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GANGS AREN'T AN IMMIGRATION ISSUE

Record - 4/30/2017

Gang violence is destroying too many of our communities. As Joe Malinconico of Paterson Press reported last week, in Paterson, the continuous march of death is led by intra-city gang activity between groups of thugs from either "up the hill" or "down the hill." Seven people were wounded and one man was killed in four separate shootings in Paterson last weekend. Gang-related violence must stop.

So it was heartening to hear U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday say, "I have a message for the gangs that are targeting our young people: We are targeting you. We are coming after you." Sessions was in Suffolk County on Long Island speaking to law enforcement officers in the wake of several gruesome killings believed to be linked to MS-13, a Salvadoran-rooted gang with, according to Sessions, 10,000 members in at least 40 states.

Sessions visited an area of Suffolk County heavily impacted by MS-13. He also was linking the war on gangs with a crackdown on immigrants. It is a tenuous link.

Federal authorities must aggressively track down gang-tied immigrants. There is no debate on that subject. But the proliferation of gang activity is not an immigration issue; it's a gang issue.

In cities like Paterson, gang members are homegrown. That may be the case on Long Island, as well. The heroin trade that has made Paterson a haven for crime is certainly fed by the flow of that drug into the city.

More must be done to stop heroin from coming into the United States. And the Justice Department has a clear role to play in doing just that.

But it is not just a matter of supply and demand. Gangs exist because of the easy money of selling drugs, yes. But they also exist because of easy access to firearms and a culture in some of the most financially distressed of U.S. cities that glorifies violence.

Many of these young men are barely beyond boyhood. Something must be done to stop this waste of human life. Sessions and the Trump administration must see beyond the short-term political gain of tying immigration reform to the war on gangs.

Yes, some gang members are undocumented immigrants. But all gang members are a menace to our society.