Have you ever heard of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal gang? Maybe not, but it could bring into quiet American neighborhoods some dangerous young men with little to contribute and even less to lose. Joseph Humire, a security expert in Latin America, calls Tren “the fastest-growing transnational criminal organization in the world.”
Last year, Tren de Aragua didn't even appear on the Border Patrol's “Nationwide Arrests for Gang Affiliation” list, an alphabetical list of 50 Central and South American gangs invading the United States — all the way back to Angelino Heights Sureno 13 to the Zetas. But with 47,000 Venezuelans caught entering the U.S. last December alone — 27,000 of them single adults — Tren is on track to join the list soon.
With President Joe Biden opening national borders, gang foot soldiers can enter from Mexico or Canada with ease. Or they can apply for Biden's fake parole processes, which allow in another 50,000 or more illegal immigrants per month.
Tren is reportedly active everywhere from Atlanta to Chicago to Washington, D.C. When police made a beat in a prison allegedly controlled by Tren inmates in Tocorón, Venezuela, last year, they found “a zoo, a nightclub, swimming pools and a children's playground.” It's not as fancy in New York, but at least illegal gang members there get free housing in luxury hotels, free meals, free laundry, and now, credit cards. debit prepaid, thanks to taxpayers.
According to the FBI, “The gang takes advantage of its Venezuelan community” in El Paso, Texas, primarily engaging in human trafficking and sex trafficking. Foreign gangs, from the Italian Mafia on down, always start by victimizing their own people, making money through extortion, prostitution and drugs. But then they spread.
Recently, a group of young illegal immigrants attacked two New York police officers who tried to stop them from robbing a local store. They were part of a “violent pack of looters” who rob the city and then head to Florida and other states to enjoy the profits, according to the newspaper. New York Post. The perpetrators are believed to be Venezuelans who crossed the southern border illegally, and there are indications that they are members of the Tren de Aragua.
This being New York City with District Attorney Alvin Bragg's soft stance on crime, the few criminals the police managed to arrest were soon released on cashless bail. Another four tricked a local migrant charity into giving them tickets to the west. Just as they gave false names to get bus tickets, they likely gave false names to the border authorities who originally “processed” them and quickly released them into the country.
Reports that they were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Phoenix turned out to be premature — they were just other illegal immigrants traveling freely across the US. With so many millions out there, who can keep up?
Tren is following in the footsteps of other foreign gangs already present in the US. The violent MS-13, based in El Salvador, is everywhere in the US. This brutal group challenges its members to murder innocent people to rise in status. In 2016, five members of MS-13 stabbed to death a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old in a park in Alexandria, Virginia. Six additional members of the MS-13 gang were recently convicts for a series of random murders in 2019, also in northern Virginia.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
likes to say that illegal migrants are carefully evaluated before they are released into American communities, but that is simply not true. When a young man presents himself at the border to be “processed” and then sent — with the tax payer's money — to the city of his choice, law enforcement does not know who he is unless he already has some registration in the US. No matter how bad he is, if he has never been to the US before, he will not be known.
There was a time when gang members were dumb enough to tattoo themselves in ways that US authorities could identify them, but they have become smarter. Border Patrol can only note the names and identity information provided by aliens or available on documents they have on their person.
If illegal immigrants suspected of being gang members are undocumented and give false names, US agents have no way to verify the information unless they already have some history in the US. The sheer number of people being detained and released precludes doing this every time, and on top of that, the US and Venezuela have tense relations. Nicolás Maduro's regime has no incentive to tell us anything that is not in its own interest.
Biden's open border policies have allowed in up to eight million illegal immigrants since he took office. They tend to be younger and more often male. In general, men are much more prone to violence than women, and young people commit more crimes than older people.
One study on recidivism showed that, within ten years, about 80% of criminals reoffended, and those who did so had an average of 5.4 arrests each during that period.
Even assuming prevailing average crime rates among illegal aliens released at the border, let alone higher rates due to criminals knowingly entering the U.S. in search of opportunity or to evade justice, the country is poised to face a sustained wave of crime. . U.S. cities will report additional cases, from shoplifting to homicides, that could have been prevented if borders had been secure.
At the New York City police station where the Venezuelans attacked those two police officers, the thefts increased by more than 83% last year in relation to 2022. Perhaps not strange, another group of violent thieves, led by another Venezuelan illegal immigrant“lives predominantly in the migrant shelter system,” according to the New York police, and has ventured to commit up to 150 robberies nearby.
While many illegal immigrants remain in line, the Justice Department reported in 2018 — before Biden's current mass releases at the border — that 64% of federal arrests involved “non-citizens, even though they represented only 7% of the population at the time. ”
If anyone wonders why the House of Representatives wants to remove Mayorkas, this is a good reason. He took an oath to protect the nation against foreign threats, but instead, he deliberately exposed the country to them.
Simon Hankinsona former State Department foreign service officer, is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Center for Immigration and Border Security.
©2024 Daily Signal. Published with permission. Original in English: The Gang's All Here—Thanks to Biden's Open Border
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