The event, open only to local media and a small group of travelling pool reporters, continued a familiar theme for Trump in highlighting violent acts committed by immigrants and calling for tougher enforcement measures to clamp down on crime.
Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein detailed a gang "resurgence" that he said he witnessed firsthand as the US Attorney for Maryland. That rise, Rosenstein said, was "fuelled" by illegal immigration and "particularly the challenge of unaccompanied minor children."
The issue is compounded, Rosenstein said, by the fact that these migrant children must eventually be released from detention, and many never show up for their immigration proceedings before a judge.
"We're letting people in who are creating problems. We're letting people in who are gang members. We're also letting people in who are vulnerable," Rosenstein said. Because many of the migrant children lack families or a similar support system, they become "vulnerable to [gang] recruitment," he said,
Thomas Homan, the departing deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said about 300 arrests related to the MS-13 gang were made on Long Island last year. Of those arrested, more than 40 per cent entered the US as unaccompanied minors, he said.
"So there is a problem," Homan said. "There is a connection."
This terrain - both the location and the subject matter - is familiar territory. Trump travelled to nearby Selden last July with a similar message of MS-13 wreaking havoc in communities across America. Here on Long Island, the transnational gang has been blamed for more than two dozen deaths in the last two years, according to radio station WNYC.
The gang, formally known as La Mara Salvatrucha, has roots in Los Angeles and ties to Central American countries such as El Salvador and Honduras. John Cronan, an assistant attorney-general, said today that about 2000 MS-13 members are on Long Island.
Trump has ramped up his focus on immigration and gang violence in recent days, most notably in another roundtable at the White House last week when he described undocumented immigrants who commit violent crimes as "animals."
He also blasted Libby Schaaf, the Democratic Mayor of Oakland, California, who tipped off residents to a federal immigration enforcement raid in February. Trump said her move was tantamount to "obstruction of justice" that allowed undocumented immigrants to escape before the raid.
Trump again called the gang members "animals" during today's roundtable.
"I called them animals the other day, and I was met with rebuke," he said. "They said, 'They're people.' They're not people. These are animals, and we have to be very, very tough."
His critics say Trump is unfairly conflating crime from a smaller subset of immigrants with the broader undocumented population.
Several dozen protesters gathered a few blocks from where Trump hosted the roundtable in Bethpage, holding signs that read "No Hate, No Racism, No Trump" and "Long Island is #UnitedAgainstHate." One woman carried a sign that read: "Keep your tiny hands off my rights."
"We think it's shameful that they're using the rhetoric of calling us animals, whether it's animals, rapists or calling the countries that we come from a shithole country," said Walter Barrientos, the Long Island organising director for Make the Road New York, an immigrant advocacy group. "It just becomes an excuse to vilify and dehumanise people in our countries."
