiliation or a sense of community, a sense of belonging.
How does your police department--and, by the way, I have to
say you deserve credit for taking over an agency that was in
serious turmoil, and from all accounts--I think Chairman King
would agree--you are doing what needs to be done there, and I
would like to go into how you are actually improving the morale
in the police department, but also training, because there are
some reputational issues about how the police department in
Suffolk treats immigrant communities, understanding that they
have a job to do, but what programs you have put in place to
allow for a more comprehensive approach to these issues.
So how do you address--what do the police do when a young
girl who is in an undocumented status comes and says that this
is what just happened to me?
Mr. Sini. Right. So, our policies are very clear on this.
Our officers are prohibited from inquiring into the immigration
status of those individuals who contact the police department
as witnesses or victims or someone really seeking police
assistance.
Ms. Rice. Now, is that a new policy under your
administration?
Mr. Sini. No, that policy existed prior to me becoming
police commissioner. The policy also talks about why that is
the case. We want to create an environment that encourages
people to come forward.
By the way, I just spent a week down at the FBI. There is
literally--I have not found a police commissioner or a police
chief who disagrees with that policy. This is not a real
debate. Law enforcement officials recognize that we need to
create an environment in which people feel comfortable coming
forward.
Simultaneously, we collaborate closely with the Department
of Homeland Security when we arrest individuals who are not
here legally. We notify the Department of Homeland Security of
that arrest. It is important that we have the right policies,
which we do. There is no question about that.
But the more difficult part, which I think is what you are
touching upon, is messaging and communicating those policies to
the people who need to hear them. We do a tremendous amount of
work attempting to do that. We do direct community outreach to
folks. We do it through churches, we do it through community
organizations, we do it through schools, we do it through a
host of different media, and we also use community ambassadors
and try to break those barriers, develop relationships with
folks in the community who are respected, particularly those
people who are respected by the undocumented community, and we
have them convey our policies to their constituents because
they are much more likely to believe it when it is coming from
such a trusted community ambassador than law enforcement.
I say that--it is not a criticism of law enforcement. We
have to understand the reality here. Many of these individuals
are recently immigrating from countries where law enforcement
is extremely corrupt and there is virtually no trust between
law enforcement and the citizens. So oftentimes we are pushing
back on a cultural mistrust that is extremely difficult. So we
utilize community ambassadors to help us do that.
Ms. Rice. In your opinion, set up a structure that you
think will work in terms of making the whole placement program
for UACs better.
Mr. Sini. Right. So I think funding and notification and
sponsor compliance are the key ingredients to making this
program more responsible. So I agree with--I believe it was
Sheriff DeMarco who initially stated that all these children
need to be case managed. So right now the Office of Refugee
Resettlement places these children in our communities and they
do a post-placement check-up and endeavor to close out the case
file within 30 days. Oftentimes that post-placement check is
via the phone. That is woefully inadequate.
To the extent that they are funding post-placement
services, the only contract that I have identified--and there
could be others that I do not know about, but the only contract
that I have identified is with Catholic Charities, and it is
only good for 3 months post-placement, woefully inadequate.
So what I would like to see is notification to appropriate
authorities within the local municipality, the county
government, the local police department, school districts, and
a case management system set up that is funded appropriately
that involves an array of services, from psychological services
to social work services to legal services. That way we provide
a system of support for these children who oftentimes are very
vulnerable to gang recruitment.
Ms. Rice. This is to whomever would like to answer this
question. I think one of the things we have not even
mentioned--well, I think Sergeant Marino talked about a gun
that was recovered that they thought they were going to connect
to something else. But clearly, one of the reasons why these
gangs are so violent is because they have access to weapons.
What initiatives on the local level, partnering with the
Federal/State authorities, what are you doing to address the
clear ease with which these gang members are able to get guns?
Where are they coming from? How are they buying them?
Mr. Sini. I'll speak for Suffolk County. We have strong
partnerships with the New York State Attorney General, with
ATF, FBI, all of our Federal partners. Obviously, guns are not
manufactured in Suffolk County. I do not think there are many
guns manufactured in New York State at all, and many of our
guns come from the iron pipeline, from the south.
There are some exceptions. We do have some hot spots in the
Northeast, point of origin. But the key, of course, is tracking
these weapons, making sure we are doing ATF traces on all our
weapons, sharing that intelligence with law enforcement
agencies in the region, investing in technology in our lab to
make sure we are able to do ballistic analysis in a timely
fashion so that if there is a match, we know about it in almost
real time. We are making improvements on that front.
So again, it is about intelligence, it is about making sure
we are sharing that intelligence.
In terms of removing weapons from our streets, we have had
a particular focus on search warrants. Since my administration
came in, we have increased our search warrants in 2016 compared
to 2015 by 118 percent, and in 2016 that helped us recover more
illegal firearms than ever before in Suffolk County, 507
compared to 333 the year before. That corresponds to a decrease
in violent crime. So it is not because there are more
shootings. In fact, shootings dropped 4.4 percent. It is
because we are doing more enforcement.
Ms. Rice. Let me just say, I should not say that this kind
of gun violence is specific to MS-13. We see it every day in
the paper all across this country, and it is a much larger
issue that we do not need to get into now. But just in terms of
how you are dealing with MS-13, if anyone else has any thoughts
about the issue of guns----
Mr. Melendez. I would also like to underscore the fact that
MS-13 members' weapons of choice are readily available at a
sports store. So when we look at the level of violence that
they carry out, they carry out with baseball bats or other
instruments that are found in a hardware store, like a machete,
that actually makes it more challenging to be able to address
the level of violence.
I agree with what Commissioner Sini indicated. However, it
is important to underscore that when we are talking about
specifically MS-13, the level of violence that they carry out,
what is their trademark, is the utilization of instruments that
are found readily available to any citizen at a hardware store
or at a sporting goods store.
Ms. Rice. So are you saying they do not use guns?
Mr. Melendez. No, they do utilize guns, ma'am.
Ms. Rice. Right, so there is very little you can do to
prevent someone from going into a Dick's Sporting Goods and
buying a baseball bat.
Mr. Melendez. That is correct. But what I wanted to
underscore is the fact that when you look at the level of
violence that they carry out, their seal is the utilization of
machetes, the utilization of baseball bats. They do--yes,
ma'am--utilize firearms. However, it is important to underscore
that because one of the things in my experience dealing with
gang operations in other jurisdictions, not necessarily with
MS-13, is the fact that gang members carry firearms or they
have firearms readily available. Dealing with the MS-13
phenomenon is something that we could encounter, but not
necessarily it is always the fact.
So it makes it more challenging to be able to bring--if you
find an illegal alien with a firearm, that is a Federal charge
that you can charge them with. The fact of the matter that you
find them with a bat, then, of course, it makes it more
challenging for us, and it is very particular to the MS-13. I
just wanted to underscore that.
Ms. Rice. No, I appreciate that.
Can I just go to Mr. Sweeney? Commissioner Sini pointed out
that one of the things that might help this situation is hiring
more AUSAs. Having been a former one, like the Commissioner, I
wholeheartedly agree that you can always use more. Prosecutors
tend to be very overworked, not just at the Federal level but
at the local level as well. What are your thoughts about that?
Mr. Sweeney. I would let this district speak for itself. I
know more is always good. More is more. More gets more cases,
more prosecutions, so I think I agree with the sentiment,
although I will not be the one to argue that directly. But I
think anybody in this building that works upstairs would agree.
Ms. Rice. What about agents?
Mr. Sweeney. More is more. We are a big office. The New
York office is the largest, as you know. We have the ability to
surge resources when we need to, but more is more. The more we
hire, the more cases we work, the more we get done.
Ms. Rice. I could not agree more.
Sergeant Marino, just in terms of the gun issue, are they
still doing gun buy-backs in Nassau County?
Mr. Marino. I will let the Commissioner answer.
Mr. Krumpter. Yes, we are still doing gun buy-backs with
the Nassau County District Attorney program that was started a
number of years ago.
Ms. Rice. By the way, I do not say that just because I
started them in Nassau County. I say that because you have to
use every tool in your toolbox to try to get guns off the
street, and we had enormous success with that program, and they
were not all just old, inoperable weapons.
Mr. Krumpter. No. As Congressman King and Congressman Rice
are aware, they are real guns that are taken off the street
that could be diverted--even if they are legally possessed,
they could be diverted into the hands of criminals.
The one thing I will also add on is with MS-13, MS-13 is
unique. We have had great success in Nassau County reducing the
number of shots fired, especially in that corridor--Roosevelt,
Uniondale, Hempstead. But with MS-13, the weapon of choice, as
was pointed out in Nassau County, is machetes and other knives,
chains, bats. After discussions with Sergeant Marino, in last
place with MS-13 are those firearms.
When it comes to other gangs, we know that they have a
propensity for gun violence. Because of the programs we have
implemented, we have seen a reduction of those types of
shootings in Nassau County. In Roosevelt/Uniondale in
particular, from a peak in 2007 of 350 or so shootings, we have
now somewhere in the neighborhood of about 40 that we have been
able to stay for an 85 percent reduction in shots being fired
in those two communities.
Ms. Rice. Commissioner Sini, what is the status of the
fusion centers that you mentioned before?
Mr. Sini. I will let FBI speak regarding--I will let the
two Federal agencies speak as to their fusion centers. We have
one in Suffolk County that is not MS-13-specific. It is an
intel center that is obviously very focused on gangs. The one
that is abroad, a trip is being scheduled currently for the
month of August. There will be several local law enforcement
officials, as well as Federal officials, invited to attend to
engage in roundtable discussions regarding what that fusion
center should look like so that it can be most effective.
Mr. Sweeney. For the FBI, the fusion center or the fusion
cell that I mentioned earlier is a group of analysts that sit
inside our Long Island Gang Task Force. So those analysts are
from almost all the agencies, as we continue to build it, that
are already represented by operators on our task force. Those
analysts are solely grabbing the intel that moves from those
departments and sharing that amongst themselves.
The other network that we have that we are working to
exploit even further is the domestic National intelligence
framework. So there are 12 DNI reps around the country. In this
region, we have tried to take some of our officers in the
Northeast to focus not just on the National intelligence
priorities--counterterrorism, counterintelligence--but what are
we seeing in criminal areas that actually, in my opinion,
affect some of our National security concerns.
So as an example, last week we had all the officers on the
East Coast, in my region at least, from Philly through Albany,
discuss MS-13 so we could try to bring some of the State and
local partners in from those local jurisdictions so they can
see what we have, we can see what they have, and then partner
them up. I think Tim was down recently in PG County as Mike
McGarity, who is my SAC for criminal, tried to work that
network.
So it is a network, and each one of those field offices has
analysts, has an intel branch or a field intelligence group
that can then leverage that network up and down, all around the
region.
Mr. Melendez. For Homeland Security, specifically for HSI,
here in Long Island, actually in this building, we have a
command center in support of Operation Matador where we house
all elements from the Department of Homeland Security--Customs
and Border Protection, the U.S. CIS as well, the Fraud and
Detection National Security officers are assigned, as well as
HSI and ICE intelligence agents.
One of the other things that we utilize and that is
specifically for Long Island operations is in our headquarters
we have a database that we actually bounce financial
information off of. So any type of financial information, we
have a repository of information that allows us to create these
linked charts and structures of the MS-13.
The other thing is at the National level, of course, we
utilize the Special Operations Division system that is actually
directed from the Drug Enforcement Administration. So any gang-
related information regarding telephone numbers or targets, we
are able to place it in that repository so it is accessible to
all partner agencies as well.
Ms. Rice. Great. Thank you all very much.
Mr. King. Commissioner Sini, in the last several months we
have had the administration in Washington, we have had Governor
Cuomo in Albany, we have had yourself, obviously the FBI and
Homeland Security, in effect declaring war on MS-13. There have
been a number of high-profile arrests, large numbers of arrests
surging.
Have you found an increase in cooperation from the
community? What impact has that had? Are they coming forward
with more intelligence? I remember being with you a few months
ago in Central Islip, I guess it was. Have you, in effect,
challenged them to come forward, asked them to come forward?
Have you seen any increase in people volunteering information?
Mr. Sini. Yes. The community has been tremendous. I know
oftentimes the media wants to portray this picture of a
community that is not willing to come forward, but it simply
does not jibe with reality. I understand that people are
fearful. They are fearful of the gang, and those who are
undocumented are also fearful of immigration consequences. But
I think because of the brutal nature of MS-13, the support that
the Suffolk County Police Department has provided to
individuals and the work that many of the advocacy groups and
community-based organizations have done in the community, we
have received significant assistance from the community.
That is not to say we could not benefit from more. It is
hard to know what we do not know in that sense. But we have a
lot of different options for people to come forward. They can
come forward through third-party advocates, and some of those
individuals, hard-working individuals, are in this room behind
me. They can call our anonymous tip line, 1-800-220-TIPS, and
that accommodates over 200 foreign languages. They can
essentially reach out to any asset that we have in the police
department.
We believe that the community, as the police department,
feels that it is important to stand strong, and we have been
very pleased with the support that we have received from the
community. Part of that, too, is the victims' families. I
cannot say enough how tremendously supportive the victims'
families have been, and think about the trauma and tragedy that
they have recently experienced. Oftentimes people may react
with anger and look to blame, and the family members have been
tremendously supportive, even becoming activists in their own
communities to empower the residents to fight against this
gang. I cannot say enough about that. It is remarkable.
Mr. King. Congresswoman Rice was asking Sergeant Marino
about the number of schools that participate. I would also like
to ask that about Suffolk County. This does not involve co-pay,
but I know that some of the victims' families have said in
other school districts that when they went to the school
district and told of threats, told of actual threats made
against their children, that the school district did not follow
through in informing the police.
How does that work as far as when they should come to you,
when they should not? How does privacy work? I know that some
of these victims' families are very upset by that. How accurate
it is, I am not vouching for it other than they seemed very
believable to me when they told me.
Mr. Sini. Without commenting on any specific instance, I
will say very clearly that whenever there is an allegation,
even if it is not corroborated or confirmed, but whenever there
is an allegation of some sort of threat that is associated with
a gang, that information should be immediately shared with the
Suffolk County Police Department. It is that simple.
Mr. King. On the question of the unaccompanied minors, I
have spoken with Secretary Price's office, because HHS,
basically, Health and Human Services, has the final word on
that. Has there been any improvement in the relationship
dealing with HSI on that?
Mr. Melendez. As a matter of fact, yes, there are. So we
are basically--when I talk about the 5,000 unaccompanied alien
children that were resettled here in Long Island, it is based
on the information that HHS has readily provided to us. So
their willingness to cooperate with law enforcement and work
with us, we have seen a dramatic change, and they are
cooperating and providing information.
Mr. King. Mr. Sini and Mr. Krumpter, have you seen any of
that, more cooperation from HHS?
Mr. Sini. I think it is important that we have ready access
to information that is in the possession of the Department of
Homeland Security and the Office of Refugee Resettlement
regarding immigration status and other facts that may help us
use certain tools. The Department of Homeland Security, under
the special-agent-in-charge's leadership, has recently provided
a mechanism by which the police department can request
information and receive it within a short period of time,
certainly within 24 hours, and that, I think, is going to do a
lot of good for information sharing and for the overall
mission.
In terms of determining the UAC status of certain
individuals, I still think there is room for improvement. I
still have holes in my data, and I am in a very data-rich
institution. Nassau County PD and Suffolk County PD have
intelligence policing models. We are collecting data on a daily
basis. We have a tremendous amount of intelligence. Yet I have
holes in that data, and that needs to be addressed, in
particular regarding the status of certain individuals as it
relates to the UAC program.
Mr. King. Mr. Krumpter and Sergeant Marino?
Mr. Krumpter. What we have seen is a significant
improvement in communication with Homeland Security, who for us
is acting as the gate with Health and Human Services. But as
far as direct contact with Health and Human Services, we have
not seen any improvements in that area. As you are aware,
Congressman King, our entire organization is driven by the
intelligence-led policing model. The intel center is very
robust. But we do know that there are holes, as Commissioner
Sini pointed out, when it comes to the unaccompanied minors,
and I do not know that it is so important for us to be getting
the information on the unaccompanied minors. I think it is more
important that Social Services in Nassau County is getting that
information so they can get them into the necessary programs.
It is all about intervention, and it is all about prevention.
So if they start committing crimes, we are going to arrest
them. But it is getting them the resources on the front end
that is the most important part of this.
Mr. DeMarco. By the time I get them, they are usually in
custody in the facility, and we have a very close relationship
with the Department of Homeland Security. There are three
agents stationed at the facility. They work very closely with
our gang intelligence unit doing interviews and determining
status and whether or not they are removable.
Mr. King. When Attorney General Sessions was here, we did
raise up the issue of the Assistant U.S. Attorneys. Has anybody
heard anything on that?
Mr. Sini. In terms of----
Mr. King. More U.S. Attorneys?
Mr. Sini. No, I have not. I am quite sure there has been no
increase. Just to sort of piggyback on the Assistant Director's
comments, I consulted with the U.S. Attorney's Office a couple
of weeks ago regarding their staffing levels. If you look at
their staffing levels as it correlates with the population in
Suffolk and Nassau County, they have less staffing than other
offices with more population. So I think there is a real
argument to be made using data, using staffing levels,
population, index crimes, that additional AUSAs are warranted.
Ms. Rice. Mr. Chairman, if I may just ask a question?
Mr. King. Sure.
Ms. Rice. Does the hiring freeze apply to DOJ?
Mr. King. I do not believe so, no. I know the Attorney
General did say he was going to look into it. He seemed
receptive. I am just wondering if anything has come through the
pipeline, any word on that. OK, we can check on that with the
U.S. Attorney.
Mr. Sini. So just to throw out some stats----
Mr. King. Compared to Nebraska?
Mr. Sini. Kansas--same thing.
Mr. King. You can say that. I do that and I get
[inaudible].
Mr. Sini. Nassau and Suffolk combined has a population of
about 2.85 million, with 14 AUSAs, three of whom I believe are
supervisors. By comparison, Kansas has a population of 2.9
million and 24 criminal AUSAs, plus six special assistants.
The Eastern District of Tennessee has a population of 2.6
million and over 30 AUSAs, and I believe there are other
examples that can be provided.
Mr. King. Mr. Sweeney, it seems like you wanted to say
something here.
Mr. Sweeney. No. I am good, sir.
Mr. King. I know you prosecutors always stick together. But
I actually fully endorse that.
Mr. Krumpter. I think it is actually quite clear: More
agents, more prosecutors, more cases. It is more focus on the
gangs, it is more focus on the heroin epidemic that is ravaging
Long Island. You are looking at literally close to one person a
day dying as a result of a heroin overdose on Long Island, and
every single police officer on Long Island is trained on
Narcan. So there are literally hundreds more, two or three a
day, that would have overdosed if not for the intervention of
the police.
Mr. King. Ms. Rice, do you have anything?
Ms. Rice. No, thank you.
Mr. King. I want to thank all of you. Thank you all for
your testimony. Really, more important than that, thank you for
the job you are doing day in and day out. I want to really
commend you for it.
This is a war. We are going to win it. It is going to be
because of people like you. So, thank you very much; and to all
the men and women who work for you, thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. King. The Committee will come to order.
Again, I want to thank our witnesses from the first panel.
I think it was very, very informative.
Our second panel today consists of Mrs. Evelyn Rodriguez
and Mr. Robert Mickens, who are the mother and father of
victims Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens. Also, we have Dr. Howard
Koenig, who is the superintendent of the Central Islip School
District, and Mr. Patrick Young. He and I have had engagements
over the years, all professional. I recognized him both from
meetings we have had and from protests against me. But in any
event, it is great to have you here today.
Let me start on a very serious note, Mrs. Evelyn Rodriguez
and Mr. Robert Mickens. Mrs. Rodriguez is the mother of Kayla
Cuevas. Mr. Mickens is the father of Nisa Mickens. Their
daughters were killed on September 13, 2016 by MS-13 gang
members. In the face of unspeakable tragedy, they have both
been advocates for justice for their daughters, improved
security in schools and public safety. As Mr. Sini said, I
think they have formed a viable work by coming forward the way
they have, by really giving a public face to private anguish.
Also I would say I have had several meetings with them. I know
they met with Attorney General Sessions. They meet with Mr.
Sini on a regular basis and with the FBI, HSI, everyone
involved.
So I want to thank them for all they have done up until now
in the face of unspeakable horror, and I want to thank them for
agreeing to testify here today.
I now recognize Mrs. Rodriguez and Mr. Mickens. Take
whatever time you want. You can speak in the order in which you
wish. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT MICKENS, SUFFOLK COUNTY RESIDENT
Mr. Mickens. Ever since September 13, 2016, the loss of
Nisa and Kayla has shocked us not only as a family, shocked our
community and shocked the world. You know, two young ladies'
lives have been cut short over something that could have been
settled differently, could have been handled differently. It
could have been acted upon in a different way.
We sit here and think about it every day, about what would
have happened if these girls did not leave the house. Would it
have made a difference? Yes, and possibly no, because the way
these criminals think, we are all really not too sure how they
actually think. They could have mental problems, or they could
just be very ignorant about how they go about handling things
in life.
But it is very difficult, but we have a lot of support from
our community. We support each other, and we also just take the
time every day to give our praises and say thank you for
allowing us to have the strength to carry on to make sure this
does not happen to another student or somebody else's child, or
their father or brother or sister, aunt or uncle in our
community.
We would like to say thank you to the Suffolk County
Police, Homeland Security, the FBI, because they are providing
security for our community and, of course, the rest of Long
Island and the United States, and it shows the community that
security is there, they are trying to make it better. It is
actually working.
Now, us becoming advocates and activists in our community,
we have to show that, yes, you have to work with your local
police in order to get results done. It is very important for
us community leaders, people who are just average citizens in
the community, to step forward to say something. It is not
about the whole term ``snitching.'' You have to say something,
and by us sitting here today, hopefully it will help bring more
of a change to our community and to the rest of the United
States.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mickens follows:]
Prepared Statement of Robert Mickens
June 20, 2017
My broad experience with MS-13 before Nisa's murder was like most
people. I know we heard about them seldomly only in passing a little
article from time to time or someone talking about them here and there.
The old adage you never really know about anything until it affects you
personally is very true. Unfortunately, it became all too real on
September 13, 2016. MS-13's grip on the community has not been felt
until it hit our family and made the news. Their shockingly cruel crime
has brought forward a knowledge no community should deal with. Begs to
ask, why didn't we know about them until now? Many MS-13 members come
here as youngsters those who are initiate into the gang are a mix
between citizens and unaccompanied minors who are then recruited or
forced into MS-13. In turn we have these young kids committing crimes
backed by fear promoted and abused by the gang.
The community has not only dealt with death but others acts of
violence destruction of properties and it seeps into the school system
nourished cultivated and brought forth. There's no one solution this
process takes time and takes a community effort something easily said
than done it also takes people working with law enforcement again
something a lot find hard. We also have to change the mentality of the
community CHANGE is the magic word it starts from the home and it ends
in the streets schools need to be a safe haven for our children. The
Federal Government, NYS, Suffolk County must update their laws to catch
up to these individuals of MS-13. With the same energy they put forth
to commit crimes we need to be equally if not more aggressive to
eradicate them from our society.
Mr. King. Mrs. Rodriguez.
STATEMENT OF EVELYN RODRIGUEZ, SUFFOLK COUNTY RESIDENT
Mrs. Rodriguez. Thank you, Congressman King and
Congresswoman Rice, for having me here today to testify on
behalf of this critical mission to eradicate MS-13.
My daughter, Kayla, was bullied, targeted for 2 years in
school from the MS-13. She was murdered September 13, found
September 14. Twenty-four hours later, they found her.
These individuals have changed my life, my family's life
dramatically. We were a family that used to go out on the
weekends, take the kids to the park, go to church, be with
other family, with friends, with their kids. You do not see
that anymore. You see people staying home now, holding their
kids tight.
Kids are going to school afraid because they are being
targeted and bullied, as my daughter was. Parents are scared to
send their kids back to school. The majority of the kids are
being home-schooled because they are either being targeted or
bullied, or the parents are just scared to send them to school.
We need to have more stronger policies, laws in place for
these individuals that do this heinous crime to these other
kids. They are kids killing kids. That needs to be stopped.
We cannot let our kids be afraid to go to school, because
in the beginning this is where it all originates, in school.
They get them in school. They target them. They bully them.
They have other people to look out to get them.
My daughter, for 2 years, her life was miserable in school.
She had to wear a tougher skin every day to go to school. You
could see the difference in her personality. The minute she
walked on that school ground, her personality changed. She had
to be a tough girl in order to survive that whole day in
school.
When Mr. King was saying about law enforcement being
contacted, some of these schools do not contact law enforcement
when a child is being threatened, and I can testify to that 100
percent fact, that that does not happen. They like to keep it
under cover. They like to keep it among themselves, and they
want to say they are taking care of it, but they cannot.
This situation is growing every day. Every year the numbers
increase in school with this gang violence, and it needs to be
stopped.
I want to say thank you to everyone that has been
affiliated, involved in trying to get these individuals,
Commissioner Sini, law enforcement, the 3d Precinct, the FBI,
the Gang Task Force, everybody that is involved. I want to say
thank you for your hard work and your dedication, and please
continue to be dedicated to ensure that these individuals are
caught and justice will be done for them, they will be judged.
I am sorry.
We also need programs, interventions in schools. Funding
needs to be supplied for the schools. Every time the funding
gets cut, our kids are more in danger. Our kids are at risk to
things to be happening in the district.
Our State officials, Federal officials, law enforcement
have to come together and find a solution, something that can
work out throughout our community to come together to make
things right, a little better. I do see a difference in our
community, in people coming together, coming a little bit more
out, giving more information, but a lot of them are scared due
to their status, as Commissioner Sini said. That has nothing to
do with if they have information. Please provide it, because
your status here, that is not in question.
I believe the American Dream for everybody. Everybody here
works hard to have that dream. I just want these criminals that
are coming into our country to be stopped, to be investigated
further. They are coming in here, recruiting our kids, if not
at the high rate of the risk of these unaccompanied kids coming
into our country. It needs to be further investigated. It needs
to be more policies in place in order to make our kids safe,
our families safer, our communities safer.
I think that is it.
[The prepared statement of Mrs. Rodriguez follows:]
Prepared Statement of Evelyn Rodriguez
June 20, 2017
Any parent's nightmare is calling your child for hours and hours,
and they do not answer their phone, then you realize that something is
wrong. Your heart races and you think the unimaginable, then the
reality hits when you are told that your child's body was found.
My world collapsed to know that my Kayla was brutally murdered by
the same group of kids involved in the MS-13 gang that have been
bullying her in school for the last 2 years. I was left emotionally
helpless because I couldn't protect her from these savages that are
cold killers. Kayla's death opened the doors to find the bodies of 4
more kids that were missing students from Brentwood High School. Now
the MS-13 left their mark in communities to be known as the most
vicious and brutal gang in history in and outside our schools.
Parents and community residents now live in fear and are afraid to
let their kids play outside. The MS-13 gang is so unpredictable, you
just don't know who is who with them. MS-13 is a new breed of murders,
they are children, kids killing kids, and as they continue to grow so
does their techniques of recruiting helpless kids into their wicked
actions. We must change our laws to protect our children and community
from these criminals. Bring long-term resources and strategic Federal
pilot programs that will bring solution to this gang epidemic, however
this can't just be done by the law enforcement, local Government, we
need the community to come together and be part of this process and
take our streets back. We need to eradicate MS-13 for good.
Mr. King. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Dr. Koenig, Dr. Howard Koenig, is the superintendent of
schools for the Central Islip School District. He has had a
long career in the education field. I have had the privilege of
visiting his school district a number of times, and I have to
say it was actually in his school district--this is going back
2 years now--that I began to learn the full extent of MS-13
penetration into the schools and the program that they have
adopted to try to combat that. So I want to thank you for
agreeing to be here today. I know you had to cancel some other
meetings to be here, so I thank you, Dr. Koenig, for again
being so attentive to this issue and for your dedication.
You are recognized.
STATEMENT OF HOWARD M. KOENIG, PH.D., SUPERINTENDENT OF
SCHOOLS, CENTRAL ISLIP UNION FREE SCHOOL DISTRICT
Dr. Koenig. Thank you. Chairman King, Congresswoman Rice, I
want to thank you for your invitation to appear and testify at
this hearing. I am proud to serve as the superintendent of
schools for the Central Islip Union Free School District, the
school district we are all located in at this very minute.
The very violent activities of MS-13 have had a great and
terrible impact on our schools, on our community and, most
importantly, on our students. The ability of criminal members
of this gang to gain entry to the United States is something
that goes far beyond what any school district or local
community can resolve.
However, since the gang's success is measured in its
recruiting new and younger members from our schools, this is
something that I believe we can have a positive impact on
reducing and, God willing, preventing. It is that that I would
like to speak to you about today.
The young school-aged candidates for gang recruitment are
isolated, frightened, and feel very vulnerable. Their new
country, their new community, their new schools can feel very,
very unwelcoming. They have come, in so many cases, as you have
heard this morning already, they have come in so many cases
from places of extreme violence and death. They have spent very
little time, if any, in organized schooling. They do not speak
the language of their new home. They are not familiar with the
local customs or societal norms. They are missing and need so
very much structure and support in their lives. They seek a
feeling of belonging to their communities.
It is our job in the schools to provide for the education
of all of our resident students. We want to do that in a safe
and secure environment. Our newly-arrived students very often
come with significant needs, and we provide services to those
children based on those needs. We partner with local community
agencies to help these students, agencies here in Islip such as
Youth Enrichment Services, who we work very closely with in
providing programs for these students.
With the help of programs from New York State and the U.S.
Department of Education, we had been able to provide help to
our newly-arrived students not only during the school day but
in after-school programs and other things to help those
students transition into their new communities. The President's
executive budget proposal would reduce funding by approximately
$9.2 billion for the Education Department. The programs that we
would lose and the help that we would not be able to provide to
these students because of these cuts include--and this is not
an inclusive list, but it includes after-school programming,
extended-day academic support, special education help, teacher
development help. The domino effect that the Federal cuts to
the New York State budget would impact our ability to provide
other programs that we were able previously to offer.
This is the second-largest requested decrease in education
aid since, I believe, 1983. That request in 1983 was met with a
Congressional increase in assistance to the Education
Department and our schools, and I am confident that you guys
will do that job again. I hope I am confident.
Now, why do I list these? It is because the loss of these
programs will hamper our ability to bring newly-arrived
students into the mainstream of school life and to provide to
them a sense of belonging. It is the absence of this connection
between these students and the mainstream of school life that
makes them easy prey for gang recruitment. It can be
postulated, I think, that the reductions in the assistance that
we receive that enables us to work with these students becomes
a tool. These reductions would become a tool which enhances
successful gang recruitment activities.
I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this
morning, and thank you for the chance to be here.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Koenig follows:]
Prepared Statement of Howard M. Koenig
June 20, 2017
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Counterterrorism and Intelligence
Subcommittee, I wish to thank you for your invitation to appear and to
testify at this hearing. My name is Dr. Howard M. Koenig and I am proud
to serve as the superintendent of schools for the Central Islip Union
Free School District.
The very violent activities of MS-13 have had a great and terrible
impact on our schools and our community and most importantly on our
students. The ability of criminal members of this gang to gain entry
into the United States is something that goes far beyond any solution
that the school districts and our local communities can resolve.
However, since the gang's success is measured in its recruiting new and
younger members from our schools this is something, I believe, we can
have a positive impact on reducing and preventing. It is that I would
like to speak to you about today.
The prime young school-aged candidates for gang recruitment are
isolated, frightened, and feel very vulnerable. Their new country, new
community, and new schools can feel very unwelcoming. They have come,
in so many cases, from places of extreme violence and death. Many have
spent very little time, if any, in organized schooling. They do not
speak the language of their new home. They are not familiar with the
local customs or societal norms. They are missing and need structure
and support in their lives. They seek a feeling of belonging.
It is our job in our schools to provide for the education of all of
our resident students. We want to do that in a safe and secure
environment. Our newly-arrived students, very often, come with
significant needs. We provide services based upon those needs. We
partner with local community agencies to help these students. Agencies
such as the Youth Enrichment Services program in the Town of Islip.
With the help of programs from New York State and the U.S. Department
of Education we had been able to provide help to our newly-arrived
students, not only during the school day but in after-school programs
to help the students transition into their new communities. The present
executive budget proposal would reduce funding by approximately $9.2
billion for Education Department spending. The programs that we would
lose and the help we would not be able to provide to these students
include after-school programing, extended-day academic support, special
education help, and teacher development. The domino effect of the
Federal cuts to the N.Y. State budget will impact our ability to
provide programs that we were previously able to offer. Why do I list
these? It is because the loss of these programs hamper our ability to
bring the newly-arrived students into the mainstream of school life and
provide to them a sense of belonging. It is the absence of this
connection between the students and the mainstream of school life that
makes them easy prey for the gang recruitment.
It can be postulated that these reductions become a tool which
enhances successful gang recruitment activities.
Mr. King. Thank you, Dr. Koenig. Thank you very much for
your testimony.
Our final witness is Mr. Patrick Young. He is the program
director at the Central American Refugee Center in Hempstead.
He is an immigration attorney and immigration eights advocate.
He is a special professor of immigration law at Hofstra
University School of Law, and in 2012 he was named co-director
of Hofstra's Immigration Law Clinic.
As I said, Mr. Young and I have known each other over the
years. I have great respect for him. We do not always agree,
but it has always been on a professional basis. So I want to
thank you for being here today, thank you for your efforts. I
look forward to your testimony.
You are recognized.
STATEMENT OF PATRICK YOUNG, ESQ., PROGRAM DIRECTOR, CENTRAL
AMERICAN REFUGEE CENTER
Mr. Young. I thank you, Chairman King and Ranking Member
Rice, for allowing me to testify in front of this committee. It
is very moving to listen to Mr. Mickens and Mrs. Rodriguez'
testimony because certainly the harm they have suffered has
been suffered by them and by a dozen other families in the
area, and the fear that they talked about in the community is a
fear that many people in the community feel.
Nassau and Suffolk Counties have 526,000 immigrants living
in them out of a total of 2.8 million people. That means 1 in 6
Long Islanders is an immigrant. So we sometimes talk about
immigrant communities, but immigrants are spread throughout
Long Island, although certainly certain communities are
concentrated in certain villages here.
We have the largest suburban immigrant population in the
United States, and the population of immigrants here is roughly
equivalent to that in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Boston.
So although immigration is often thought of as an urban or
rural phenomenon, 50 percent of immigrants now move to suburban
areas, and Long Island was one of the first suburbs to have a
large number of immigrants.
In the mid-1990's, when Mara Salvatrucha first came to my
attention, CARECEN approached the Nassau County Police
Department to partner with the police in reaching out to
immigrant communities to oppose the growth of MS-13. We
arranged for meetings in our office for the police to get
together with ordinary Central American immigrants to build
relationships, because policing has to be based on
relationships. I would say that prior to that time, the police
had not really been focused on the immigrant community.
As the police began to devote more resources to countering
Mara Salvatrucha, they adopted a strategy of working side-by-
side with the primary victims of these gangs, the young
immigrants. CARECEN was invited to help train several classes
of police cadets at the Academy and provide training to the
detective and hostage negotiation units of the Department. We
even had two police officers intern with us in order to learn
how to talk with the community and work with the community
better.
Nassau police understood that many in the growing immigrant
community came from countries where the motto of the police was
not ``serve and protect'' but ``oppress and brutalize.'' The
Nassau County----
Mr. King. Now, what years are we talking about?
Mr. Young. This would be between--well, we first were
working with Herb Faust back around 1998.
Mr. King. Sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to get
that.
Mr. Young. Sure. Then a lot of our work expanded when
Lawrence Mulvey became the police commissioner. So this is not
a partisan thing. It was two Republican administrations and one
Democratic administration.
Nassau police listened to immigrant concerns and made sure
the Department was accountable to the people that they served
irrespective of immigration status and long before it became a
mantra among police. As Commissioner Sini said, the Nassau
police early on adopted a creed that they would not ask your
immigration status if you were a victim or a witness, or even
simply trying to seek the help of the police.
The Nassau County District Attorney's Office under both
Kathleen Rice and Madeline Singas has worked hard to ensure
that immigrants from countries without functioning judiciaries
understand that Nassau was not like their homelands, that
criminals could not act with impunity, and that if they were
harmed by criminals they could obtain justice.
In Suffolk, CARECEN also regularly hosts meetings between
our clients and members of the Suffolk Police. The difference
with the situation in Nassau, however, is that these extremely
positive interactions are of very recent vintage.
As the Southern Poverty Law Center documented in 2009, the
Suffolk County Police Department did not include immigrant
cooperation in their policing strategies. The report found that
violence against Suffolk immigrants was being fueled by elected
officials and some law enforcement officials. Latinos believed
that their reports of crime to the police went uninvestigated
and ignored. This failure to partner with immigrants resulted
in many tragedies in Suffolk, one of which was the rise of MS-
13.
The elevation of Tim Sini to police commissioner seems to
have brought real change to the way the Department does
business. Spanish-speaking officers have been hired in record
numbers, and the police meet regularly with community leaders.
Unfortunately, these new initiatives are only a little over a
year old.
Three years ago, a large number of unaccompanied children
came to the United States, as was testified before, about 8,000
live here now, and we are often asked why so many. Well, this
is where their families live. They are not being released to
people on the streets. They are not street children. These are
children who are being released to their family members.
Long Island has the fifth-largest Central American
community in the United States, and in most years we have
between the third- and fifth-largest of unaccompanied children
coming here.
CARECEN works with more than 200 of these children. Many
left because they or a family member was threatened or harmed
by gangs trying to force them to join. These are the kids who
said no to the gangs. You know, we always tell our children say
no to gangs. They said no, and then they often became targets
of rape, kidnapping, or death threats. In doing so, in saying
no, they were placed in mortal danger.
When the children came to Long Island 4 years ago, they
were met with hostility from some officials and the illegal
exclusion from some schools. It took action by the State
Attorney General to compel some districts to provide
Constitutionally-mandated access to education. CARECEN, which
worked closely with the Attorney General's Office, had dozens
of children who were kept out of school September, October,
November 2014. Few of the refugee children received special
orientations or welcomes to the community in which they had
arrived. Some told us that they were very aware that they were
viewed as a problem rather than as children by local officials.
Federal, State, and county governments failed to make
provisions for the reception of children. I know we have
advocates who are dressed in white behind me, and many of them
met with county leaders, with State leaders, and with Federal
leaders to ask that more resources be given to the districts so
that they could work more closely with these students. I know
that you and Congressman Israel also worked on that. But it is
something that largely was not forthcoming, as you mentioned
before.
By contrast, almost as soon as a much smaller flow of
children began in New York City, the city appropriated over a
million dollars to assist in their resettlement here. Similar
welcoming programs should be implemented on Long Island. The
children need to learn that if they are being bullied by gang
members or in their neighborhoods or schools, they can turn to
school officials and the police for help.
One of the things that I think Commissioner Sini mentioned
that I think is very important is that while there may be a
small number of unaccompanied children who are gang members
prior to arriving here, in most of the situations where people
have been tempted to join the gangs, it has been because they
have been in schools and have been harassed either by Mara
Salvatrucha or by rival gangs and either sought to end the
harassment by joining the gang or have sought the protection of
an alternative gang.
The welcoming must also come from public officials. A small
number of young immigrants do become involved in gangs, but
stigmatizing all immigrant youth as potential gang members only
convinces the young that they have no allies outside of their
ethnic group.
The violence of Mara Salvatrucha should be kept in
perspective as well. Long Island still has one of the lowest
homicide and violent crime rates among the country's
metropolitan areas. As the immigrant portion of Long Island's
population has grown over the last 40 years, the homicide rate
has gone down, not up.
To uncover the criminals behind the outrages committed by
MS-13, we need the cooperation of the people they victimize,
the immigrant community. Immigrants will not be the eyes and
ears of the police if they see the police as auxiliaries of ICE
and assistance in deportation of otherwise law-abiding
immigrants.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Young follows:]
Prepared Statement of Patrick Young, Esq.
June 20, 2017
Thank you for inviting me to testify before this committee. My name
is Patrick Young and I am the program director at the Central American
Refugee Center (CARECEN) with offices in both Brentwood and Hempstead
on Long Island. I am an attorney and I have worked at CARECEN in
different capacities for over 33 years.
Nassau and Suffolk, the two suburban counties of Long Island, have
526,000 immigrants out of a total population of 2.8 million people. One
in six Long Islanders was born outside of the United States. We have
the largest suburban immigrant population in the country and the
immigrant community here is similar in size to those in Boston,
Philadelphia, and San Francisco. The immigrant population on Long
Island is extremely diverse, with four different continents having
countries ranking in the Top 10 countries of birth for immigrant Long
Islanders. The country of birth of the largest number of immigrants
here is El Salvador.
In the mid-1990's Mara Salvatrucha first came to my attention. At
CARECEN we assisted several members of the Salvadoran community whose
children were being intimidated by the gang. In 1999 we approached the
Nassau County Police Department's (NCPD) detective chief Herb Faust to
partner with the police in reaching out to immigrant communities
through churches, community groups, and service organizations to oppose
the growth of MS-13. We arranged for meetings at our office for Herb
Faust and members of the NCPD's anti-gang unit to get together with
ordinary Central American immigrants to build relationships. As the
police began to devote more resources to countering Mara Salvatrucha
they adopted a strategy of working side-by-side with the primary
victims of Mara Salvatrucha, young immigrants. CARECEN was invited to
help train several classes of police cadets at the academy, as well as
provide training to the detective and hostage negotiation units of the
department. We even had two officers intern with us.
When Lawrence Mulvey became Nassau's Police Commissioner, outreach
by the department expanded even further. Both Faust and Mulvey
understood that good policing can only happen when the immigrant
community partners with officers and detectives. They also knew that
many in the growing immigrant community came from countries where the
motto of the police was not to ``Serve and Protect'' but to ``Oppress
and Brutalize.'' These police executives made the extra effort to meet
repeatedly with immigrant leaders and ordinary immigrants to develop
trust and understanding. They listened to immigrant concerns and made
sure their department was accountable to the people that they served
irrespective of immigration status.
The Nassau County District Attorney's Office, under both Kathleen
Rice and Madeline Singas, has worked hard to insure that immigrants
from countries without functioning judiciaries understood that Nassau
was not like their homelands, that criminals could not act with
impunity, and that if they were harmed by criminals they could obtain
justice.
In Suffolk County CARECEN also regularly hosts meeting between our
clients and members of the Suffolk County Police Department. We attend
quarterly meetings with Police Commissioner Tim Sini and other
department leaders. The difference with the situation in Nassau,
though, is that these extremely positive interactions are of very
recent vintage.
As the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) documented in the report
``Climate of Fear: Latinos in Suffolk County,'' the Suffolk County
Police Department (SCPD) did not include immigrant cooperation in their
policing strategies for nearly a decade. In the 2009 study the SPLC
found that violence and discrimination against Suffolk immigrants were
being fueled by elected officials and some law enforcement officials.
The study found that Latinos believed that their reports of crimes to
the police went uninvestigated and ignored. According to the report,
Latinos told the SPLC that ``they are regularly subjected to racial
profiling while driving and often to illegal searches and seizures.
They said there's little point in going to the police, who are often
not interested in their plight and instead demand to know their
immigration status.'' This failure to partner with immigrants resulted
in many tragedies in Suffolk, one of which was the growth of MS-13.
Five years ago we saw the police department take its first steps
toward reform. Police/Community meetings became more regular and there
were efforts at retraining officers. Unfortunately these efforts were
undermined by notorious abuses. First, of course, was the arrest and
conviction of Police Chief James Burke for beating a prisoner. The
second was the arrest of Sgt. Scott Greene for his crimes against
immigrants. Sgt. Greene had repeatedly targeted Latino drivers for
traffic stops. During these stops he extorted money from his victims.
Even though Latinos reported these crimes to the police they went
uninvestigated for months. These and other incidents made it difficult
for immigrants to take seriously the pledges of reform, however
sincere, coming from the SCPD.
The elevation of Tim Sini to Police Commissioner seems to have
brought real change to the way the department does business. Spanish-
speaking officers have been hired in record numbers and officers who
can't speak Spanish now have access to telephonic interpretation. The
police meet regularly with community leaders and CARECEN never has a
problem getting an officer to meet with our students and clients.
Unfortunately, these new initiatives are only a little over a year old
and they come as MS-13 violence has become more deadly.
CARECEN welcomes the new spirit of cooperation and we hope that it
continues. Immigration continues to our region and policing needs to
reflect that reality.
Three years ago, a large number of so-called Unaccompanied Minors
began arriving on Long Island. More than 8,000 live here now. More have
settled on Long Island than in the entire rest of the State combined. I
am often asked why they are here. There are two parts to my answer. The
first is that they are here because they have been forced out of the
places where they live by gang violence. The second is that they come
specifically to Long Island because this is where their families live.
Contrary to the notion promoted in the media that they are children
dumped on Long Island communities by the Federal Government, in fact
they are typically only allowed to come to Long Island by the
Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Refugee Resettlement
if they have guardians here in Nassau and Suffolk counties. Long Island
has the fifth-largest Central American community population in the
United States and we have received the fifth-largest number of these
children.
In the 3 years that I have worked with these child refugees I have
heard their stories of escape from gangs in their homeland. Many left
because they or a family members was threatened or harmed by gangs
trying to compel them into membership. In other words, these are kids
who said ``No'' to the gangs. In doing so they were placed in mortal
danger.
When the children came to Long Island, some of them were met with
hostility by local officials and with illegal exclusion from school. It
took an investigation by the State attorney general to compel some
districts to provide Constitutionally-mandated access to education.
Even in the best of circumstances, few of the children received any
special orientation or welcome to the communities in which they had
arrived. Some told us they were aware that they were viewed as an
``issue'' rather than as children. Federal, State, and county
government failed to make the provisions for the reception of the
children, ignoring recommendations to do so by CARECEN, Catholic
Charities, and other groups working with them.
By contrast, almost as soon as the much smaller flow of children
began in New York City the government there appropriated over a million
dollars for their integration. The city even became a regular presence
in immigration court helping the children and their guardians
understand the resources and services available to help them through
their difficult first year in the United States.
Similar welcoming programs should be implemented in Nassau and
Suffolk counties. New arrivals need to learn that if they are being
bullied by gang members at school or in their neighborhood, they can
turn to school officials and the police for help. They don't arrive in
the United States knowing that.
And the welcoming must also come from public officials. A small
number of young immigrants do become involved in gangs, but
stigmatizing all immigrant youth as potential gang members only
convinces the young that they have no allies among the non-Latino
officials they sometimes feel are arrayed against them.
The violence of Mara Salvatrucha is a serious problem for Long
Island but it should be kept in perspective. Long Island still has one
of the lowest homicide and violent crime rates among the country's
metropolitan areas. As the immigrant portion of Long Island's
population has grown over the last forty years, the homicide rate has
gone down, not up.
To uncover the criminals behind the outrages committed by MS-13 we
need the cooperation of the community that they most victimize, the
immigrant community. To halt the growth of the gang we must gain the
trust of those they try to intimidate into joining. If a young
Salvadorans is the target of violence by the Bloods, we need him to go
to the police, not MS-13, for protection. Immigrant youth will not be
the eyes and ears of the police if they see the police as the auxiliary
of ICE.
Since the Central Islip killings we have seen an increase in
resources for gang prevention. This is welcome, even though it is
coming late in the game. Hopefully further resources will be available
to these communities, including those near here that Representatives
Rice and King represent.
Archbishop Oscar Romero, the martyr of El Salvador, once said that
progress can only be made when we realize that ``we can all do
something.'' To counter MS-13 we need to foster the power of immigrant
youth and parents to ``do something'' to end the violence.
Mr. King. Thank you, Mr. Young.
Commissioner Sini has left, but in my conversations with
him and in public statements he has made, he does not think
that it is just by coincidence that some of these children have
ended up with certain families. But he has said he thinks that
MS-13 in Central America is coordinating some of these kids.
Now, let's stipulate right at the start, the overall
majority of these kids are honest, law-abiding, not going to
get into trouble. But the other part of it is that the majority
in some cases, and at least 30 percent in others, of those
charged with serious crimes are unaccompanied minors.
It is felt that MS-13 in El Salvador actually knows which
families some of these kids are going to be going to. They are
told what to do when they cross the border, and then you find
that they have either been threatened by MS-13 or have been
paid by MS-13 or are actually supporters of MS-13. So even if
that is a small number of the overall number, what can be done
to have better screening so that sponsors who are affiliated
with MS-13 do not have these kids placed with them? Can more be
done to scrutinize--I know they are young kids, but the records
of these kids coming in? Are they coming from MS-13 families in
El Salvador?
Again, I am stipulating up front that the great majority of
them are innocent kids and we are a welcoming country. So I am
not trying to stop the program, but what can we do to make the
program more effective and more safe? Because even though we
say that Suffolk County and Nassau County have low crime rates,
if you are living in Central Islip or Brentwood, you have one
of the highest murder rates in the world, probably, right now,
or if not the world, in the country. I mean, you are talking
about 17 murders in basically two communities over the last
year. The community is not that large; it is a large number.
So, my community has no murders. But if I was living 20
minutes away, I would be living in a high-crime area, certainly
for the last several years.
So what can we do to protect the innocent immigrants,
documented or undocumented, from the MS-13 scourge coming in
through the unaccompanied minors?
Mr. Young. Sure, I appreciate the question. I think that
there are really two parts to the answer. I think that the
first part is, as you rightly point out, even if we assume that
all of the unaccompanied children who have been charged with
crimes associated with MS, that that still is 1 percent of all
the children, so it is a very small number, and I believe
Commissioner Sini also said that most of the MS folks that they
have arrested appear to have joined MS after they came to the
United States.
So I think in addressing that, I think we are looking, as
both police commissioners and the head of the gang unit in
Nassau County pointed out, I think you are looking at creative
and aggressive anti-gang work in the schools and also in the
communities, because the schools are an important place. But
many of the kids, as has been pointed out, when they first
arrived in the United States, which is when they are, frankly,
the most vulnerable to recruitment, many of the children do not
necessarily see the school as a place where they find refuge
and safety.
So these programs should also be extended into churches. As
you know, when you visited the community, many of the folks
meet every week, essentially. The community comes together
every week in church----
Mr. King. Not to interrupt you, but I do know from talking
to Commissioner Sini that there are a number of kids who are--
--
Mr. Young. I was going to address that.
Mr. King [continuing]. Placed by MS-13 operating out of El
Salvador.
Mr. Young. I think that is important to address, as well.
My understanding is it is a very small portion of the children.
It is a very small subset of the total.
I think that one of the things that the Federal Government
should be doing is to have greater engagement by ORR, which is
the Office of Refugee Resettlement. ORR typically spends only a
month working on each particular case.
Mr. King. I think in the last several months they are
changing that.
Mr. Young. They are changing it, and there are cases in
which they maintain contact for more than 6 months. But I think
that a more general involvement would not only identify those
who might actually be affiliated with MS but would also serve a
useful purpose for other new arrivals who could be helped to
integrate into their communities, because I think as they
integrate into their community, as they have a feeling of
affiliation, for instance, with Central Islip schools, they are
not going to be drawn into MS. It is the child who is alienated
who is most likely to be drawn into it.
Mr. King. Can I ask Mrs. Rodriguez, Mr. Mickens, if they
would like to comment on this, whether or not you believe there
are families who are supportive of MS who are sponsors for the
children?
Mr. Mickens. Yes. Actually, we believe that, because they
come up here to work, to find a better way of life; how much of
that money is being sent back to their country to bring them
back up here? So I truly do believe, yes, there is some type of
recruitment going on where they may send a child from El
Salvador to Texas to be with this specific family for X amount
of time, then you can also ship them to New York to be with
another family that is already established within the
organization. That is something that is very true. A lot of
kids are also being led into it because as a young child--13,
14, maybe even 10 years old--who is new to America and new to
our customs, for them it is, like I said, those starting a new
job where, when we first start the job, we are not familiar
with the policies and the procedures, we do not know this
person, we do not know that person, until there is one
particular person who comes up to you and starts showing you,
oh, this is how you do this, this is how you do that, and the
next thing you know they are being lured and manipulated into
joining this organization.
So I truly do believe it is from both sides. Yes, they are
being automatically, as I was saying, drafted into it, and they
are also being lured into it.
Mr. King. Mrs. Rodriguez.
Mrs. Rodriguez. I feel the same, too. When these kids are
coming into the United States, like I said, it has to be really
thought out. I think there is a lot of glitches in the system
that needs to be fixed, that needs to be looked at again, maybe
structured a little bit better. Some of them are affiliated,
and some of them are not. Some of them, they are leaving their
country due to the circumstances there. They want to have a
better life, which is understandable.
But like I said, my focus is trying to make these kids
safer, policies stricter, laws changed, more harsh.
Mr. King. Dr. Koenig, if you want to comment on that, then
I will ask one question before I yield to Ms. Rice. Again, if
you want to comment on that, and also in view of what Mrs.
Rodriguez said before, when I am entering other school
districts, if a parent came to you and said they felt that
their son or daughter was being threatened, what action would
you take? Would you contact the police?
Dr. Koenig. We would first investigate what the parent
said, and it has happened, obviously. If we felt that it was
something that we could not handle in terms of mitigating the
contact between these students, if it was rising above that, we
most certainly would involve the police.
We have a very, very strong relationship with the Third
Precinct. Our school resource officer--and I said to the
Commissioner I think she may walk on water--Officer Tracy
Mathis, is very much in contact with our students, with our
staff. The students in the schools know her and trust her. If
they feel something is going on, they will talk to her.
In addition, it is so important to know that it is the
isolated child who is so subject to this recruitment. So we try
to make sure that not even only new arrivals but any child in
the school who is isolated out of the mainstream, that we reach
out, staff and other students who are in various clubs, reach
out to these students, let them know that they are not alone.
Our social workers, our teachers that work in the high
school with these students, have a very good relationship not
only with the students but with the ability of that student to
come, close the door, and talk about things that are going on.
So we try to be proactive immediately when we hear this stuff,
and we will certainly never, ever try to sweep it under the rug
because we do not want it to look bad. What looks bad is if you
do not take care of the child that is in trouble.
Mr. King. Ms. Rice.
Ms. Rice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First I want to extend my condolences to both you, Mr.
Mickens, and you, Mrs. Rodriguez. I cannot even imagine the
pain that you and your family have gone through. It must be
intolerable.
But my question to you, Mrs. Rodriguez, is since your
Kayla's experience at school in terms of being bullied, I got
the sense that you felt the school was not being responsive to
the situation that was occurring with Kayla. If you could just
talk a little bit about your interactions with the school since
Kayla was murdered, and do you think that the school has
learned anything as a result of your activism in this space
from what happened to your daughter?
Mrs. Rodriguez. Kayla was a beautiful girl, into sports
heavily, loved basketball. She used to tell me, mom, if I did
not make it in playing ball, I wanted to be in law enforcement.
Law enforcement was hers since she was very young. I could be
at a red light, a police officer could be pulling up at a red
light, and she would immediately pull down her window and start
asking questions at 7-11. That is how much she was so
interested.
Kayla was bullied for 2 years. I fought with the school for
2 years going back and forth. She is being targeted, names,
they threatened her. I assumed as a concerned parent I could
pick up the phone and call. They said we will take care of it,
Mrs. Rodriguez, do not worry, we will have this under control.
For 2 years I was listening to the same story, we have it
under control. My daughter was threatened on school grounds
with a knife. She immediately came home and told me. I
immediately called the school. They said the individual is no
longer in the school. Coming that September, that individual
was back in school. I go up there, have my meeting. They used
to tell me the individual is not there anymore. Meanwhile, the
individual was in another school district getting home tutored
in school with three school security guards. My daughter will
text me, ma, the person is back in school again.
So how many times as a parent, as a concerned parent,
active parent in school, have to go through this with one big
meeting asking for the superintendent to attend these meetings?
Their response was he is unable to attend the meeting, not
getting the root of the problem, not being there to listen to
the child, not just to label them right away saying this is a
kid with a behavioral issue.
If you see a kid being good in school, sports, all of a
sudden you start seeing some type of behavioral changes,
parents go up, meet with the student with the teachers to see
what the problem is, my daughter is telling me a lot of things,
I am expressing my concerns to the school, and they did
nothing, and they continued to do nothing for these other kids.
If a kid is coming up to a principal, to a dean, to an
assistant principal and telling them I was threatened, why do
you not take that serious? Why are you not listening to these
kids when they are coming up to you? Because the end result,
when the kids get tired of coming up with the same, coming up
to say that I was being bullied and they see that there is no
action being taken, what are they going to do? They are going
to stop reporting it. They are probably going to have a tougher
skin, always trying to look side-to-side to see who is looking
at them or who is targeting them, or may not even show up for
school. They will cut out for that day.
There is a lot of things going on in the school district
that they are not acknowledging it. They want to take care of
it themselves, and it is a bigger issue. For my daughter, it
was a big issue. The school did nothing for my daughter,
absolutely nothing. My daughter went to school the first day of
school, got suspended because she was being bullied, and my
daughter was being told that she could not defend herself. That
is wrong, totally wrong, unacceptable.
If a child comes up to you with a concern, a complaint,
take it serious. Do not put it to the side. Do not say we are
going to take care of it, and especially when you have it on
video that your child is being threatened. There is no time to
do no investigation. That is for that phone call to be made to
the law enforcement, and let them handle it, because if a kid
comes up to me and says my life is being threatened, I am going
to take that child to the precinct and report it immediately.
Let them do the investigation. Whatever findings come out of
that, well, at least I can say, you know what? I did my job. I
went to the precinct, I made the report.
When my daughter was being threatened in the very
beginning, before the changeover with the law enforcement, new
people coming into the new chair, they did not take my report
as a parent. They looked at me like, OK, just tell your
daughter do not go there. That was their response.
Now, I am bringing my daughter to a precinct to let them
show this is the way you do things, and for an officer to come
out and tell me that very sarcastically like if I was a piece
of garbage, I felt very offended. My daughter is, like, you
see, ma? This is why we do not come up to them, because if they
treat you like that, just imagine to us, and you are an adult.
That is not right. We are trying to teach our kids to do
the right thing, to report things when they see things
happening. But if we are being knocked out at the beginning,
how are our kids supposed to know what to do?
Now, things have been changing, absolutely. Law enforcement
has been more supportive to the community. They have been more
out there trying to get the community, just to get to know the
people in the community. When I first moved out here to
Brentwood, the police officers had their zones. They knew
families by their first names. They used to come out of the
car, have a cup of coffee. I know that for sure because my
mother used to make the Spanish coffee for them, and that is
how the community should be, connected, united as one.
When this situation was happening in the early 2000's until
just recently, the community was a mess. I am sorry to say that
because I have been here in Brentwood since 1978, and for me
growing up here, graduating, and now having my kids and
graduating, two different worlds, two different worlds.
I know it is a whole new generation, I know that. But the
consistency and the relationship should always be there. I see
a big difference, a big difference with the law enforcement and
coming out, like I said before, with the community and getting
things open. When you are going up to the precinct, there is no
more of that sarcasm or that attitude feeling. You are coming
up there, you are being greeted: ``Yes, how can I help you?''
Not just sitting behind and saying, ``Yes?'' Or, ``I am sorry,
your daughter should not be playing around in that area.''
This is the response before when people used to make
reports was happening. Now you see the difference that I see,
going to meetings, talking to the community, talking to
families. They actually see the difference when they are going
up to the precinct and making a report, or just asking for
information because, like I said, there are a lot of families
that are scared to come forward with information, or just to
give information because of their status.
Me talking to them, I reassure them that that is not the
case. If you have any type of information, there is a hot tip
line you can call. You do not have to give your information,
just give the information that they needed.
There is so much. There is so much that needs to be done,
so much programs that needs to be placed in schools. We just
really need to, like I said, come and sit down and really open
the doors for these kids to have more of the programs, after-
school programs, so we can keep them safe, not have these kids
have in the high-risk category that they might be lured into
these gangs. We just need more support, more funding for our
kids, to make sure that they have places to go after school
instead of being lured someplace else.
Thank you.
Ms. Rice. Thank you.
Mr. Young, taking off on what Mrs. Rodriguez said about
how, as a 40-year, almost 40-year resident of Brentwood, how
different it was when she was growing up to now when she is
raising her children, and you specifically talked about how you
felt that there was a better relationship with law enforcement
back then when you were growing up, what advice would you give
law enforcement about how they can make it better and get back
to a time like Mrs. Rodriguez talked about when she was growing
up?
Mr. Young. I think we have to remember that there was an
active attempt to divide the community from the police in
Brentwood, Central Islip, and elsewhere in Suffolk County when
County Executive Levy discussed deputizing the police as
immigration agents.
Ms. Rice. Yes.
Mr. Young. Also, honestly, what she said does not strike me
as something that I have not heard before, where people from
these communities have reported crimes and been told that the
crime was not even going to be reported as a police report.
You know, it is just as important--I live in Westbury. My
aunt lived in Central Islip. I have to say, when I began
looking at the Suffolk County Police Department 15 years ago, I
was very surprised by how different it functioned in
communities of color from the Nassau Police Department, that
accurate recordkeeping did not seem to be an important goal.
I think some of the things that need to be done are being
done. Right now, 1 in 5 new officers has to speak Spanish, and
I think that is important, because prior to 4 years ago, the
Department, when they would be investigating a crime, if
somebody was an immigrant, would ask the immigrant to have
their child translate for them, and this may be a situation in
which a person was a victim of domestic violence or in which a
person was a victim of rape.
The police department now uses both telephonic translation
and keeps statistics on it, because we were finding that when
they first started using telephonic translation, it was only
being used a few times a day and they were encountering a few
Spanish speakers per day. But now they are using telephonic
translation, they are doing regular outreach to the community.
We have had the police by three times, I think, in the last
month-and-a-half at our organization just to get to know the
community, which is exactly what Mrs. Rodriguez was saying is
so important in her youth.
It is important that people get to know the police not
simply when they are being arrested or not simply when they see
somebody being arrested, but that they get to know the police
on a regular basis, and also that the police get to know them.
You know, many times the police in places like Brentwood and
Central Islip come from other parts of Suffolk County and
really have no familiarity with these communities outside of
the situations in which the law has been broken.
The police have to be pillars of the community, but that
means they also have to be part of that community. They can
only be that if they can communicate with people there. If
people feel comfortable, as Mrs. Rodriguez has been assuring
them, that their immigration status is not going to be
questioned when they report crimes.
In 2008, when Marcel Luzauro was murdered in Suffolk
County, we found that the Suffolk Police did ask victims of
crimes what countries they were from. That is the sort of thing
that alienated these communities, and it is something that we
hope does not recur. We know that since there has been an
upswing in the number of ICE raids carried out Nation-wide,
that there is increased fear in immigrant communities. I think
it has been a mark of Commissioner Sini's good grace that he
has been able to get the cooperation of the community because
the chief of police in Houston last month said that reports of
rape from his city were down 40 percent over the last 4 months,
and it was not because 40 percent fewer Latinas were being
raped, it was because people were much more frightened now to
work with the police.
As I said, we have more than half-a-million immigrants on
Long Island, so that is more than the total population of
native-born and immigrants in Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester
combined. We cannot make inroads against Mara Salvatrucha if we
do not work directly with the immigrant community.
Ms. Rice. What is your opinion on the placement program for
UACs and how it could be better?
Mr. Young. You know, I think there are checks in place at
the border. People can be excluded from the United States if
they pose a danger to the United States. We do know they are
examined for gang markings, et cetera.
I think that the best thing that can be done, though, when
somebody is released onto Long Island, is for increased
engagement by ORR. I think that the office needs to, as several
of the police officials said, needs to stay in touch with the
children.
I know there has been discussion about revealing the names
and locations of the children. ORR has been a little bit
nervous about suggestions along those lines because they are
afraid the children will be targeted. Not all people within law
enforcement maybe are as professional as some of the folks we
had here today.
I think it is important that ORR does work with local
community service agencies, with school districts, et cetera,
to set up programs for the children. New York City does not get
the names of the children, and yet they have very good outreach
to the kids because they actually have a person stationed in
immigration court who can meet with the children and, if the
child wants, take down their information and work with the
child in integrating into the community.
But I think that should not fall only on local communities.
I think the Federal Government, through the Office of Refugee
Resettlement, should have case workers working with each of the
children, and at least work with them for the first year that
they are here in the United States. That will also give them a
good chance to determine if the family is, in fact, the family
that it was presented as.
Ms. Rice. Thank you.
Mr. King. I thank all the witnesses for their testimony,
and also I will just add something on. I should have said this
during the first panel. I know Mr. Sweeney and HSI is still
here, Mr. Melendez is still here. I want to just submit a
question in writing as to the rationale and the working
together of having two task forces. If you could just answer
that for me in writing, why there are two task forces, how they
work together, and what the rationale for that is.
I want to thank all of you, especially Mrs. Rodriguez and
Mr. Mickens, for being here today. It has been invaluable to
us, and I hope it provides some measure of relief to you to
know that there is focus on this.
Mr. Koenig, I want to thank you for your efforts over the
years.
Mr. Young, I am sure we will be seeing each other in the
future. Again, I want to thank you for your dedication.
Mr. Young. Either inside or outside your office.
Mr. King. Either way. We can wave to each other.
But seriously, I want to thank you especially and all the
family members who have done so much to really bring this to
the public eye, and hopefully it is not going to happen to
other kids what happened to yours.
But, thank you all.
I have to say this officially. Pursuant to Committee Rule
VII(D), the hearing record will be held open for 10 days.
Without objection, the subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Questions From Chairman Peter T. King for William Sweeney, Jr.
Question 1a. As you know, both the FBI and HSI have task force
operations on Long Island focused on combatting transnational criminal
organizations.
What is the rationale for having two separate task forces?
Question 1b. How do these two task forces work together?
Question 1c. Do you have any agents assigned to the HSI's Operation
Community Shield or Operation Matador?
Question 1d. If not, has your agency ever been offered a spot on
these task forces?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 2. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on
June 21, 2017, Mr. Scott Lloyd, Director of the Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR) at the Department of Health and Human Services,
testified that ORR ``field specialists'' are now attending local MS-13
task force meetings to strengthen the agency's partnerships with law
enforcement. Has your agency had any interaction with ORR field
specialists?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Questions From Chairman Peter T. King for Angel M. Melendez
Question 1a. As you know, both the FBI and HSI have task force
operations on Long Island focused on combatting transnational criminal
organizations.
What is the rationale for having two separate task forces?
Answer. Both U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) task forces are long-standing initiatives, pursuant
to each agency's authorities, mission focus, global reach, and
successes. ICE HSI initiated Operation Community Shield (OCS) in 2005,
to respond to the growing threat of transnational criminal ``street''
gangs. Through its OCS domestic and international task forces, ICE HSI
leverages its world-wide presence and expansive statutory and civil
enforcement authorities to mitigate the threats posed by these global
networks, often through the criminal or civil arrest of gang members
and the tracing and seizing of cash, weapons, and other illicit
proceeds.
It is not uncommon for multiple task forces or initiatives led by
separate Federal, State, or local law enforcement agencies to co-exist
in a mission space and specific area. For example, HSI's Border
Enforcement Task Force (BEST) and Department of Justice's (DOJ)
Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) Program
address narcotics violations but approach the threat from two different
viewpoints. BEST's primary mission is to combat existing and emerging
Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) by employing the full range
of Federal, State, local, Tribal, and international law enforcement
resources in the fight to identify, investigate, disrupt, and dismantle
these criminal organizations posing significant threats to border
security.
BEST is a comprehensive response to the constant threat to border
security, public safety, and National security from TCOs seeking to
exploit the United States' international borders. The Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) seeks to create task forces free of the
challenges often associated with multi-agency efforts by empowering
partners to work in a true joint environment without the restrictions
and challenges normally encountered in a single agency endeavor. BEST
eliminates the lines between Federal, State, local, and Tribal
investigations, and facilitate international cooperation in diminishing
vulnerabilities exploited by TCOs. The OCDETF Program's mission is to
reduce the supply of illegal drugs in the United States and diminish
the violence and other criminal activity associated with the drug
trade, through intelligence-driven investigations and prosecutions that
capitalize on the combined resources and expertise of its 7-member
Federal investigative agencies, in cooperation with each other, with
OCDETF's cadre of experienced Federal prosecutors, and with State and
local law enforcement agencies across the country. ICE HSI is an active
OCDETF participant and frequently serves as the sponsoring/lead agency
on OCDETF investigations in partnership with other Federal, State, and
local law enforcement agencies, to include the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA), FBI, and others.
In February 2017, President Trump signed Executive Order (EO) 13773
aimed at targeting transnational criminal organizations such as drug
cartels and gangs. It orders Federal law enforcement agencies to focus
enforcement on these groups and increase intelligence sharing and
cooperation. Some of the specific portions of the order target
international criminal gangs like MS-13. The Eexecutive Order directs
Federal law enforcement agencies to devote sufficient resources to
execute the swift removal of foreign nationals in transnational
criminal organizations, where appropriate and to the extent permitted
by law; increase prosecutions of immigration and visa fraud; and review
whether current immigration laws should be amended to further prevent
foreign members of these organizations from entering the United States.
Paralleling the National perspective put forth by E.O. 13773, ICE
HSI New York established Operation Matador to take a proactive approach
utilizing all of its authorities, both criminal and civil, to remove
known MS-13 members from our communities and to conduct long-term
investigations of the gang and its leadership. ICE HSI New York has
partnered with other DHS components including ICE Enforcement and
Removal Operations, ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services, and U.S. Customs and Border
Protection Office of Field Operations. ICE HSI New York has also
partnered with Suffolk and Nassau County Police Departments and the FBI
to combat MS-13 in the greater New York City area, specifically on Long
Island.
From May 9, 2017 to August 2, 2017, Operation Matador led to 114
arrests of known gang members, 90 of whom belong to MS-13.
Question 1b. How do these two task forces work together?
Answer. Paramount for a holistic Government approach is the
utilization of de-confliction mechanisms to ensure the safety of law
enforcement personnel and to have a transparent model to determine the
agencies investigating a target. By following de-confliction protocols,
the task forces can identify opportunities for joint investigations,
enhance communication and information sharing, and address mutual
targets of interest and determine the best investigative course.
An FBI analyst is embedded with ICE HSI's Operation Matador. The
analyst is responsible for de-conflicting targets, conducting social
media research on known gang members, and running known gang members
through the FBI databases. All ICE HSI targets of investigations as
well as gang members confirmed to be removable are placed in eJustice
SafetyNet, a local de-confliction system, and entered into De-
Confliction and Information Coordination Endeavor, a national de-
confliction system managed by the DEA.
Question 1c. Do you have any agents assigned to the FBI's Safe
Street Task Force?
Question 1d. If not, has your agency ever been offered a spot on
this task force?
Answer. In New York, ICE HSI currently has one agent assigned to
the FBI Long Island Safe Streets Task Force. ICE HSI also has one agent
assigned to the Hudson Valley Safe Streets Task Force.
Question 2. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on
June 21, 2017, Mr. Scott Lloyd, director of the Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR) at the Department of Health and Human Services,
testified that ORR ``field specialists'' are now attending local MS-13
task force meetings to strengthen the agency's partnerships with law
enforcement. Has your agency had any interaction with ORR field
specialists?
Answer. The Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR) field specialist covering the New York/New Jersey
area of responsibility is participating virtually with Operation
Matador (OPMAT). The assigned specialist has provided Request for
Information responses in near real-time. HHS ORR personnel are also now
in touch with the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force. HHS ORR
personnel are establishing or re-establishing connections with gang
task forces in which DHS participates. HHS ORR has also coordinated
space for ICE HSI training for HHS ORR related to gang awareness. This
gang awareness training will serve to provide HHS ORR the necessary
information to stay abreast of trends within the gang culture and to
help them identify potential gang members and activities associated
with transnational criminal organizations.
Questions From Chairman Peter T. King for Timothy D. Sini
Question 1a. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on
June 21, 2017, Mr. Scott Lloyd, director of the Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR) at the Department of Health and Human Services,
testified that ORR ``field specialists'' are now attending local MS-13
task force meetings to strengthen the agency's partnerships with law
enforcement.
Are you aware of any ORR field specialists attending MS-13 task
force meetings in your jurisdiction?
Question 1b. Are you aware of any interaction between these field
specialists and any representatives from your agency?
Answer. Since the committee held its hearing, we have had several
communications with ORR regarding the placement of Unaccompanied Alien
Children (``UAC'') in Suffolk County, including ORR's agreement to
notify local government of the placement of UACs in the county. In
addition, it is my understanding that ORR is now regularly
communicating with the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland
Security Investigations, Long Island. The Suffolk County Police
Department has detectives assigned to HSI task forces. I appreciate the
committee's attention to this very important issue.
Questions From Chairman Peter T. King for Vincent F. DeMarco
Question 1. In regards to the detailed notes taken by your Gang
Unit Investigators during their interviews with MS-13 gang members in
custody at Suffolk County jail, is there a Federal database available
to your department to share this type of intelligence with the broader
Federal, State, and local law enforcement community?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Question 2a. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on
June 21, 2017, Mr. Scott Lloyd, director of the Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR) at the Department of Health and Human Services,
testified that ORR ``field specialists'' are now attending local MS-13
task force meetings to strengthen the agency's partnerships with law
enforcement.
Are you aware of any ORR field specialists attending MS-13 task
force meetings in your jurisdiction?
Question 2b. Are you aware of any interaction between these field
specialists and any representatives from your agency?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
Questions From Chairman Peter T. King for Thomas C. Krumpter
Question 1a. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on
June 21, 2017, Mr. Scott Lloyd, director of the Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR) at the Department of Health and Human Services,
testified that ORR ``field specialists'' are now attending local MS-13
task force meetings to strengthen the agency's partnerships with law
enforcement.
Question 1b. Are you aware of any ORR field specialists attending
MS-13 task force meetings in your jurisdiction?
Question 1c. Are you aware of any interaction between these field
specialists and any representatives from your agency?
Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
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