The governor of Texas (United States), the Republican Greg Abbottannounced this Monday the start of an operation against the transnational criminal gang of Venezuelan origin Aragua Train and designated it a foreign terrorist organization.
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At a press conference in Houston, the most populous city in Texas, Abbott He said the gang poses a “dangerous and deadly” threat to the state.
“Texas will use the courts to stop their (Aragua Train) activities, use civil asset forfeiture to seize their property (…) and harsher criminal penalties to keep them in jail,” the politician said when announcing the measures.
The governor ordered the creation of a unit within the state Department of Public Safety dedicated to Aragua Train and has “hundreds” of law enforcement officers.
Recently, this band has jumped into the national media scene due to the dissemination by Trump and other Republican politicians of false information claiming that members of the Aragua Train They had taken control of an apartment building in Aurora, Colorado.
Police departments in the Denver metropolitan area of Colorado denied the information, But they acknowledged that this criminal organization does have a presence in the area.
Abbott’s announcement comes less than two months before the November 5 presidential election, in which Republicans have resorted to xenophobic rhetoric to criticize President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
Republican leaders, including former president and candidate Donald Trump (2017-2021), have connected the presence of members of this gang in the United States with the thousands of Venezuelan migrants who have arrived at the southern border fleeing the deep crisis that the South American country is going through.
One of the main criminal activities of the Aragua Train, which has its origin in a prison 130 kilometers from Caracas and has spread to other countries in the region, it is precisely the extortion and sexual exploitation of Venezuelan migrants.
The Texas governor, who is hoping to solidify his control of the state legislature after the November elections, is one of the leading critics of the Democratic government and has spent millions of dollars to “impede” the entry of migrants across the border with Mexico.
Investigations against the Aragua Train in the United States
More than a dozen people that authorities have linked to the Aragua Train have been accused of committing crimes in several states across the country, including Texas, Georgia, Florida and New York.
One of the most publicized cases has been the murder of a 22-year-old woman named Laken Riley by José Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan identified by the authorities in the state as a member of the criminal organization.
Federal authorities have not released official figures on the presence of this gang in the US, but according to leaks to The Wall Street Journal, there are more than 1,000 open investigations in the country involving “alleged” members.
Last July, the Treasury Department classified the Tren de Aragua as a “transnational criminal organization” and the State Department said its network had “extended” from South America to the United States.
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