Venezuela’s violent prison gang Torren de Aragua has expanded its territory into at least 16 U.S. states, including half of the country’s population, the Post reported. .
Homeland Security officials were warned last week in an Interior Department intelligence memo about TdA’s growing presence across the country, most recently in Washington, D.C., Virginia, Montana and Wyoming. Ta.
The gang already has locations in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin, according to previous Memo and Post reporting.
The memo added that as the gang spreads, its “violent tendencies” will only increase.
The memo said Torren de Aragua’s arrival in the capital and Virginia suburbs coincided with the region’s “growing immigrant population.”
“As the population of Venezuelans continues to grow, violent TdA migration is very likely to occur,” the memo warns.
Fairfax County police arrested three suspected members on shoplifting charges in August 2023 after a clash with a violent Virginia gang.
One of the suspects had a fake Venezuelan ID, and all three had distinctive gang tattoos.
Gang members target the Washington, D.C., area because they can easily travel to the northern Virginia suburbs to commit thefts, robberies and assaults, the memo said.
According to the memo, its members are increasingly involved in “low-level fraud and theft schemes” and send stolen funds “back to South America as a means of financing further criminal enterprises.”
In one of the incidents cited in the documents, a person believed to be a member of Torren de Aragua withdrew $118,000 in “fraudulent check deposits” from a Florida bank account before the fraud was discovered. The money was reportedly transferred to a Venezuelan bank account.
The sheriff of Wyoming’s most populous county told the newspaper on Monday that although he “has not established a presence” in the western state, he has suspected TdA members in jail.
“We have a TdA suspect in our jail who is on trial in December for possession of a stolen vehicle in Colorado,” said Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak.
“This is the only incident in Wyoming where a possible TdA member was arrested, and he was just passing by when he was arrested. “We haven’t seen an increase in that,” he claimed.
TdA members were part of the wave of millions of migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden-Harris administration. U.S. Border Patrol officials say they were easily released into the U.S. because there was no intelligence sharing between the U.S. and Venezuela to find gang members.
Further complicating the dire situation is the fractious relationship between the Biden-Harris administration and Venezuela’s Maduro regime. Maduro’s government is refusing to accept deportation flights transporting Venezuelans from the United States to the South American country.
President-elect Donald Trump says cracking down on Torren de Aragua will be a top priority of his administration, and says he will use not only ICE but also the U.S. military to carry out a historic “mass deportation” effort. .
In New York, TdA members have been involved in police shootings, assaults, snatch robberies, and smuggling guns into immigrant shelters.
The gang is also said to be sex-trafficking immigrant women on Roosevelt Street in Queens.
Beyond the cities and states that are Democratic sanctuaries, TdA is establishing itself in unlikely parts of the country.
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch told “Fox & Friends” on Friday that the gang operates human trafficking rings in Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga.
“They go from human trafficking to organized retail crime theft, and they’re moving into drug trafficking and taking on cartels in very violent and bloody battles,” Rausch said.
