The policy is more than a legal civil liberties nightmare; it is strategically ill-advised. Deporting suspected gang members will not stop gangs. Transnational gangs are a serious problem, but there is a better way to deal with them.

Many have heard of the MS-13 gang because of its penchant for violence. Few, however, know that MS-13 was a small crew for much of its early history before becoming one of the largest criminal enterprises in the world. How did this happen?

Researchers have argued that immigration reforms in the mid-1990s had the unintended consequence of spreading criminal networks. University of California, San Diego, anthropology professor Elana Zilberg made the observation in her book "Space of Detention" that America's policy of deporting Salvadoran youth contributed to the spread of MS-13. The gang was born in Los Angeles, but it flourished in Central America only after the United States shipped its members back to unstable countries with policies that exacerbated gangs. Rather than eliminating MS-13, the problem was exported, and then it boomeranged back even stronger to the United States.