America Under Attack: DHS warns that Tren de Aragua has already set up shop in 16 states

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Officials with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a warning that the violent Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA), has expanded its territory to nearly 16 states, covering an area that includes half of America's population.

According to the New York Post, DHS officials were warned in an internal department intelligence memo about TdA's growing presence across the United States, most recently in Washington, D.C., Virginia, Montana, and Wyoming. The vicious gang already has footholds in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. 

The memo, which was issued on November 14th, states, "This document reviews the expansion of the Venezuela-based Transnational Criminal Organization (TCO) Tren de Aragua (TdA) as well as their methods of criminality, history, and common identifiers." The gang has only increased its "violent tendencies" as it continues to spread across the country.

TdA's arrival in the nation's capital and nearby Virginia coincided with "increases in migrant populations" there, as noted in the memo from DHS. The memo warned, "As the population of Venezuelan nationals continues to increase, the potential for violent TdA migrants is highly probable." In one run-in with the violent gang in Virginia, police in Fairfax County arrested three suspected gang members back in August 2023 for shoplifting. One of the suspects had a fake Venezuelan ID and all three of them had the gang's signature tattoos.

The gang's members are targeting the D.C. area because they can travel with ease to nearby suburbs in norther Virginia to carry out thefts, robberies, and assaults. The memo said that its members are increasingly engaged in "lower-level fraud and theft schemes," sending their stolen funds back to "South America" as a means of "financing criminal enterprises." 

In one case cited in the memo, a suspected TdA member withdrew $118,000 from a Florida bank account with "fraudulent check deposits" and wired the money to bank accounts in Venezuela before any fraud was detected. A sheriff with a heavily populated county in Wyoming said that while he "would not say they have established a presence" in the Western state, he is holding a suspected TdA member in his jail.

Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak said, "We have a person in our jail who is suspected of being TdA who is being held for trial in December for being in possession of a car that was stolen in Colorado." He said, "This is the only arrest of a possible TdA member in Wyoming and he was just passing through when he was arrested. We have not seen an increase in Venezuelan immigrants in Wyoming, especially the criminal gang type."

TdA members illegally crossed the southern border as troves of other illegal immigrants made their way into the United States during the Biden administration, and with no information-sharing between the U.S. and Venezuela to detect gang members, they were easily released into the U.S.

As noted by the Post, further complicating the disastrous situation is the not-so-good relationship between the Biden administration and Venezuela's Maduro regime, which is refusing to accept deportation flights carrying Venezuelans from the United States back to the South American country. President-elect Donald Trump said that cracking down on TdA will be a top priority for his administration, adding it will carry out a "historic mass deportation" effort leveraging not only ICE, but the U.S. military.

In New York, TdA members have engaged in shootings of cops, assaults, smash-and-go robberies, and gun smuggling into migrant shelters. The gang is also said to be engaged in sex trafficking of migrant women on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. Outside of Democratic sanctuary cities and states, TdA has established itself in other unlikely areas of the country. Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch said that the gang has been running human trafficking rings in Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga.

He said, "They go from human trafficking to organized retail crime theft, and then they move into the drug trade, taking on the cartels in very violent, bloody battles that they've had."