Back in March, one shocking video emerged of hundreds of illegal migrants rushing the fence near El Paso, Texas. They cut down and broke through fences, crashing into CBP officers and local authorities, with some officials being injured in the process. Some of them were eventually turned back or detained, but many of them made it through, disappearing into the Texas countryside. Now, follow-up investigations have revealed that at least one hundred of the violent migrants were not simply random migrants seeking a new life in America. They were members of the notorious Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua (TdA). Some were detained, but despite the fact that such known gang members are supposed to be barred from entry or any form of amnesty by default, many others made it into the country and spread out to various cities so they could hook up with their old friends and get back down to business. (NY Post)
More than 100 suspected members of Tren de Aragua (TdA) were a part of the group that violently stormed the border at El Paso, Texas in March — as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has declared the Venezuelan prison gang a foreign terrorist organization.
“Earlier this year, more than 100 suspected TdA members were arrested after the riots at the El Paso border, when immigrants assaulted the Texas National Guard,” Gov. Abbott revealed Monday, as he announced a plan to crack down on the group’s growing presence across the US.
The wild border rush, captured exclusively by The Post, saw hundreds of illegal migrants break through razor wire to dash into the US — shoving Lone Star State troops in the process.
We're learning about this now because Texas Governor Greg Abbott is rolling out a new plan designed specifically to deal with these gang members. Under new proposed legislation, gang members will be pursued with greater vigor with more resources being dedicated to properly IDing and vetting them. The new plan will introduce a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for TdA smugglers bringing people into Texas, create a database to track members of the gang, and beef up law enforcement’s capabilities to target the transnational criminal organization.
Some of you likely recall the recent spate of "takeovers" of apartment complexes and warehouse spaces by TdA gang members in places like Aurora, Colorado. Liberal Democratic politicians literally laughed at reports of the perpetrators being members of a violent Venezuelan prison gang, calling such claims a figment of someone's "imagination." But as Border Patrol agents have routinely pointed out, these denials are easily disproven. It simply takes more work to sort out the TdA members from the rest of the gangbangers because they are bit more clever in their approach.
CBP notes that the MS-13 members are significantly easier to weed out because of all of the "crazy tattoos" they have all over their bodies, including on their faces. They are like walking billboards for their gang. TdA members tend to wear their ink where it will typically be covered by a shirt or their pants. Further, they are likely well aware that the Venezuelan government does not share the identities or criminal histories of suspects with U.S. immigration officials. If we're lucky and they've been arrested previously, they may show up in international terror-tracking databases or American arrest records. But by putting a trace on them after they are in the country, their gang affiliations can be established quickly enough in many cases.
Unfortunately, none of this aggressive policing will ever be effective enough unless we have the full cooperation of United States law enforcement and immigration control officials. Some border states like Texas take these responsibilities seriously because the actions of the illegal migrants leave them no choice. But far too many liberals are afraid to cooperate with these enforcement efforts because doing so would be an inadvertent admission that the open border policies of the Biden/Harris administration have failed miserably and made the country far less safe. But this crisis demands effective answers. If we can't trust Venezuela to take these violent gang members back and lock them up in their own prisons, room will have to be found to lock them up in ours.
