Held for Months, Teens Accused of MS-13 Affiliation Start Returning to Long Island

Over the summer on Long Island, immigration agents started picking up teens, known as "unaccompanied minors," and accusing them of being members of the international gang, MS-13. Local police made many of the allegations based on the clothes they wore and who they spoke to in and out of school.

"It’s almost as though the police are saying we know [a gang member] when we see it, trust us. And the whole point is that's not enough," said William Freeman, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California who represented three teens in a class-action lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Justice, the Office of Refuge Resettlement and others.

The ACLU said at least 32 teens, mostly from Long Island, have been held in immigration detention over allegations that they are gang members. 

According to court hearings attended by WNYC, immigration judges were saying over and over again that they were not convinced many of the teens were gang members. But they didn’t have the jurisdiction to release them from detention. Now, under a federal ruling, they do.

A federal judge in Northern California granted immigration judges temporary authority to release unaccompanied minors from detention if they are convinced they do not pose a danger. 

A 17-year-old, who goes by the initials F.E., was the first to be released under the ruling.

"I thought I’d never see my 'Mami' again," he said in Spanish. "And I just kept telling myself that God knows well who I am and that he was going to help me get out."

He’s back in Brentwood, Long Island, after being held for five months.

"I have this fear," he said. "Like [police and immigration agents] are going to come back. I don’t want to leave my house."   

According to federal court documents, as well as police and school records obtained by WNYC, this was the evidence presented against F.E.: Police told immigration agents the teen was seen at school, and in a car, with confirmed MS-13 members. Police said he was fighting on a soccer field, and later added he was "in the presence of MS-13 members" at the time. They said the teen admitted to them that he associates with gang members. He was cutting class, and he had the numbers 503 written in a notebook. It’s the international calling code to El Salvador, where he’s from, but police consider it a gang symbol.

The ACLU is representing F.E. in the lawsuit arguing the Trump administration is illegally detaining immigrant teens in "jail-like facilities" based on unsubstantiated evidence that they are gang members. Now the burden is on the federal government to provide evidence. 

"In the future, if the local police and ICE claim that someone is a danger to the community, they actually have to convince an immigration judge that that’s the case," Freeman said. "They can’t just arrest someone, ship them across the country and lock them up based on nothing more than suspicion." 

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the judge's decision. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Suffolk County Police Commissioner, who has been collaborating with immigration agents to combat the presence of MS-13 on Long Island, did not respond to requests for comment. But police commissioner Timothy Sini told News 12 he stands by "every single detention" his department collaborated on, and said he makes no apologies for his strategy.

When WNYC first spoke to F.E. from immigration detention in July, he had been in the U.S. for two years, but knew no English. He started learning inside by reading children’s books, including one called Kenny and the Little Kickers.

Most of the English he learned, though, relates to his experiences in detention.