Free Republic

San Salvador, El Salvador - It's not every church service that includes homilies about Pablo Escobar and Al Capone. But at a church in El Salvador, the message of sin and redemption is tailored to a different kind of parishioner: reformed members of the notorious gangs in the Central American nation. All the men are former members of Barrio 18 or the 18th Street gang, which, along with MS-13, began in Los Angeles but is now responsible for much of El Salvador's widespread violence. The Trump administration announced last week that in 18 months it will revoke Temporary Protected Status...

12,513 Afghans became permanent residents in ’16. Their country is in the middle of an endless civil war between the Islamic terrorists who hate us and the Islamic terrorists who really, really hate us. Only 31% of the population of Afghanistan can read. Around 1,000 of the Afghans we took in have jobs. 8,190 don’t have jobs. 3,158 are marked as unknown. That’s an 8% employment rate. The left has been shrieking that wrapping up Temporary Protected Status for aliens from El Salvador will wreak havoc on our businesses and economy. In ’16, we took in 23,449 Salvadorans. Around 3,000...

“I wasn't in the meeting with the president so I don’t know what he did or didn't say. I can tell you my family, Heidi as a child lived in Africa, she lived in Kenya and Nigeria. Her parents were missionaries there. My brother-in-law has been a missionary with his wife and sons in Haiti for many years,” Cruz said. President Trump denied using the vulgarity. “The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. Never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Friday that he said his piece directly to President Trump at a White House meeting on immigration reform the previous day where Trump reportedly disparaged several nations as "shithole countries." Graham was present at the bipartisan meeting in the Oval Office where Trump reportedly referred to Haiti, El Salvador and several African nations as "shithole countries" after lawmakers suggested that immigrants from the countries be provided protections.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — President Trump’s dismissal of Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as “s-hole countries” whose inhabitants are not desirable for U.S. immigration shocked people around the world and provoked swift condemnation. “The African Union Commission is frankly alarmed at statements by the president of the United States when referring to migrants of African countries and others in such contemptuous terms,” said Ebba Kalondo, the spokeswoman for the African Union. The reaction from the United Nations human rights spokesman, Rupert Colville, was uncharacteristically blunt. He described the remark as “racist.” In Haiti, people took to Twitter to share...

Full title: Female MS-13 gang member, 18, told teen girl 'don't forget my name' in video confession of brutal killingA teenage member of the MS-13 street gang, who sought to avenge the murder of her boyfriend by killing a 15-year-old girl, chillingly told her victim "don't forget my name" just before stabbing the girl more than a dozen times, according to interrogation video released Wednesday. Venus Romero Iraheta, who was 17 at the time of the January 2017 murder, pleaded guilty Monday in a Virginia courtroom to first-degree murder, abduction and criminal street gang participation in the slaying of Damaris...

Nearly 200,000 people from El Salvador who have been allowed to live in the United States for more than a decade must leave the country, two government officials familiar with the decision said on Monday. It is the Trump administration’s latest reversal of years of immigration policies and one of the most consequential to date.The officials, who declined to be identified because they were speaking before an official announcement on the decision later Monday morning, said that the administration was ending a humanitarian program, known as Temporary Protected Status, for Salvadorans who have been allowed to live and work legally...

Long Island police say they foiled an MS-13 kidnapping and murder plot when they saw the intended 16-year-old male victim being lured into a van. Plainclothes officers arrested five members and associates of the notorious immigrant street gang on conspiracy charges after Wednesday’s takedown in Brentwood, Newsday reported. President Trump went to Brentwood in July and vowed to crush MS-13, while pledging a tougher approach on immigration. "They have transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into blood-stained killing fields," he said about the gang. "They're animals." Officers told Newsday that two of the suspects, Vidal Contrera-Ortiz, 18, and Miguel...

The Trump administration is drafting a new policy to quickly deport more than 150,000 child migrants from Central America who arrived alone in the U.S. illegally, creating a new class of undocumented migrants. The Department of Justice and Homeland Security is drawing up a policy proposal in a series of memos, according to two sources with knowledge of the internal debate who spoke to the Miami Herald. As it stands, the plan would allow for teens and children who arrived in the U.S. illegally by themselves to be put on a fast track to deportation when they turn 18. Most...

Mexico's deputy foreign minister, Carlos Sada, said Trump's decision created "anxiety, anguish and fear" for the roughly 625,000 Mexican nationals protected under the program. "They are exceptional. ... This is as emotional for the United States as for Mexico," Sada said at a news conference immediately following the announcement to end the program. He said his government would press U.S. lawmakers for a quick solution to the uncertainty that "Dreamers," as they are commonly called, now face in their adopted home. Immigrants who opt to return to Mexico will be welcomed with "open arms," Sada said, offering them assistance with...

The Trump administration on Wednesday shut down yet another Obama-era program — this one created to give Central American minors fleeing poverty and gang violence in their homeland temporary legal status in the United States. The “CAM parole” program was established in 2014 in response to a surprise spike in the number of unaccompanied minors and families entering the country from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The program allowed minors who did not make the cut for “refugee status” to enter the U.S. on a two-year, renewable parole if they had a parent already legally in the country.

A 22-year-old man accused of killing a Muslim teenager with a baseball bat in Virginia on Sunday is an undocumented immigrant who entered the United States illegally, federal authorities said on Tuesday. The man, Darwin Martinez Torres, who was charged with murder in the death of Nabra Hassanen, 17, is believed to be from El Salvador, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman said. The agency said it issued a so-called detainer on Monday with the Adult Detention Center in Fairfax, Va., where Mr. Torres is being held without bail, to keep him in custody in the event that he could...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the MS-13 gang could be designated as a terrorist organization. Asked by Fox News's Tucker Carlson on Tuesday whether he thinks the designation would be helpful, Sessions replied, “I think so, perhaps. I believe it could qualify for that." "There are rules that I guess the State Department does to establish that," he added. El Salvador's government has already designated MS-13 a terrorist group. Sessions called the gang "one of the most violent gangs in the history of our country." “We can devastate this gang. We’re going after them," he said. "We’re not going to...

Suffolk County Sheriff Vincent DeMarco took to the airwaves Sunday to bash President Obama’s immigration policies — blaming him for the recent rash of murders linked to MS-13 gang activities across Long island — while lauding U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recent visit to address local law enforcement on the same topic. “In the community of Brentwood, where there is a big El Salvadoran population, we have had over the last nine months or so 11 bodies turned [sic] up,” Sheriff DeMarco told John Catsimatidis during an early morning interview on “The Cats Roundtable.” The victims, many of whom were...

  It's all too common. A fourteen year old Maryland girl was raped and sodomized by two "immigrants", at least one of whom is an illegal alien. New, brutal details emerged Monday in the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl at a Maryland high school by two male students, at least one of whom was in the country illegally. The unidentified student at Rockville High School in Rockville, Md. was violently raped, sodomized and made to perform oral sex in a campus bathroom stall by the two males, according to court records. Jose O. Montano, 17, from El Salvador, and...

Two immigrants, ages 17 and 18 were arrested at a Maryland High School on Thursday and charged with three counts each in connection with the rape of a 14 year old female classmate. One of the immigrants, Sanchez, 18 is actually the subject of an ‘alien removal’ case. Henry Sanchez, 18, and Jose Montano, 17, were arrested at Rockville High School on Thursday and charged with three counts each in connection with the rape of a female classmate.

<p>A 14-year-old girl was pushed into a boys bathroom at Rockville High School on Thursday morning and raped by two other students during school hours, according to Montgomery County District Court records filed Friday.</p> <p>Police arrested two ninth-graders, Henry E. Sanchez, 18, and Jose O. Montano, 17, who appeared in court Friday and were ordered held without bond.</p>

Rockville, Md., the city home to the recent immigrant high school rape scandal, is considering declaring itself a sanctuary city to hide illegals. Although Rockville police have had a long-standing policy neither to question suspected illegals about their immigration status, or to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, the city is now considering the process of formalizing that informal standard by becoming a sanctuary city. Rockville City Councilmember Julie Palakovich Carr introduced an ordinance in early March in response to President Donald Trump’s pledge to beat back illegal immigration.

Just days after Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy ordered police not to co-operate with ICE in enforcing immigration laws, a previously deported illegal alien went on a murderous rampage killing a mother and stabbing her friend. From The Hartford Courant: A convicted felon, who was previously deported, fatally stabbed a woman and abducted their 6-year-old daughter from a Bridgeport home, triggering an Amber Alert and multi-state search that ended after a highway police chase and crash in Pennsylvania, authorities said. Though the child, Aylin Hernandez, did not suffer serious physical injuries, police said her 26-year-old mother, Nidia Gonzalez, was dead. Another...

Foreign ministers of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras met this week to address concerns about President-elect Trump's plan to deport illegals, mostly those with criminal records. Their goal: Calm the fears of illegals, help them avoid deportation, and keep the flood of money they send home going. Mexico and Guatemala announced plans to expand immigration services at their dozens of offices in the United States.