Tren de Aragua, a criminal group from Venezuela that is said to pose the same level of threat as the Peruvian group MS-13, is slowly operating in undercover towns and communities across the nation.
The international corporation-sized criminal organization capitalized on the country’s current border crisis to recruit members and increase its occurrence in cities all over the country where law enforcement and elected officials are deeply concerned about the kind of violence they are seeing, especially after one murder that has drawn national attention.
Laken Riley, a student at Georgia Nursing, was killed in February while out jogging, and authorities have identified her as the suspected killer of Venezuelan improper immigrant Jose Ibarra. Ibarra is a allegedcase“> member of the gang, and his disclosure has exposed the legal business as the case against him and his nephew, who is also a suspected gangcase“> member, revenues in court.
The group has been active for over ten years, and it has since changed from its roots inside prison walls to its current path of penetration into U.S. communities.
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX ), whose district borders nearly half of the southern border, said he has been informed about the gang and is concerned about how well-known it is in the United States, given its history as an “agent of chaos and terror through Central and South America.”
” For months, I have sounded the , alarm , about Tren de Aragua and the danger this gang poses to Americans”, Gonzales said in a speech to the Washington Examiner. ” It’s vivid, but this group has been known to rape children, death, and commit almost every other offense under the sun. We are aware that some group members have travelled to the United States and that Tren de Aragua has expanded its operations there.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL ), who represents a state with one of the nation’s highest Venezuelan populations, claimed in an interview that the gang has “wreaked havoc” across Central and South America and is now threatening to do the same in the United States.
Rubio told Fox News on June 5 that it has “worked its way into the United States and has now been linked to sex trafficking and individual smuggling activities in the United States.”  ,
How Tren de Aragua came to be
According to the Venezuela section of Transparency International, a research organization founded by previous World Bank people, the group started about ten years ago and had its beginnings years earlier.
According to the research report, “it has its roots in the workers ‘ organizations that worked on the building of a railroad project that may connect the northern west of the country and that was not finished.” ” By then Héctor Rutherford Guerrero Flores, alias ‘ Niño Guerrero,’ was the]leader ] of the Aragua Penitentiary Center, better known as the Tocoron prison. Although the legal firm broke out outside the prison, it quickly transformed into its main location.
Last year, more than 11, 000 Cuban police and military raided the Tocoron captivity, but not before several prisoners escaped. Inside the jail where the gang’s leadership operated, officials found franchises, a swimming pool, and supplies of weapons and weapons.
From Venezuela to America
Cuban crew members were living on the street in El Paso, Texas, according to a report from The Washington Examiner in May 2023 while on a border crossing in El Paso, Texas.
Almost 700,000 Venezuelans have been encountered at the southern border since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, compared to the 200 or so Venezuelans who were encountered each quarter at the Trump administration.
U. S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens has confirmed the gang’s many attempts to enter the U.S. and attempted to sound the alarm through posts on social media that began late last year.
” Keep your eye on this group. They commit serious crimes, which pose a major threat to our neighborhoods. Owens addressed a declaration to X.
Border Patrol agents ‘ difficulty lies in how only they can evaluate the knowledge that is available to them when they are in prison. Because Venezuela has a hard time identifying a person who has been detained as a convicted criminal in their home country, it is difficult to tell if they are a convicted criminal there.
Members of Tren de Aragua hide themselves among Cuban immigrants seeking job or asylum in the United States.
The state has been forced to let most of the refugees into Venezuela because they lack long-term bed room and Venezuela’s refusal to accept repatriated people from the United States.
According to Owens, Border Patrol agents stationed in Texas intercepted 10 Tren de Aragua people who were trying to enter the country from Mexico over one trip.
Violence rampage in US locations
According to an NBC review, federal law enforcement has opened more than 100 studies into crimes involving Tren de Aragua people.
Beyond drug dealing and bribery, which are popular money-making strategies for criminals in general, are other types of crimes. Tren de Aragua is apparently involved in large-scale sex trafficking plans all over the nation and police officer shootings.
Two New York police officers were shot earlier this month by suspected Tren de Aragua crew people who were taken into custody in the course of their duties. Nineteen- year- ancient Bernardo Raul Castro- Mata of Venezuela was arrested for the shootings and had tattoos affiliated with the group, including a five- pointed king, five- noted stars, and teardrops, according to the New York City Police Department.
The group is also thought to have a strong network of sex traffickers and extorts sexual immigrants who owe their members hundreds of thousands of dollars for smuggling them into the United States.
” Stash homes”, where people are held by the group without the freedom to leave, were busted in Louisiana, Texas, New Jersey, and Florida, where some Tren de Aragua people were arrested for running a sex trafficking ring out of the properties, according to a legal problem shared with CNN.
The men who helped the trafficking ring threatened the women held against their will and said they would murder their neighbors in Venezuela if they did not cooperate and collect money from smuggled women into the U.S. for sex acts.
In January, 23- year- old Yurwin Salazar- Maita was arrested for luring, abducting, and murdering a retired Venezuelan police officer in Florida.
Federal authorities have not made any reports about child abuse and incest. Lawmakers, including Gonzales, have access to information that has not yet been made public, such as information that has been leaking to intelligence and national security officials.
Getting in touch with the gang before it’s too late
According to Director Christopher Wray, the FBI is monitoring the gang.
” We have ongoing engagement with intelligence community partners, state]and ] local law enforcement in some cases, foreign partners in looking at whether it’s their drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping for ransom, you know, different kinds of violent crime, different kinds of trafficking and smuggling, even things like organized retail theft”, Wray told lawmakers in a congressional hearing in April.
Wray was forced to deeper into Tren de Aragua by Gonzales.
Hispanic Republicans in Congress— Rubio, Gonzales, and Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar ( R- FL ) — have pushed the White House to declare the gang a transnational criminal organization immediately.
” Heinous crimes committed by the Tren de Aragua, like the rapes of multiple children and the murders of retired police officer José Luis Sánchez Valera and nursing student Laken Riley, must stop”, the lawmakers, along with 23 other members, wrote in a letter earlier this year.
U. S. border officials screen immigrants, and those determined to be a threat for national security or public safety reasons are denied admission, detained, removed, or referred to other federal agencies, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
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They warned that Tren de Aragua’s designation as a transnational criminal organization would allow it to grow within the United States.
” By doing so, we can use more resources to combat Tren de Aragua and raise awareness of the gang’s activities.” The time to act is now, and the window is closing before it’s too late” , , Gonzales told the Washington Examiner.
