The Mexican Mafia, worried about the growing power and recklessness of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, has “greenlighted” killings of TdA members, said a homeland security expert who tracks cartel behavior.
Jarrod Sadulski said TdA has sent thousands of members across the border into the U.S. and has been encroaching on what the Mexican Mafia considers its territory. La Eme, as the mafia is known, has responded with the kill order.
“They’ve been greenlighted to murder them,” Mr. Sadulski said. His information comes from a former senior Sinaloa Cartel operative with ties to the Mexican Mafia, a coalition of Hispanic gangs that is primarily involved in drugs in the Southwest.
Tren de Aragua has become the face of crime amid the Biden border surge. Gang members have been implicated in some of the most high-profile cases over the past year. That includes a migrant mob attack on New York City police, the killing of university student Laken Riley in Georgia and the rape of a girl at a government-run migrant shelter in Massachusetts.
The gang also has quickly expanded its reach into more mundane criminal enterprises, such as drug distribution and prostitution.
The arrival of a new gang is always touchy on the streets as the old players try to figure out a new balance. They must decide whether to ignore the newcomer, try to co-opt it, take it over or go to war.
That La Eme chose war is not surprising.
“They’re concerned that TdA is getting too strong,” said Ali Hopper, a researcher who works with Mr. Sadulski. “They want to make sure they put TdA in their place.”
John Fabbricatore, a gang expert and retired senior executive at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he anticipated that kind of reaction from other gangs.
“You’re going to see a lot of brushback from gangs and cartels,” he said. “If this does spill over to the confrontations between these gangs, unfortunately, the normal civilian always gets caught in the middle.”
Former President Donald Trump threw a spotlight on TdA during the presidential debate this month when he pointed to a housing complex in Aurora, Colorado, where a viral video showed heavily armed young men walking through the hallways. Residents said they were TdA members.
Local authorities have disputed parts of that account.
Meanwhile, city officials in El Paso, Texas, moved to shut down the Gateway Hotel, a residential hotel, after TdA infiltrated the building. City police said criminal activity exploded once TdA took hold.
An officer said police had responded to hundreds of complaints at the Gateway over the past year. When officers were dispatched, they found drug paraphernalia and trash-strewn hallways with garbage piled high enough to block emergency exits, prostitution, and people with tattoos popular among TdA members.
Mr. Fabbricatore said TdA’s arrival reminds him of the cocaine gang wars of the 1980s, which were fueled by the arrival of tens of thousands of Cubans from the Mariel boat lift.
He noted similarities to TdA, except the U.S. government is making it even easier for the Venezuelans to gain a foothold thanks to the generous support to new arrivals under President Biden’s “parole” programs.
One program offers an iffy legal status to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans if they secure a sponsor in the U.S. and fly directly into airports, skipping the southern border. Another, open to a broader range of nationalities, welcomes unauthorized migrants with the same iffy legal status as long as they preschedule their arrivals at border crossings.
None of them has a legal visa to enter, yet most are granted parole and given some transition assistance. Work permits are issued to those who want them.
“We are literally setting things up for TdA. We are funding NGO housing for them, we are providing three months of rent. We are providing food benefits. They don’t have to struggle. They can go right to crime,” said Mr. Fabbricatore, who is running as a Republican for a seat in Congress in Colorado.
Sniffing out gang members from among the broader Venezuelan migration is tricky because the U.S. doesn’t have access to data from Venezuela, an adversarial nation.
Mr. Sadulski said TdA members often postpone their gang tattoos until after they are in the U.S., making it tough for Customs and Border Protection agents and officers to spot them.
TdA is strategic about where it goes.
“TdA will study the state laws, study law enforcement. They find the weakness in the area of operation where they’re at,” Mr. Sadulski said.
The gang is the first from Venezuela to make it on the international scene. Its expansion largely tracks the broader exodus of Venezuelans escaping the calamity of the Maduro regime: in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Chile.
More recently, it has gained footholds in the U.S.
Mr. Sadulski said TdA has indications of alignment with the Cartel of the Suns, a drug smuggling operation with ties to the Venezuelan government. Indeed, after the Venezuelan government deployed thousands of security forces to retake the TdA-controlled Tocoron prison last year, experts said it seemed staged and pointed out that the gang’s top leaders escaped.
TdA leader Hector Guerrero Flores, also known as Nino Guerrero, went on the run.
In July, the Treasury Department declared TdA a “deadly criminal threat” and slapped financial sanctions on the group’s assets. The State Department announced a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Mr. Guerrero, $4 million for Yohan Jose Romero and $3 million for Giovanny San Vicente.
“Tren de Aragua leverages its transnational networks to traffic people, especially migrant women and girls, across borders for sex trafficking and debt bondage. When victims seek to escape this exploitation, Tren de Aragua members often kill them and publicize their deaths as a threat to others,” the Treasury Department said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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