As the media have been fixated all week on the Trump administration strictly enforcing immigration laws and, as required by law, separating illegal immigrant parents from children during prosecutions, MSNBC's Jacob Soboroff delivered a gem that deserves a place in the annals of "Blame America First" as he actually blamed the U.S. for Central America's crime problems with MS-13 and other gangs.
As MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle asked Soboroff why the crime problem exists in Central America that leads many to flee to the U.S., the MSNBC correspondent recalled that MS-13 and other gangs were founded by "undocumented immigrants" who were living in Los Angeles:
Actually, the violence that many of them are fleeing in Central America is violence that's perpetrated by gangs that actually started in places like my hometown, Los Angeles. When you hear about MS-13 from President Trump or the 18th Street Gang -- Barrio Dieciocho.
In fact, I stood here maybe a couple of months ago, and I met families that came here to seek asylum, and one of them said that they had been terrorized by Barrio Dieciocho. Those are Los Angeles gangs where the original members were undocumented immigrants and deported to Central America.
Even though the illegal immigrants who founded the gangs in Los Angeles were originally from Central America, Soboroff described the gangs as having been "exported" from the U.S. to Central America as he recounted:
Those gangs exploded in those Central American countries and terrorized communities down there. It's literally something that was exported from the streets of Los Angeles down to Central America, and the violence that's happening down there now is in large part due to gangs that first roamed the streets -- not of Central America -- but of the city of Los Angeles. So it is incorrect to hear the President say -- or at least the Attorney General -- that those are -- the violence down there is something that comes from that culture.
The MSNBC correspondent concluded: "It's a culture that started north of the border and very specifically in Southern California. And when you're here, and when you hear people present themselves to the border patrol, they say the names of the gangs that started on the streets of Los Angeles."
Ruhle then gushed over Soboroff for his "truth-telling" as she wrapped up the segment: "Jacob, it's stunning. Thank you so much for your unbelievable reporting, your truth-telling. We need it now more than ever."
