THE PRESIDENT: Hi, John.
MR. HOMAN: They're working very closely with ICE to hold these jurisdictions responsible. And they're helping us with our litigations. I want to thank the Department of Justice -
THE PRESIDENT: John, how are you doing with litigation on sanctuary cities? Because I read about it so much where, you know, everybody is suing and nobody wants the sanctuary cities except a couple of politicians that - in the local areas - they fight hard for a sanctuary city, and it's unsafe. How are you doing on -
MR. CRONAN: In the Criminal Division, we haven't been dealing with civil litigation, with respect to that, but we have been certainly seeing that problem. MS-13 is our top priority right now. And they're getting here because they're able to take advantage of the weaknesses at our border. They're able to take advantage of higher -
THE PRESIDENT: And you throw them out but they come back as fast you throw them out.
MR. CRONAN: That's the danger, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Different ones or the same?
MR. CRONAN: Well, we haven't gotten to the point where they've come back yet - probably yet, sir - but I can give you one good example. We had a takedown a few months ago, Operation Raging Bull - there were 214 MS-13 arrests in the United States; 198 of them were foreign nationals. Of that, only five had legal status in the United States. And of the 193, 64 of them had illegally crossed the border as unaccompanied children. Most of whom were then, now, adults by the time they committed the crime.
So just that one takedown, Operation Raging Bull, we saw the consequences of people being able to get here across the border through sanctuary cities or through a porous border.
THE PRESIDENT: So what makes them so evil, more so than other gangs even? And there are some pretty bad gangs. What is it exactly? They come from a certain part of the world. What makes them so evil?
MR. CRONAN: It's a unique threat, sir. MS-13 is massive. It has about 10,000 gang members across 40 states in the United States. But it's also the most violent of transnational organizations -
THE PRESIDENT: And why is that though?
MR. CRONAN: They're - it's indiscriminate killing. They are engaging in rape, robbery, extortion, murder, often just for the sake of it. It's not necessarily a gang that's connected with drug trafficking for the sake of drug - to fund it. They're committing these acts for the sake of the indiscriminate, violent, and heinous killings. They're attacking their victims with chains, bats, machetes. They recruit children to be their murderers. They gang-rape young girls and sell them for sex.
It's an awful, awful thing that is a problem.
THE PRESIDENT: And because of the laws we have, we have to put up with it, right?
MR. CRONAN: Well, we're aggressively going after them.
THE PRESIDENT: No, you have to. Just do what you have to do. But in theory, because of the laws that we have - the weak and just terrible laws that we have - we have to live with this at a much bigger pace than we would normally.
SECRETARY NIELSEN: I mean, yes.
THE PRESIDENT: I mean, you'd be able - Tom, you'd be able to get them out really quickly if we had the right laws.
MR. HOMAN: Yes.
SECRETARY NIELSEN: Yes, we need to change the inadmissibility and removability to include gangs. I mean, they're - as was just described, they're only here to commit violence. They need not come into our country to do that.
MR. HOMAN: And the connection is clear. These loopholes are causing more MS-13 members to come to this country, either as UACs or as adults. But we need to close these loopholes.
THE PRESIDENT: So let me ask you: Of the 214 or so people, how many of them are good, wonderful people that can be wonderful citizens of this country someday? What would you say would be the percentage?
MR. CRONAN: I would say low, sir. They're members of a gang that operates to commit murder and they terrorize our communities. They're holding our neighborhoods hostage.
There was a - gang violence in this country is a terrible problem. There was a town in North Carolina that had to cancel their Fourth of July parade this year because they cannot put on the parade because of threat of gang violence. It's terrorizing our neighborhoods, and our citizens are being held hostage.
THE PRESIDENT: What about the local police? How are they doing with it?
MR. CRONAN: They're doing what they can, but the problem is the volume. When the criminals are able to get here, it's a large - it's a large problem.
Now, the Department of Justice - the Attorney General - is dedicating resources to this. He has announced the surging of hundreds of new U.S. attorneys to specifically focus on violent crimes in immigration. He has sent additional prosecutors to our southwest border. They were down there on detail to focus on an emphasis on enforcing immigration and criminal laws.
THE PRESIDENT: So we're throwing a lot of MS-13 out - and jail - but a lot of them are getting out, and they're coming back in - and different people - but they're coming back in.
MR. CRONAN: Exactly. When we don't enforce our immigration laws, MS-13 is able to just reconstitute its jailed members in the U.S. or released members in the - released from the U.S. with more members who are able to cross our borders.
SECRETARY NIELSEN: They recruit from across our borders, bringing folks specifically in to try and (inaudible).
THE PRESIDENT: And our Democrat friends don't understand this?
MR. CRONAN: Sir, it's a problem that can be certainly solved with - largely with this legislation. We'll still need to do our work here in terms of locking them up in the U.S. But because MS-13 is based and operating in El Salvador, and that's largely where this murderous mission is being directed by El Salvadorian prisons, it's not enough just to enforce our laws in the United States. We need to stop them from coming here.
SECRETARY NIELSEN: And, actually, sir, if we could turn it over the Deputy Secretary of State Sullivan to talk a little bit about this other challenge, which is the countries taking them back.
DEPUTY SECRETARY SULLIVAN: You've mentioned it, Mr. President. Once we've caught them, we're not going to release them. We need to send them back where they came from. And that's been a problem with some countries. And that's the job at the State Department, working with DHS, to convince those countries that if they're non-cooperative -
THE PRESIDENT: How many of those countries are there?
DEPUTY SECRETARY SULLIVAN: I'm going to turn it over to Assistant Secretary Risch. He's got the statistics of -
ASSISTANT SECRETARY RISCH: It's a moving number, sir. It's getting better, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we've taken a much tougher stand. And, you know, we give aid to a lot of these countries, and they wouldn't take anybody back. And we said, we're not going you aid anymore - which, frankly, we probably shouldn't do anyway. We give aid to everybody.
So how many countries are there? Who are the worst offenders?
A
SSISTANT SECRETARY RISCH: The worst offenders, numerically - countries like China, for example, has a long history of not taking back their removal cases. But most recently, in September, we started a visa sanction plan with Guinea, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia. And we're seeing some progress there. The visa sanctions do work in these cases, sir. And we're seeing that there's people going back to these countries that would not have gone back a year or two ago.
THE PRESIDENT: So if they don't take them back and - you know, those are unusual names, because you think in terms of South America more so than you do Asia. But if they don't take them back, we'll put sanctions on the countries. We'll put tariffs on the countries. They'll take them back so fast your head will spin. We'll just tariff their goods coming in, and they'll take them back in two seconds. You have a lot of people from those countries, and they'll take them back.
We've had a very weak policy. We bring them back; they say, "We don't want them." And why should they? They killed five people. Why would they want them? And we will do something with regard to sanctions and tariffs, where they will - your head will spin how fast they get taken back. Okay? Every country is the same.
And the other is, we give a lot of aid to some of those countries. And to those countries, we'll stop giving aid, and they will take them back instantaneously. Okay? You just have to let us know just who they are. A lot of ways to handle it. But you can only handle it economically, because otherwise - you know, you're not going to force them in. And that's so easy to solve. It sounded difficult, but it's not. That's an easy one.
Okay, good. So you'll work on that. John, you'll work on that.
DEPUTY SECRETARY SULLIVAN: Yes, sir.
SECRETARY NIELSEN: I think we're going to thank the press. We appreciate you being here. We're going to stay for a few more minutes.
THE PRESIDENT: To the press, if you could go back and tell the Democrats they really have to vote on this, because otherwise, this is going to go on for a long time, and we can't let this happen to our country. Thank you.
Q How are the negotiations going?
THE PRESIDENT: I would say we want to make a deal. I think they want to use it for political purposes, for elections. I really don't - I really am not happy with the way it's going from the standpoint of the Democrats negotiating. And DACA is something that should absolutely be easy to do. And I don't think the Democrats want to take care of the DACA recipients. I don't think they want to take care.
So when you ask, "How's it going," we want to make a deal. I want to make a deal because of this stuff. We need protection in this country. We have people coming into this country - MS-13 and others - that - the likes of which we've never seen come into a country. So I think that we are trying to make a deal. We're going to see. But the Democrats, I really believe, they don't want to make a deal. And think of it: They've given up on DACA, and that's supposed to be theirs. It's ours - because we're the ones that are taking care of DACA, not them. So we'll see what happens.
Contact: White House •
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