More than 800,000 Venezuelan immigrants have entered the United States in the past four years, including hundreds of members of the brutal Torren de Aragua prison gang.
However, the Biden administration gave up on deporting criminals and gang members in January after the Venezuelan government stopped accepting deportation flights from the United States.
This is a problem that President-elect Donald Trump must resolve if he is to fulfill his promise of mass deportations.
Tom Homan, who President Trump named border czar to lead deportation and border security efforts, said the incoming administration has significant leverage to get Venezuela to start accepting deportations. This included threats of additional sanctions and withholding of aid, totaling $3 billion. Last year it was $209 million.
“He got El Salvador to get MS-13 back and got Mexico to agree to a Remain in Mexico program, where I was able to trust President Trump and work with the president of Venezuela,” Homan said.
Venezuela has become one of the largest sources of immigrants to the United States. Millions of Venezuelans have fled their home country in recent years, fleeing corruption and economic collapse caused by President Nicolas Maduro’s communist regime.
The Biden administration has instituted a policy that grants Venezuelans temporary protected status, which protects them from deportation and priority work permits and makes travel more attractive.
Torren de Aragua saw an opportunity in the influx of Venezuelans to the United States and began infiltrating the country posing as an asylum seeker. Many members avoided having their gang’s distinctive tattoos detected when crossing the border.
Ron Vitiello, a former acting ICE director who served during President Trump’s first term, said the gang only began to appear on the radar of border officials and local police during the Biden administration.
“In reported CBP data, there are no arrests of Torren de Aragua members prior to 2021. Think about it, that’s unbelievable. I worked in the government for 34 years. . I had never heard of Torren de Aragua until after I left in 2021 and it was talked about in New York,” Vitiello told the Post.
Venezuela’s prison gangs now have a presence in at least 16 states, and their members have committed heinous crimes, including the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
The moratorium on deportations of Venezuelan immigrants also means members of Torren de Aragua Ban cannot be deported even if police find them to be a threat.
Some gang members have been arrested for minor crimes, released from custody, and subsequently committed violence.
One example is Niefred Serpa-Acosta, 20. ICE agents arrested him on multiple theft charges earlier this year, but released him on July 17. A month later, he made headlines after being accused of being part of an armed group that attacked an apartment complex. Located on the outskirts of Aurora, Colorado.
Serpa Acosta had already admitted to being a TdA member before ICE released him and had a tattoo to prove it, a Homeland Security official previously told the Post.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Venezuela was receiving U.S. deportation flights almost every week until January. Everything came to a screeching halt when the Biden-Harris administration imposed new sanctions on the dictatorship.
It is up to President Trump to decide how to resume deportation of Venezuelan criminals. Here’s how he does it.
Withdrawal of sanctions and state aid
In 2012, Wes Tabor, then head of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s office in Caracas, announced that deportations could be resumed through a “business-like” approach to “economically” and “crushing” the oil-rich country. He said it was possible.
“They have no choice against Mr. Trump, because if he reaches out and tries to do something reasonably against them… and he (Maduro) gives Mr. Trump the pinky. Trump is going to do everything he can to destroy them economically,” Taber said.
President Trump’s press secretary did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Forcibly’ expel TdA
The mission is “complex” but President Trump could try to “forcibly” return Venezuelan gangsters without government permission, Venezuelan dissident Daniel Di Martino said.
“At least one time this has happened in Haiti, the U.S. Coast Guard has deported people to Haitian shores without the consent of the Haitian government,” said Di Martino, who is also a researcher at the Manhattan Institute. .
Such an operation could involve transporting deported migrants to the Caribbean or Colombia and then placing them on boats that land on the coast of Venezuela.
Forced return to a third country
Another option is to pay other countries to house deported immigrants.
John Fabricatore, the former head of ICE’s Denver office, said it’s certainly possible that President Trump could “reach out” to countries like Colombia in exchange for aid and economic trade.
But Colombia, which is struggling with an influx of about 3 million Venezuelan refugees, is likely to be reluctant to accept convicted criminals from the United States.
