Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution reads, in part, as follows:
The Constitution provides that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed…”
This duty potentially implicates at least five categories of executive power, including:
(1) powers the Constitution confers directly upon the President by the opening and succeeding clauses of Article II;
In the president’s oath of office, he promises to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Clearly on both fronts, Joe Biden is an abject failure. And by refusing to enforce the laws protecting our sovereignty and to keep the American people safe by controlling the border, he is putting American citizens at risk.
One significant and existential threat facing the American people is the emergence of violent criminal gangs from South and Central America that have made their way into the U.S. One of the most violent gangs is Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal gang that originated in a Venezuela prison that is now operating in the United States, CNN reports.
While the scale of the gang’s operation is unknown, crimes attributed to gang members have so concerned some lawmakers, Republicans in particular, that they are asking the administration to “formally designate the vicious Tren de Aragua as a Transnational Criminal Organization.”
The gang has long terrorized South American countries, including Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile and Peru. The former vice president of Colombia and chief of the Colombian National Police, retired general Oscar Naranjo, told CNN that the gang is “the most disruptive criminal organization operating nowadays in Latin America,” calling them “a true challenge for the region.”
According to a report by Transparency Venezuela, the gang had “its origin in the unions of workers who worked on the construction of a railway project that would connect the center-west of the country and that was never completed.”
Leadership of the gang operated out of Tocoron prison, a notorious facility which they controlled. Last September, Venezuelan officials raided the prison and found a swimming pool and several restaurants operating within the prison walls. They also seized a number of weapons, including automatic rifles, machine guns, and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
That gang was already in its prime by 2015, according to a former Venezuelan law enforcement official. That was the year they formed an alliance with a Brazilian criminal organization, Comando de Capital. That led to the gang expanding throughout South America.
Tren de Aragua, along with a rival group known as the National Liberation Army, “operate sex trafficking networks in the border town of Villa del Rosario in the Norte de Santander department.” The US State Department 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report said the groups exploit Venezuelan migrants and internally displaced Colombians in sex trafficking and take advantage of economic vulnerabilities and subject them to debt bondage.” Law enforcement sources in the area say the organization has “victimized thousands through extortion, drug and human trafficking, kidnapping and murder,” CNN reported.
That threat is now established in the United States, according to US Customs and Border Protection, thanks in no small part to the Biden administration’s open border policies.
“They have followed the migration paths across South America to other countries and have set up criminal groups throughout South America as they follow those paths, and that they appear to follow the migration north to the United States,” said Britton Boyd, an FBI special agent in El Paso, Texas to CNN.
Meanwhile, US Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens has confirmed multiple arrests at the southern border of people alleged to belong to the Tren de Aragua gang, and issued a warning in April. “Watch out for that gang. It is the most powerful in Venezuela, known for murder, drug trafficking, sex crimes, extortion & other violent acts,” he wrote on X.
CNN reports that there are over 70 cases where the gang is mentioned in law enforcement documents or prosecutor reports. Out of that total, CBP in Texas has identified 58 gang members between FY-2023 and last May. The remainder appear in complaints made by victims or arrest reports that identify members of the gang as being involved.
When two NYPD officers were shot last week, the suspect, Bernardo Raul Castro-Mata, 19, from Venezuela was arrested. He entered the US illegally last July, according to a member of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He has tattoos associated with Tren de Aragua, described in court documents as five-pointed crowns. While Castro-Mata did not have a criminal record in New York, he is a suspect in a number of robberies in the borough of Queens.
Perhaps the most egregious crime attributed to the gang is the kidnapping and murder of a former Venezuelan police officer in South Florida in November 2023. Another crime, CNN wrote, stands out.
In late April, the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office received a 911 call from a Spanish-speaking woman who told authorities she was being held against her will at a residence and being “forced to have sexual intercourse with unknown males for money.” The woman later told police that she was forced to have sex with strangers “to pay off a $30,000 debt to a trafficker for bringing her to the United States.”
This is the scourge of Biden’s open border…the sex trafficking, murder, extortion, and other crimes being committed to facilitate getting illegal aliens into the U.S.
In the East Baton Rouge case, two suspects, both Venezuelan nationals were arrested at the location. Albert Herrera Machado, 23, and Osleidy Vanesa Chourlo-Diaz, 26. A third Venezuelan, Josmar Jesus Zambrano-Chirinos, 23, was later arrested. He was identified as the ringleader of the sex trafficking ring being run by Tren de Aragua in the U.S.
A criminal complaint reviewed by CNN showed Zambrano-Chrinos was “operating ‘stash houses’ used for human trafficking in Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, and Florida.” Herrera Machado and Chourlo-Diaz were not linked to the gang in the complaint.
It appears based on the allegations that Tren de Aragua has established a human trafficking foothold in the United States as it has in several South American countries. Despite the arrests, it is difficult if not impossible to know how many members of the gang are already in the United States. However, Venezuelan immigrants who fled that country and are now living in Florida and other states told CNN they are seeing the same type of criminal activities in their communities that they saw in their home country.
A former Venezuelan police officer now living in Florida says he fled the country mostly because Tren de Aragua had become “so powerful.” Alvaro Boza said the gang “could kill law enforcement like him with impunity.” He noted that a fellow police officer who refused to cooperate with the gang in his native Aragua state was shot 50 times.
“He refused and was murdered,” Boza said. “They tied his body to a motorcycle and dragged it throughout the San Vicente neighborhood to demonstrate the power of the Tren de Aragua.”
The March letter, sent by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Ana Maria Salazar (R-FL), urged Biden to take action by designating the gang a “transnational criminal organization.
The lawmakers told Biden that “if left unchecked, they will unleash an unprecedented reign of terror, mirroring the devastation it has already inflicted in communities throughout Central and South America, most prominently in Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru.”
Protecting the American people. It used to be such a simple concept.
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