Heightened immigration enforcement most likely caused MS-13, not lax enforcement
Jose Miguel Cruz has a good overview of the growth of the MS-13 in El Salvador and the United States in Central American gangs like MS-13 were born out of failed anti-crime policies for The Conversation.
Instead, many Salvadoran youth were here illegally which made integration into US society that much more difficult. They fled one home and never arrived in another. Some were eventually deported in the 1990s because they were never able to more fully integrate into US society.
That is one of the more painful characteristics of today's "unaccompanied minors crisis." Many of these young kids have fled violence at home. It's not clear that they are receiving enough support in the US to integrate into society. They might or might not be denied asylum at the end of some undefined time period. In the meantime, US MS-13 gangs are attempting to prey on these kids the way that Salvadoran MS-13 gangs did.
Leaving these kids in legal limbo or deporting them to El Salvador is likely going to make matters worse.
Despite what President Donald Trump and Attorney General Sessions have claimed, lax immigration policies are not what allowed MS-13 and other Central American gangs to form in the U.S. Rather, these criminal groups spread largely in response to failed U.S. anti-crime policies in the 1980s that were later adopted in Central America.I'd add one more thing here. If anything, it was excessively tough immigration policies that allowed the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs to gain a foothold in the US. Salvadoran (and Guatemalan) youth who fled the political violence and civil wars of the 1970s and 1980s were denied asylum in the US because the US government thought that it would look bad to allow people into our country as refugees/asylees if they were fleeing governments and militaries we had been supporting.
Instead, many Salvadoran youth were here illegally which made integration into US society that much more difficult. They fled one home and never arrived in another. Some were eventually deported in the 1990s because they were never able to more fully integrate into US society.
That is one of the more painful characteristics of today's "unaccompanied minors crisis." Many of these young kids have fled violence at home. It's not clear that they are receiving enough support in the US to integrate into society. They might or might not be denied asylum at the end of some undefined time period. In the meantime, US MS-13 gangs are attempting to prey on these kids the way that Salvadoran MS-13 gangs did.
Leaving these kids in legal limbo or deporting them to El Salvador is likely going to make matters worse.
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