By Matthew Rusling
WASHINGTON, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A gruesome rape case in the United States last week has grabbed headlines nationwide, sparking outrage from many supporters of President Donald Trump.
Last Thursday may have been a normal workday for many Americans. But for one 14-year-old girl in a Washington D.C. suburb, it was a grizzly, life changing event.
The girl was forced into a school bathroom by two fellow students from Guatemala and El Salvador, where she was sodomized, raped, and where oral sex was forced on her.
One of the assailants, 18-year-old Henry Sanchez, was confirmed to be in the country illegally, and had been placed in a class of 14-year-old 9th graders. The other alleged attacker is also suspected of being an illegal migrant.
The case has been the top story on many nationally broadcast prime time television media outlets this week, including Fox News, has tens of millions of viewers, many of them support Trump's tough hand on illegal immigration.
The case underscores Trump supporters's concerns over unfettered illegal immigration into the United States, which they view as a nationwide breakdown of law and order.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer weighed in on the case on Tuesday, saying the brutal case is the reason Trump is making illegal immigration a top priority.
"I think part of the reason that the president has made illegal immigration and crackdown such a big deal is because of tragedies like this. We act so many times when we talk about this and say why is the president dealing with this, because of this priority," Spicer said.
Some groups have said the case is a result of former President Barack Obama's catch-and-release immigration policies, in which individuals caught entering the U.S. illegally are released and told to show up at court on a specific date.
In the vast majority of cases, they do not show up for their court date and simply melt into the massive population of 11 million illegal immigrants.
"What we are experiencing is the impact of a catch-and-release program....and we're paying the price for it now. We hope to see a huge improvement in that," Marguerite Telford, director of communications for the Center for Immigration Studies, told Xinhua.
The massive tide of illegal immigration into the United States was one of Trump's main campaign platforms, and supporters now expect the president to tackle the issue.
Telford said that under Obama administration, there was a huge surge of unaccompanied minors crossing into the U.S., which the country didn't have previously, as they previously had not been allowed in.
Minors who enter the U.S. illegally can claim asylum and are allowed to take up residence in the country. However, many people exploit the law, as there is no way to verify claims that they are under 18.
In one recent case, two men in their 30s claimed to be minors, were allowed to take up residence in the U.S. and attend high school, and ended up sitting in a class with 9th graders.
Some experts said there have been cases of single men exploiting the laws that allowed children and family units to enter, so they would look for -- or in some cases abduct -- children in order to enter the U.S. as a family unit.
But Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy at the Center for the Study of Congress and the Presidency, told Xinhua that several studies have indicated that criminals are less likely to commit crimes than those born in the United States.
"That said, the emotional and political impact of anecdotes about crimes committed by immigrants often gain far more media coverage and public attention than the actual data," Mahaffee said.
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