Violent gang members, murderers and sex offenders have infiltrated the United States through a special government program that provides illegal immigrants under the age of 21 who claim to be abused, abandoned or neglected by a parent with a pathway to residency and citizenship. In the last ten years more than 300,000 migrants have applied for the protection, known as Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) classification, and federal authorities are finally exposing the serious national security and integrity vulnerabilities of the decades-old initiative. Besides widespread identity and age fraud, known or suspected terrorists are filing SIJ petitions, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that oversees the program.

In a recently published report USCIS confirms that 198,414 SIJ petitions were approved in the last ten years and more than half were over the age of 18. The overwhelming majority—72%—came to the U.S. illegally from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, a region known as the northern triangle that received billions of American taxpayer dollars under former Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed Root Causes Strategy to curb illegal immigration. Unbelievably, over 500 known or suspected members of the notoriously violent Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) were authorized by the government for SIJ classification during the period examined. SIJ petitions were also approved for members of other deadly gangs, including Tren de Aragua (TdA), 18th Street gang and members of the Sureño and Norteño gangs. “The gang statistics were compiled by manual identification and, consequently, are likely an underrepresentation of the total number of gang members within this population,” USCIS found. The agency discloses that dozens of gang members have been charged with federal racketeering offenses for murder and attempted murder. Nearly 19,000 SIJ petitioners had criminal arrests and at least 120 were arrested for murder, the agency records show. At least 200 approved SIJ petitioners were convicted of sex crimes and were registered in the National Sex Offender Registry.

As if this were not bad enough, federal immigration authorities observed a “significant increase in SIJ petitions in recent years filed by aliens from countries where designated foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) are known to recruit or operate.” The countries include Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Many of the SIJ petitioners from the terrorist countries entered the U.S. “without inspection,” the report says, adding that “federal law enforcement authorities have determined some of these SIJ petitioners may pose a risk to national security.” As an example, USCIS offers the case of an 18-year-old man from Tajikistan who crossed into the U.S. illegally from Mexico through the San Ysidro port of entry in April 2023. He claimed both his parents physically abused him, his father by beating him while drunk and throwing vodka bottles at him and his mother by hitting, slapping, and throwing heavy objects at him. About a year later he was among a group of Tajik nationals arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for ties to the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) terrorist group. Federal law enforcement officials said that after the Tajik nationals entered the U.S., they identified a terrorist plot in its early stages.

Many criminals have also come to the U.S. under another special program that welcomes illegal immigrants under the age of 18 and provides them with a multitude of taxpayer benefits. The government refers to them as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and hundreds of thousands have entered the country in the last few years. The overwhelming majority of UAC are not really children but rather young adults in their teens and some have criminal histories. Approximately 72% of UAC in custody are over 14 years of age and 66% are male. Nearly half (47%) of the underage migrants come from Guatemala, 32% from Honduras,13% from El Salvador and 8% from other countries. A few years ago, a 17-year-old MS-13 gang member who entered the U.S. as a UAC raped and murdered a 20-year-old woman just months after being released in the country. Years earlier two UAC were charged with raping a 14-year-old girl in the bathroom of a Maryland public high school. The illegal immigrants were both charged with first-degree rape and two counts of first-degree sexual offense. Both were in the ninth grade like their victim. One came from El Salvador and the other from Guatemala. A year earlier two UAC, both 17-year-old MS-13 members from Central America, executed a Massachusetts man by shooting him in the head shortly after being welcomed into the U.S.

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