First Lady Laura Bush is leading a warm-and-fuzzy youth initiative to discourage young boys and men from joining gangs.

But as I report in my new column today, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than Kodak photo-ops to combat the criminal alien gang problem spreading across the country:

With all due respect to the First Lady, this is a job best left to law enforcement professionals willing to get tough, get dirty, and crack heads. From the suburbs to our national forests, savage criminal alien gangs are infiltrating America and luring young recruits.

Compassionate conservatism ain’t gonna stop them.

As many law enforcement sources have been informing me, native gangs such as the Bloods and Crips have nothing on the recent wave of criminal alien enterprises settling across the heartland. Recent enforcement action in New York demonstrates the scope of the problem. Last month in New York, 41 criminal aliens with felony convictions were arrested by immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) agents on a single day as part of a joint public safety initiative between ICE and the U.S. Probation Office of the Eastern District of New York.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the aliens arrested in New York — half of whom were here illegally—include citizens of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Italy, Jamaica, Jordan, Mexico, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Trinidad, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela. The operation targeted criminal aliens with prior felony convictions for “murder, firearms trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering, racketeering, fraud, false statements, receipt of stolen property, producing false identity documents, copyright infringement and other federal felonies.”

A related ICE operation in Chicago targeted violent Hispanic gangs. Over the past five years, ICE agents on Chicago’s Violent Gang Task Force have arrested more than 375 known alien gang members.

As I’ve been reporting in previous columns and on the blog, the most notorious criminal alien gang on the scene is Mara Salvatrucha/MS-13. They’re on the border, in the suburbs, and now…in our national forests. Earlier this week, I spoke with Siskiyou County, Calif., sheriff Rick Riggins, who has uncovered massive marijuana farms in our federal forests . Riggins reports that the Mexican Mafia and MS-13 paraphernalia have been discovered on the scene.

My conclusion: The solution lies with increased federal-local cooperation, aggressive deportation, and uncompromising immigration enforcement, not with piddly anti-gang/”conflict resolution” grants doled out by the First Lady.

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