The Latin American crime network MS-13, noted for machete attacks and schoolyard slayings, is using President Obama's loose immigration policies to recruit illegal youths across the border and into towns including Washington, D.C., Boston, Miami and San Francisco, according to a new report out Friday.

Three shocking new details from the Center for Immigration Studies show the problem:

— 92 percent of MS-13 gang members arrested are in the United States illegally.

— 80 percent of the tens of thousands of Latin American youths who've crossed illegally into the United States and were seized by authorities have subsequently been placed with other illegals, some with ties to the gang.

— In calls to track the so-called "unaccompanied alien children" placed with adults in the U.S. illegally, contact has been made with only 56 percent.

"The UACs are often placed with sponsors who are in the United States illegally, with virtually no post-placement oversight by the federal government, exposing both the children and communities to increasingly profound waves of gang violence while perpetuating the illegal immigrant population," said the CIS report.

The remarkable report found that federal authorities that place the illegal youths have little or no responsibility for what happens to them, even though they know that MS-13 and other killer gangs are recruiting the youths.

Of the 120,000 illegal youths to cross into the U.S. in the past three years, his report said that "thousands of whom have joined MS-13, either through coercion and threats or voluntarily, for protection."

It has helped to revive the gang, once eradicated in many cities before Obama's so-called "catch and release" program with illegal youths.

The report detailed criminal networks in some cities and tied the rise in crime to the growth of MS-13.

It also revealed the challenge to the government in handling the youths. On the one hand, the Office of Refugee Resettlement works hard to find homes for the youths, normally with illegal relatives already in the U.S. But then it stops being responsible and that's where crime gangs get involved.

"While the administration may applaud ORR's efforts at placing these children rapidly, the children are being placed with sponsors who are only lightly vetted and barely followed up on to ensure the children's safety. This has resulted in thousands of these children being placed in Texas, Maryland, Virginia, and New York only to fall prey to the violent grasp of the MS-13 gang, and putting many of these communities in the grip of violence they have never experienced before," said the report.

It also noted that the poor system of tracking the illegals is a warning about how the government will keep track of refugees flooding in from terrorist nations like Syria.

"The record of mismanagement," said the report, "generates concerns that the impending wave of Syrian refugees will be handled with the same strategy, exacerbating the homeland security risk."

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com