More than 120,000 children from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala crossed the U.S. southern border between 2014 and the end of 2016. Most of them traveled without parents, and were somewhere between the age of six to 17. The routes they traveled were controlled by smugglers, thugs and crooked cops. But they were running away from gang wars. At the time, El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world. About a third of the children were eventually granted some form of asylum, and the government tried to place the kids with family members who already lived in America, but many communities did not want newcomers. This was especially apparent on Long Island, which has received 8,600 children since 2014. The kids are just dropped into schools that already had limited funding and services. And on top of that, there are roughly 400 MS-13 members in Suffolk County, which stretches from twenty miles outside New York City to the tip of Long Island. Many of the victims of MS-13 on Long Island are immigrants, and many came as unaccompanied minors. MS-13 is the only street gang to receive the designation of “transnational criminal organization.” They are “more like a family than like a business,” according to Carlos García, a leading expert on MS-13.
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