An immigration law used by the Obama administration to shepherd 120,000 illegal alien minors into America over the last three years has become a de facto recruitment aid for the Latin American crime network MS-13.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act was supposed to protect unaccompanied alien minors from nefarious trafficking. But Team Obama “misused the law and allowed in tens of thousands of illegal alien teenagers who are neither unaccompanied nor trafficked,” according to a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies.

An estimated 80 percent of all minors who entered the U.S. illegally and were picked up by authorities have been placed with “lightly vetted sponsors,” including those in the U.S. illegally. CIS Policy Services Director Jessica Vaughan estimates that an average of 260 unaccompanied youths are being allowed in the country daily.

With almost no government follow-up on these placements, the youths become easy targets for recruitment by MS-13 gang members. Thousands of alien minors have joined MS-13 “either through coercion and threats or voluntarily for protection,” according to CIS.

This corresponds to an increase in MS-13 membership and the brutal violence that’s associated with the gang.

As a result, a program that’s intended to protect alien minors is instead leading too many to lives of crime in the U.S. That’s reason enough to stem the flow and re-examine this gateway to gang life.

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(c)2016 The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (Greensburg, Pa.)

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