Donald Trump is right. MS-13 members are 'animals.' Just because President Trump attacked immigrants in the past is no reason to condemn him today. He told the truth about an immigrant gang.

Caleb Howe | Opinion contributor

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump doubles down on MS-13 'animals' remark President Donald Trump is defending his use of the word "animals" to describe members of the MS-13 street gang. Trump said he would continue to use the term to refer to violent gang members in spite of a sharp rebuke from Democratic leaders. (May 17)

“Street gang MS-13, infamous for vicious machete killings, is first to be declared an international criminal group.” That’s a headline from the Daily Mail in 2012.

“The gratuitous acts of violence these now-convicted gang members committed were intended to spread fear.” That’s a description from acting U.S. Attorney John Horn about a 2015 murder conviction in Georgia.

“Video of the mutilated bodies was sent to a girlfriend of one of the victims.” “She was walking home one evening with Nisa, a basketball teammate one day shy of her 16th birthday, when MS-13 members spotted them and attacked with a machete and baseball bats.” “A large butcher knife, a bloodstained baseball hat and three 9mm handguns were also found in the car.”

Those are all different incidents. All MS-13.

On Wednesday, President Trump was speaking as part of his roundtable discussion on California’s sanctuary laws and was asked about MS-13. His response set off a firestorm.

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Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims brought up the gang and her department’s ability to combat them: “There could be an MS-13 member that I know about” and yet can’t report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Trump replied, saying in part, “These aren't people. These are animals."

The controversy blew up when people and news organizations used the quote or clip without the context of Mims’ question. Trump wasn’t calling all illegal immigrants animals. One widely favored and retweeted response referred to Trump’s remark as the “language of ethnic cleansing.”

Quickly, though, people on the right (and some journalists) corrected the record. That it was about MS-13 was reported more widely. Even so, many on the left, including notably House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, simply recalibrated to defend the humanity of the gang itself.

“Does he not believe in the spark of divinity, the dignity and worth of every person?” Pelosi asked.

Likewise, CNBC’s John Harwood said, “However repugnant their actions, MS-13 gang members are human beings IMHO.”

Madness.

The question is whether it was fair or wise of Trump to call MS-13 animals, and whether it’s a morally objectionable statement overall.

The American Heritage Dictionary third definition of “animal” is “a person who behaves in a bestial or brutish manner.” By that definition, “animal” isn’t nearly strong enough.

Today's news spat over MS-13 is part of a longer-running drama. Since Trump took office, there has been an effort to downplay the gang’s significance even as Trump has rhetorically raised its profile.

He's not the only president to do so. In 2012 — you know, under President Obama — MS-13 was formally designated a transnational criminal organization by the Treasury Department. At the time, this was characterized approvingly as a “crackdown” by the Obama administration.

MS-13 (or Mara Salvatrucha), a primarily El Salvador-based gang that started in Los Angeles, was believed to have about 10,000 members across the country at that time and Central America. They were known for hacking enemies to death, executing people in broad daylight in view of witnesses, and fatally beating people with bats.

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That brutality has continued:

►In 2013, two gang members beat and hacked a 16-year-old Houston teen to death using bats and machetes. They also almost decapitated him, the Houston Chronicle reported. The gang suspected he had shared information with El Salvadoran police. Both killers were sentenced 35 years in prison. Both were from El Salvador, here illegally. One had been picked up previously on an immigration charge, a common thread for the gang. That’s why it comes up in the context of sanctuary city roundtables.

►In 2017, as many as 10 MS-13 members stabbed a man more than 100 times in Maryland. They decapitated him and cut out his heart. The first suspect charged, who allegedly stabbed first, was Miguel Angel Lopez-Abrego, of El Salvador, who was here illegally.

►Also last year, MS-13 members shot an unidentified girl who was thought to be 15 in the head and chest, leaving her body in the middle of a busy street in Houston’s Chinatown. The murderer said he killed her to appease Satan. “The beast did not want a material offering, but wanted a soul,” he said. He was from El Salvador originally, and here illegally.

Way back in 2003, Brenda Paz was famously murdered by MS-13 after cooperating with police as an informant. CBS News’ Dan Rather reported on the slaying.

Rather reported that MS-13 conducted "investigations” and held meetings where they went over things like recruitment, drug sales and murder. A “greenlight” was unanimously agreed upon to assassinate Paz at such a meeting. Paz was lured to a fishing trip with her boyfriend, who along with his fellow gang member stabbed her to death in front of a witness.

The list goes on:

►In 2017, four gang members were arrested for a spree of 10 murders in Las Vegas.

►In 2014, MS-13 “enforcers” were deployed by a cartel to kidnap and torture teenagers in St. Paul.

►In 2012, Dennis Gil-Bernardez, a Honduran native and a leader in the gang, was sentenced to 80 years for, among many other crimes, stabbing a man to death on a street in Washington, D.C.

►Four men were hacked to death on Long Island, N.Y.

►A 15-year-old girl was tortured, had a tattoo cut off, and then was stabbed to death.

The documentation of the gang’s brutality is long and horrifying. Murder, torture, rape, dismemberment, mutilation. These are heinous acts, and we’re meant to know it. They are committed for that reason, to shock and terrorize, silence and warn. MS-13 means for you to be repelled and horrified.

Calling the people who commit these acts "animals" doesn't dehumanize them. Their actions dehumanize them. Just because the president has said bad things about immigrants in the past is no reason to condemn him today.

Whatever you think about the president, it’s not responsible or reasonable to object when the president tells the truth about a brutal street gang.

Caleb Howe is a blogger and the former managing editor of Red State. Follow him on Twitter: @CalebHowe.