AG Sessions Puts Long Island Gang Violence High on Agenda

With 11 murders, community becomes the poster child for national MS-13 gang problem

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks to local, state, and federal law enforcement about a recent spate of MS-13 gang-related killings on Long Island, N.Y., on April 28, 2017. Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y.—By visiting Long Island last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions brought national attention to a community besieged by gang violence.

“I have a message for the gangs that target young people: We are targeting you. We are coming after you,” Sessions said at the federal courthouse in Central Islip, less than three miles from the park where four young men were found murdered two weeks earlier.

The brutal manner in which the four youths, aged between 16 and 20, were killed “is consistent with the modus operandi of MS-13,” according to Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy Sini.

MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, is a transnational criminal organization that has flourished in places like Suffolk County in the last several years. Although the gang formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s, it has deep ties to El Salvador—and, with an influx of unaccompanied minors from Central America resettling in Suffolk County, its violence is escalating.

A sign offering a reward for information regarding the murder of Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas, near Brentwood High School where they were students, in Brentwood, Long Island, N.Y., on March 29, 2017. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times