Rep. Riley Moore visits the Terrorist Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador which houses some 14,000 gang members and criminals, including several hundred deported gang members from the U.S. At left, an MS-13 gang member with the letters "MS" tattooed on his chest. (Office of Rep. Riley Moore)
Moore told Fox News Digital he visited the prison with a congressional delegation led by House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo. The delegation toured the prison this week and spoke with several inmates.
"These are dangerous individuals," he said. "We had several of them tell us, and they were not afraid to share it, [that] they are killers and committed homicides."
"It's not something that it seems that they regret one way or the other, from what I could glean from it," he explained.
While touring the prison, Moore said he spoke with two deportees from the U.S., both of whom were originally from El Salvador and had been deported from Virginia and California. He said one had been in the U.S. for 20 years and was a high-ranking member of the brutal gang MS-13. According to Moore, both deportees "were not afraid to admit" that they had killed people.
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While touring the prison, Moore said he spoke with two deportees from the U.S., both of whom were originally from El Salvador and had been deported from Virginia and California. He said that one who had been in the U.S. for 20 years was a high-ranking member of the brutal gang MS-13. According to Moore, both deportees "were not afraid to admit" that they had killed people.
He said he spoke with ordinary people on the streets of El Salvador’s capital city, San Salvador, who told him that "they were living in a terror state, being terrorized by these gangs and controlling their lives and taking their lives many times."
Now, he said, "they have their lives back."
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That is why Moore’s resolve to support the Trump administration’s crackdown on gang terrorism is stronger than ever.
"It is very tragic that all of these young people have just thrown their lives away because they decided to basically not only destroy themselves, to destroy their own country and community and people's lives… It's hard to really wrap your mind around," he said. "[But] the fundamental building block of any nation state is security. If you don't have security, you can't have economic opportunities, civil society, justice, any of those things. The bedrock of it is security. That has to be provided."
Peter Pinedo is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/photos-gop-delegation-provides-inside-look-controversial-el-salvador-prison-housing-u-s-deportees