Tancredo Concerned Military Officials Unaware of Gang Infiltration in U.S. Army

Congressional Website ^ | April 9, '08 | Press Release

[T.L.Sink]

Rep. Tom Tancredo today asked Gen. David Petraeus about infiltration of American gangs into the U.S. military. "The fact that gang members are being trained in our military is a growing cause for concern," said Tancredo. "Our local law enforcement officers and gang units are now facing criminals who have obtained advanced weapons and training courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer." News reports indicate that the growing level of gang activity, driven largely by the growing problem of illegal immigration, has begun spilling over into the military. A number of gang members have returned to their communities only to commit crimes made easier by extensive training. Stars and Stripes, a military publication, has documented the foothold gangs have gained in the U.S. Armed Forces as a tool to spresd their organizations.

[T.L.Sink]

Stars and Stripes has reported cases of servicemembers selling or giving stolen military equipment - including weapons and body armor - to street gangs. The lowering of recruiting standards has experts worried that people with criminal backgrounds, particularly association with gangs, are more likely to get into the military. The FBI's January 2007 report titled "Gang-Related Activity in the U.S. Armed Forces Increasing," reads in part: "Members of nearly every major street gang have been identified on both domestic and international military installations..." Gangs of illegal Hispanics and now marauding not just our cities but suburban and even rural areas. As Tancredo said, it's appalling to know that we taxpayers are supplying these thugs with the weapons and the skills to use against ourselves

[kms61]

if they don’t know, it’s because they don’t want to know.

[bcsco]

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[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

... *sigh*... and, instead of this man, we have Juan McCain as a nominee, in 2008.

Lord help us.

[Calpernia]

bump

[Anti-Bubba182]

Learn to read tattoos and fire the ones with gang signs. That will work until they decide not to mark themselves. The method could last for a while as the gangsters take a lot of pride in their tattoos.

[johnny7]

Great timing Tom...

Lets see how long it takes for the DBM/DNC to deluge his office with invitations... and turn his legitimate concerns into an indictment of the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts and the military in general. Given Tancredo's “media-handling prowess”... one 2 minute appearance with Wolfie or Spitboy should be good for a weeks worth of military-bashing by the leftist press.

[Calpernia]

The MIL already has rules about tats.

[Anti-Bubba182]

The ought to be looking specifically for Gang tattoos if they are not already, not just amount and location of tattoos or racist type tattoos.

The Army has revised its policy on tattoos

[bcsco]

it's appalling to know that we taxpayers are supplying these thugs with the weapons and the skills to use against ourselves.

Can't get much more blunt than that. The problem has been defined. Few at the Federal level are willing to do anything about it. And that's where the issue belongs; not at the state level. It's disgusting.

[cubreporter]

I miss the days when real men stood up for all that was good for our country.

[Travis McGee]

Tancredo is off the deep end. Paramilitary radical hispanics, trained in the Army? No way.

[wolfcreek]

Many of the Mexican and other countries’ cartel members are ex-military. Some trained in this country.

[Dust in the Wind]

IMO, any person trained by the military and goes anywhere and commits crimes against other persons have committed an armed assault and should be treated as attempted murders. In any case whatever the crime was it should considered as done with a weapon in hand. Ramp up the charges on these AHs.

[T.L.Sink]

It may be more true in Britain but the psychiatrist and widely acclaimed author Theodore Dalrymple said that although not all people who have tattoos are criminals, ALL criminals have tattoos.

[metmom]

This is NOT good.

Don’t they do background checks first?

[levotb]

I can’t believe how many of you weren’t aware of this issue! The Pentagon has been recruiting—RECRUITING illegal alien gang members for at least 2 years, now and some of them are over in Iraq now. For agreeing to join the Army, they’re given amnesty for being illegal and are given citizenship after serving. The Pentagon has screwed up our armed forces so bad by keeping our troops in Iraq for so long and all the time while prolonging tours and weakening our National Guard by shipping them off to Iraq and Afghanistan that we are horribly short of qualified soldiers. Thus, this desperate, insane move without thought as to its consequences. Another one of Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s idiocies...And all the time they’ve refused to call back the draft...

[levotb]

Here’s a story from March on the subject of gang infiltration into the Armed forces. It is scary what is happening, folks. Once again, the Pentagon can do what it wants. Where is the Congressional oversight? Where are conservative Congressmen? I can’t believe no one other than Tancredo has brought this up.

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=242c30e05913a8b642b8f57ee7859d5a&from=rss

[metmom]

All the more need of a militia.

[Ramius]

So... we’re gonna say that gang members cannot join the military? For many it’s a good way *out* of gang-land. There’s been several stories already about former gangbangers that got a whole new perspective on life after their tour, and finally got the ambition to do something productive with their lives.

Sure, I get it that many return to their gangs afterward, but lets be careful about throwing out the good with the bad.

[metmom]

That’s because the liberals and the media hate our country and would rather have it destroyed. If they alerted people to it, someone would put a stop to it.

[USMCGunnut]

We are taught from the recruiting process on how to identify gang members (i.e. police checks, National Agency Check, and gang affiliation signs such as tattoos). However, with a clean police record ) or sealed juvenile records) and the absence of gang tattoos, etc. It can be hard to weed them out. We have had a big push for years to identify and remove these individuals and from my experience as active duty and former recruiter, I have done all I can to keep them out or get them kicked out. This will be an ongoing problem with a volunteer military that has high pressure to maintain end strength.

[ViLaLuz]

“The Pentagon has been recruiting—RECRUITING illegal alien gang members for at least 2 years, now and some of them are over in Iraq now. For agreeing to join the Army, they’re given amnesty for being illegal and are given citizenship after serving.”

Really? Under what program? I thought you had to have at least residence status to enlist.

[HiJinx]

Ping!

[DumpsterDiver]

I thought you had to have at least residence status to enlist.

Sometimes people slip through the cracks.

A Stunning Disclosure on Illegals in the Military
March 2004

Excerpts from a Feb. 24, 2004 article in the Denver Post:

"[T]he citizenship of 16,031 members of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines is listed as 'unknown.' That's about one in 100 active-duty military members who might be U.S. citizens, legal immigrants - or just about anybody else."

"U.S. military officials say they are shoring up defenses against illegal immigrants and others who may misrepresent themselves and join the armed services."

"The Army has the highest number of unknowns - 9,055. The Navy has 6,531, the Air Force 444, the Marines one. Overall, 1,366,032 U.S. citizens and 35,662 legal immigrants serve in the U.S. military."

"Military officials check birth certificates, green cards or Social Security numbers to verify whether new recruits are legally in the country, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jane Campbell, a U.S. Defense Department spokeswoman ... 'We hope to enhance those in the future, and are looking to do that in coordination with other government agencies,' she said. 'We want to make the process better.' Among new military initiatives: Start checking Social Security numbers given by recruits - as diligent employers sometimes do."

"Data on citizenship in the military, provided by the Army, comes from September 2003. Military officials were unable to explain why the citizenship of so many is hazy. 'Of the number we have that are unknowns, I'm sure that some are citizens and some may not be citizens,' said Lt. Col. Stan Heath, spokesman for the U.S. Army Human Resources Command ... 'We just don't know' how many may be illegal, Heath said. 'We're trying to clean up the database to make sure we have a good accountability. We are working on it.'

SNIP

[AuntB]

(Latino)Gangs claim their turf in Iraq
May 03, 2006

http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/search?q=+%28Latino%29Gangs+claim+their+turf+in+Iraq

The Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings and Vice Lords were born decades ago in Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. Now, their gang graffiti is showing up 6,400 miles away in one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods — Iraq.

Armored vehicles, concrete barricades and bathroom walls all have served as canvasses for their spray-painted gang art. At Camp Cedar II, about 185 miles southeast of Baghdad, a guard shack was recently defaced with “GDN” for Gangster Disciple Nation, along with the gang’s six-pointed star and the word “Chitown,” a soldier who photographed it said.

The graffiti, captured on film by an Army Reservist and provided to the Chicago Sun-Times, highlights increasing gang activity in the Army in the United States and overseas, some experts say.

Jeffrey Stoleson, an Army Reserve sergeant in Iraq, is seen in front of a barricade tagged with gang graffiti in March in Iraq. Stoleson, who has been in Iraq for almost a year, says he has taken hundreds of photos of gang graffiti there.

Click here for photo gallery »

Military and civilian police investigators familiar with three major Army bases in the United States — Fort Lewis, Fort Hood and Fort Bragg — said they have been focusing recently on soldiers with gang affiliations. These bases ship out many of the soldiers fighting in Iraq.

“I have identified 320 soldiers as gang members from April 2002 to present,” said Scott Barfield, a Defense Department gang detective at Fort Lewis in Washington state. “I think that’s the tip of the iceberg.”

Of paramount concern is whether gang-affiliated soldiers’ training will make them deadly urban warriors when they return to civilian life and if some are using their access to military equipment to supply gangs at home, said Barfield and other experts.

‘They don’t try to hide it’

Jeffrey Stoleson, an Army Reserve sergeant in Iraq for almost a year, said he has taken hundreds of photos of gang graffiti there.

In a storage yard in Taji, about 18 miles north of Baghdad, dozens of tanks were vandalized with painted gang symbols, Stoleson said in a phone interview from Iraq. He said he also took pictures of graffiti at Camp Scania, about 108 miles southeast of Baghdad, and Camp Anaconda, about 40 miles north of Baghdad. Much of the graffiti was by Chicago-based gangs, he said.

In civilian life, Stoleson is a correctional officer and co-founder of the gang interdiction team at a Wisconsin maximum-security prison. Now he is a truck commander for security escorts in Iraq. He said he watched two fellow soldiers in the Wisconsin Army National Guard 2nd Battalion, 127th Infantry, die Sept. 26 when a roadside bomb exploded. Five of Stoleson’s friends have been wounded.

Because of the extreme danger of his mission in Iraq, Stoleson said he does not relish the idea of working alongside gang members, whom he does not trust. Stoleson said he once reported to a supervisor that he suspected a company of soldiers in Iraq was rife with gang members.

“My E-8 [supervising sergeant] told me not to ruffle their feathers because they were doing a good job,” he said.

Stoleson said he has spotted soldiers in Iraq with tattoos signifying their allegiance to the Vice Lords and the Simon City Royals, another street gang spawned in Chicago.

“They don’t try to hide it,” Stoleson said.[snip]

[SwinneySwitch]

Don’t they read FreeRepublic?

[ViLaLuz]

“”U.S. military officials say they are shoring up defenses against illegal immigrants and others who may misrepresent themselves and join the armed services.”

Thanks for the further information. It appears that at least residency is still a requirement, and those illegals currently in enlisted fraudulently. That’s a lot different than “the government is recruiting illegals.”

[Dante3]

IIRC, History Channel had a program on gangs in the military. Increasingly persons with criminal backgrounds are being accepted into the military.

McCain is the worst possible candidate - he did the worst in the debates and might have serious mental issues. He is stupid and uninformed and lacking in moral character. He abandoned our POWs and is not fit to be Commander in Chief.

[Kuja]

GOOD GOD WHAT A POST!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn’t have said it better myself. It makes me sick that our voters did NO HOMEWORK before deciding whom to support.

[Dante3]

BUMP

[allrighty]

Gee.....wouldn’t that be called racial profiling?

Just kidding!

[allrighty]

It has become very popular to eulogize immigrants that serve in the military. McCain in particular does it religiously. While one can appreciate the sacrifice that some make - it is downright disturbing to see the deadly ramifications of allowing this many undocumented soldiers into our military.

Apparently our security expert McAmnesty doesn't care about all the threats from allowing illegal aliens into our country never mind the military. When we are fighting an internal insurgency for the control of Aztlan (I see it as inevitable), I guess we can be proud of the fact that not only did we import a revolution but we also provide the necessary training they needed as well. Truly a more generous people has never lived.



More photos here: The Battle of Los Angeles - MAY 1, 2008

[allrighty]

Here are a few more links to very good articles and documentation of illegal aliens and gang members in the military.

Here is a PDF of the unclassified FBI report titled Gang-Related Activity in the US Armed Forces Increasing

This is a good report on gangs and illegal aliens in general. It references material from the 2006 House Report A Line In The Sand. MILNET Brief - Hispanic Gangs

I was a little stunned by the figures in this summary. It is much higher than I could have imagined.

Summary:

Border officals estimate 4-10 million illegals crossing into U.S. every year despite apprehension of up to 1.2 million.

Mexican Drug Cartels, dealing in drugs produced in Mexico, Central and South America now control major areas of the Southern border, especially along Texas border.