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When the Justice Department announced RICO indictments against Tren de Aragua associates this week, it was making a statement not just about the 27 people being charged but about the organization, reach and violent activities of a gang the government now deems a terrorist organization.
Authorities connected members of TdA and an offshoot, known as “Anti Tren,” to everything from carjacking and extortion to sex trafficking and murder. And lots and lots of guns.
Two days later, the department unsealed its first indictment bringing terrorism charges against an alleged TdA member. Prosecutors said Jose Enrique Martinez Flores provided “material support” to TdA and sought to import large amounts of cocaine into the U.S.
“Tren de Aragua is not just a street gang – it is a highly structured terrorist organization that has destroyed American families with brutal violence, engaged in human trafficking, and spread deadly drugs through our communities,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in announcing the RICO indictments.
That vision of the gang challenges the claims of immigration groups, who say — and have argued in court — that the Trump team is overselling the danger from the Venezuelan gang in a xenophobic effort to scare Americans into accepting dangerous immigration policies.
Rebecca Hanson, an assistant sociology and criminology professor at the University of Florida, told a judge in court filings that TdA is “a loose, disorganized group” that “has no structured presence in the United States.”
“The TdA is a relatively new gang with limited resources and therefore relatively limited capacity as compared to peer gangs,” she said.
Squaring the two visions is tough — but it’s at the heart of the constitutional crisis that’s erupted around President Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law, to bypass the usual immigration system and speed deportation of Venezuelan migrants who streamed into the U.S. in unfathomable numbers during the Biden years.
Mr. Trump argues that TdA is a terrorist organization that operates on behalf of the Venezuelan government, a nation with an adversarial relationship to the U.S. It is engaged in an “invasion or predatory incursion,” which is the test for being able to use the Alien Enemies Act.
The president’s opponents question just about every part of that story.
“There is no credible evidence that TdA has a foothold as a criminal organization within the United States,” Ms. Hanson said. “TdA activities are neither widespread nor coordinated within the United States. The profile of suspected TdA crimes in the United States do not indicate a systemic criminal enterprise.”
The RICO cases suggest otherwise.
In one, brought against six alleged members of TdA, authorities said they engaged in murder, robbery, extortion, carjacking, gun-dealing, drug dealing and, most notably, sex trafficking. The indictment said women were smuggled from Venezuela into the U.S., pressed into prostitution and kept there with threats of violence — and in some cases were kidnapped or killed for defying the gang.
The other, brought against 21 accused members or “associates” of Anti Tren, described as a violent splinter group, accused it of much the same activity, with a special emphasis on dealing in “tusi,” also known as “pink cocaine,” a synthetic ketamine-based party drug.
Guns are prevalent in both criminal cases, with authorities running a confidential source who bought expensive weapons from one of the defendants.
Authorities indicated that many of those charged were in the country illegally. Investigators were even able to track the whereabouts of one defendant, Jarwin Valero-Calderon, because he was wearing a Homeland Security-issued GPS ankle monitor, apparently as part of his catch-and-release as an unauthorized immigrant.
TdA is now a designated terrorist organization after a Trump executive order prodded the State Department to make the determination, adding it, MS-13 and several Mexican smuggling cartels to the list.
But Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge and head of the national security law division at the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service, said even the Biden administration saw danger in TdA.
He said it was former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen who designated TdA a transnational criminal organization, and former Secretary of State Antony Blinken who offered multi-million-dollar bounties for the group’s leaders.
“That’s not Trump, that’s Biden,” said Mr. Arthur, who is now with the Center for Immigration Studies.
Steven Dudley, co-director of Insight Crime, which closely tracks gang activity in the western hemisphere, said the gang is considered a threat to South American nations.
“However, although Tren de Aragua is undoubtedly a powerful criminal organization in Venezuela and some other parts of South America, there is no evidence of a structured or operational presence in the United States and no evidence of the Maduro regime communicating with it or any purported leaders, or directing it or any purported leaders to commit crimes in the U.S.,” he told the court.
Much of the debate of TdA centers on how ICE goes about identifying members here in the U.S.
Lawyers for the Venezuelans say authorities oftentimes rely on little more than tattoos, clothing or hand signals the men are seen making in social media posts.
Andrew Antillano, head of criminology at the Central University of Venezuela, said in court filings that the gang has no real culture or symbols, or even a real defined membership. That makes it impossible to discern membership based on a specific gesture or tattoo.
“Tattoos are popular among young Venezuelans and have no connection to belonging to a specific criminal organization or subculture,” he said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, though, say they don’t make determinations solely on tattoos and also rely on investigations and informants to tie people to the gang.
TdA’s reach is an issue in several current cases challenging Mr. Trump’s deportation powers.
One federal judge in Colorado this week went the furthest in undermining Mr. Trump’s claims.
U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney, a Biden appointee, ruled that there is insufficient evidence to say that TdA is closely tied to the Venezuelan government to the extent that it would trigger the Alien Enemies Act.
She also said the surge of Venezuelan migrants that rushed the U.S. over the last four years doesn’t count as an “invasion” as envisioned by the 18th-century law.
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