Newark Executions Have MS-13 Written All Over Them

Michelle Malkin does a tremendous roundup of news reports from the New York metro region over the past 24 hours, which details not only the horrors inflicted by the six suspects in the brutal triple slaying, but that the violent signature of MS-13 is written all over these crimes. Expect sexual assault charges to be included in the criminal complaints against the six as noted here:

Sources tell 1010WINS three of the college kids were being held at gunpoint as their attackers went after the fourth. With every breath, the young woman bravely fought off a sexual assault, so much so the assailant gave up and shot her [survivor Natasha Ariel] in the head.

Sources say they moved in on the other woman, pulling a machete, slashing and marking up her face and forehead, sexually assaulting her [Iofemi Hightower].

Defensive wounds on her arms and hands show how valiantly she resisted. In the end, she and her two friends were forced to kneel before a wall, face first, all three executed with bullets to the back of their heads.

Law enforcement sources familiar with gangs say this vicious attack has MS-13 written all over it, similar in its brutality to massacres they’ve committed throughout Latin America. Once convinced this was a robbery gone bad, officials have since conceded several of the suspects have MS-13 affiliations and are now, say sources, giving gang motivations strong consideration.

One of the women attacked and murdered, Iofemi Hightower, nearly had her head cut off by these thugs and used machetes to hack at their victims, and it took morticians three days to prepare the body.

Will Newark finally end its nonsensical sanctuary city policy and enforce the law, including obtaining immigration status of individuals arrested for violent crimes? Will other states and cities do the same?

The New Jersey Attorney General, Anne Milgram will require law enforcement in New Jersey to contact ICE to determine immigration status for those arrested for violent crimes. She notes that law enforcement will not ask victims and witnesses to divulge their immigration status, and that's a fair balance of dealing with the community. You want to be able to obtain tips and witnesses for criminal acts, and the threat of deportation and exposure of possible immigration law violations may keep those witnesses from coming forward and allowing violent criminals to walk free. Even with this move, there are those who are cautious and wonder whether this is going to lead to localities enforcing federal immigration law:

The order drew praise from county and local police departments, although groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey cautioned that it could lead to abuse by local officers.

"There needs to be more training with regard to this and other related issues to ensure it doesn't go down a path of enforcing federal immigration policy or racial profiling," said Charles "Shai" Goldstein, executive director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network.

Milgram said the state will monitor departments periodically to insure compliance and issue an annual report on how often notifications are made. She stressed that officers are prohibited from racial profiling -- treating suspects differently based on their ethnicity.

Sadly, it should not have taken this violent crime to have law enforcement conduct this common sense check of immigration status for those it arrests.

Furthermore, there are problems with ICE and its ability to determine promptly whether someone is here legally or not. As Michelle notes, there remain questions relating to the immigration status of the individuals arrested - in particular Godinez, Jovel, and Carranza. Were they subject to TPS - temporary protected status, which enables lawful residency in the US even if they've been accused of criminal acts? Under TPS, it would take a felony conviction to strip someone of TPS, but no one at ICE appears to know what status any of the three have.

This is one of the most infuriating aspects of this case. We have law enforcement who doesn't check with ICE to determine whether someone is here legally or not, so bail can't be properly determined or detainers placed against illegal aliens pursuant to immigration law, ICE can't quite figure out whether the three men are here lawfully - especially if the men may have been granted amnesty as a result of one of a number of amnesty laws passed since the 1980s, and the media doesn't seem to think that this aspect of the story is worth pursuing despite the problems with immigration law.

Others noting the story include Hot Air.

Meanwhile, those within the Newark community have rallied around the families of the victims.