We've been receiving warnings for some time now that violent gang members from Venezuela have been leaving their homeland and crossing Joe Biden's open southern border to set up shop in the United States. We've been told this by the Border Patrol, the FBI, and both state and local police. They meet up with friends already operating in our cities and they aren't coming here to "seek a new life." They are continuing the family business with some of the profits flowing back to their old bosses in Venezuela. Business is booming and it's exceedingly violent. But now it's probably becoming an even more dangerous situation. The leadership of the Tren de Aragua gang in Venezuela has reportedly sent word up North that their members in the Denver area have a "green light" to shoot and kill the Denver police if they try to interfere with their "operations." As if Denver needed one more thing to worry about amidst a flood of illegal migrants overflowing the shelters and sucking up all of the community resources. (NY Post)

Members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua have been given the “green light” to attack and open fire on cops in Denver, a federal memo obtained by The Post reveals.

The gang is already tied to hundreds of crimes, including the shootings of two NYPD cops who were trying to arrest one of its members in June.

“Credible human sources from Colorado provided information on TdA [Tren de Aragua] giving a ‘green light’ to fire on or attack law enforcement,” said the memo, from the Homeland Security Investigations office in Chicago.

I've researched some of the reports on this group and I'm not 100% sure that TdA is as bad as MS-13, but they are definitely playing in the same league. The website InSight Crime has a good profile on the group. They started out as a relatively small prison gang in the state of Aragua in Venezuela, but they had big ambitions. They quickly grew into a transnational threat and smuggling operation worth billions. And they have no compunction about killing law enforcement. When America's southern border was opened in 2021, they began swarming in like locusts. The State Department is currently offering a $12 million reward for information leading to the capture of the gang's three highest-ranking leaders no matter what country they are spotted in. 

How often have we heard leftist propagandists in politics and the media repeating the same tropes about this subject? When Donald Trump gives a campaign speech, he regularly talks about the dangers of our open borders and reminds us that countries like Venezuela are emptying their prisons and mental hospitals and sending the worst of the worst to our country. For this, he is regularly decried as a racist and those claims of racism continue no matter how many horror stories of trafficking, rape, and murder unfold before our eyes. The story of Tren de Aragua in the Denver area is not some new phenomenon. It's only the latest chapter in an ongoing story that has been gaining steam for several years.

Much of the crime that's seen unfolding surrounding illegal migrant and homeless encampments seems to be primarily lower-cost, street-level crime. Much of it primarily involves property crime and drug sales, replete with overdoses. That's all certainly bad enough, but that's not what we're talking about here. There is no question that TdA is involved in drug trafficking and certainly human trafficking as well, including minors. But they are into so much more. They've gone far beyond street-level, smash-and-grab looting. This is basically the Venezuelan mafia that we're talking about at this point and they are international in nature. (Not that I'm suggesting there's any such thing as the Mafia in real life, just in case any of our fine Italian-American friends are reading this... we cool, guys?) 

The point is that the southern border is not "fine," no matter what you hear on MSNBC and CNN. In reality, the northern border isn't all the much better but we'll need to deal with that later. The Biden/Harris policies have not only not fixed anything, they caused all of this to begin with and it's not getting any better. TdA is just the latest iteration and they don't traditionally make empty threats. If their bosses back in Venezuela have given a thumbs up to killing police in Denver (and who knows where else), you can rest assured that some of the gang members will try to take them up on the offer. And if a TdA gangbanger kills a Denver cop, never forget that the officer's blood will be on the hands of Joe Biden and his border czar, Kamala Harris.