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President Trump will come down hard on illegal immigration during his visit to Long Island, asking for more resources. Ray Villeda reports. (Published 3 hours ago)

President Donald Trump will come down hard on illegal immigration during his visit to Long Island Friday, the White House Administration said Thursday night.

Trump is expected to ask for more resources to combat illegal immigration as well as push for his campaign promise for a border wall.

Against the backdrop of Suffolk County, Trump is set to talk about taking down the notorious MS-13 gang and push forward his immigration agenda. The gang is blamed for 17 murders in the county over the last year and a half.

A senior administration official tells News 4 the president will address the law enforcement community, and call on congress to deliver, specifically asking for 10,000 more ICE officers. There are currently only 5,000 officers serving the entire country.

Trump wants more immigration judges to deal with the backlog of cases, the senior administration official said. He also wants the border wall, which the administration says will help stop the flow of illegal immigrants, which the administration says is behind the rising violent gang problem.

Immigrant advocates on Long Island have accused the president of politicizing the MS-13 gang problem to justify a crackdown on all undocumented immigrants. On Thursday afternoon, protesters gathered outside Suffolk Community College in Brentwood to condemn his visit.

The presence of Donald Trump is only to create confusion and fear, immigrant advocate Joselo Lucero said.

Although Trumps visit to the island was not met with complete support, law enforcement officials say they're looking forward to it and are "extending a warm welcome" to the president.

Its certainly good to see national leaders and policy makers are paying attention to this issue, said Suffollk County Police Commissioner Tim Sini. Suffolk County police will keep doing what its doing.

Trump chose Long Island to push forward his agenda because the senior administration official said the president believes Suffolk County is the epicenter of the MS-13 threat.

Trump has compared MS-13's "meanness" to that of al-Qaida and has promised he would rid the country of it.

Police officials say that since Jan. 1, 2016, there have been 17 murders by MS-13 members in Suffolk County, many of which have been in just two neighboring suburbs, Brentwood and Central Islip. Some victims were high school students whose remains turned up months after they vanished, hidden in wooded areas or found on the grounds of an old psychiatric hospital.

The deaths began to get attention after best friends Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16, both students at Brentwood High School, were beaten and hacked to death in September by a carload of gang members who spotted them walking down the street. Investigators said Cuevas had been feuding verbally with gang members.

One of their friends said he hopes Trump stays true to his word.

For me I hope he does what he says and takes the bad ones and not the good ones, Josh Cordero, a Brentwood High School, said. Cordero has felt the gangs impact after losing his two classmates.

In April, three teenagers and a 20-year-old man were massacred in a park in Central Islip. Prosecutors said they were lured to the park and then ambushed by at least a dozen MS-13 members wielding machetes and other weapons. One person escaped. Prosecutors said they were marked for death because some were suspected of being rival gang members - something their families denied.

Twenty people have been charged publicly in eight homicides in recent months. They include five people accused in the deaths of Mickens and Cuevas and 10 people in the Central Islip massacre.

All but a few of those charged in the deaths were citizens of El Salvador or Honduras who entered the U.S. illegally, according to law enforcement officials.

Published 37 minutes ago | Updated 36 minutes ago

Link:
Trump to Come Down Hard on Illegal Immigration in Visit to Long Island - NBC New York