Rich Lowry explains at National Review Online why President Trump is justified in targeting a particularly violent criminal gang.

Donald Trump is given to lurid rhetoric, and in the MS-13 gang he has finally met a subject beyond his ability to exaggerate.

He calls members of the largely Salvadoran gang “animals.” He charges them with “spreading gruesome bloodshed.” He says that “they kidnap, they extort, they rape, and they rob, they prey on children.” And, finally, he insists that “they shouldn’t be here.”

He’s right on every count. If there is any aspect of the Trump immigration agenda that should command universal support, it is his crackdown on an immigrant gang whose motto is “murder, rape, and control,” and whose signature weapon is the machete.

Yet the Trump administration’s focus on MS-13 has occasioned criticism from the usual quarters, for the usual reasons. A piece in the Boston Globe objected to the administration’s blaming crime on “highly organized gangs of immigrants.” Well, what if a highly organized gang of immigrants is indeed responsible for its own crime wave?