BRENTWOOD, N.Y. (AP) — President Donald Trump is planning to urge Congress to dedicate more funding to the administration's crackdown on illegal immigration and violent crime.

Trump is set to speak Friday at Suffolk County Community College, close to where the ultra-violent street gang MS-13 has committed a string of gruesome murders, including April's massacre of four young men.

Trump is expected to continue his tough talk on immigration and urge Congress to dedicate more funding to border enforcement and faster deportations in a speech in front of law enforcement officers and the family members of crime victims.

Trump has made cracking down on MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, a top priority of his administration. The gang, which is believed to have originated in immigrant communities in Los Angeles in the 1980s and then entrenched itself in Central America when its leaders were deported, is infamous for its violent tactics, including torturing victims and hacking them with machetes.

Its recruits are middle- and high-school students, predominantly in immigrant communities, who are said to risk violent retribution if they leave. Authorities estimate the group has tens of thousands of members across several Central American countries and many U.S. states.

The Justice and Homeland Security departments have made targeting the gang a top priority. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has directed his department's law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to prioritize their prosecution, as directed by an executive order Trump signed in February, among other measures.

"We're liberating our towns and we're liberating our cities. Can you believe we have to do that?" Trump said at an Ohio rally this week, adding that law enforcement agents were rooting out gang members — and "not doing it in a politically correct fashion. We're doing it rough."

"Our guys are rougher than their guys," he bragged.

Since the beginning of January, the Department of Homeland Security's investigative unit has arrested 3,311 gang members nationwide in a number of targeted operations, said Tom Homan, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency could not provide numbers for a similar timeframe in 2016.

Trump's trip comes as Sessions visits El Salvador as part of a mission to increase international cooperation against the gang. Sessions met Thursday with his Salvadoran counterpart and members of an international anti-gang task force.

Rep. Peter King, who represents Brentwood, said Trump's appearance would send a signal to communities that have been shaken by the violent killings.

"It's absolutely devastating," he said, adding that many of the killings have occurred within 20 minutes of his home.

"This gang's chilling motto is 'mata, viola, controla,'which means 'kill, rape and control,'" said Robert Hur, a top Justice Department official. "They seek to live up to this motto through truly shocking acts of violence designed to instill fear: vicious machete attacks, execution-style gunshots, gang rape and human trafficking."

The Trump administration blames MS-13's recent resurgence in certain areas on illegal immigration and believes policies like building a wall along the southern border and cracking down on so-called "sanctuary cities" will eradicate the problem, said policy adviser Stephen Miller.

Critics see the focus as misplaced, arguing that resources could be better spent on other enforcement efforts.

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