The police chief of a small North Dakota city says he and his officers were abandoned by federal authorities and left to fend for themselves when suspects suspected of being members of Torren de Aragua showed up in town. Ta.
North Dakota is in the grip of brutal Venezuelan immigrants after member Henry Tice, 25, was arrested last month on charges of hacking a West Fargo ATM and swindling it out of $100,000, authorities said. It is the latest state to report gangs operating there.
And he is not the only suspected TdA member currently identified in the city of 40,000 people.
West Fargo Police Chief Pete Nielsen told the Post that the department is doing its best to combat the threat of such foreign gang activity, but its resources are limited and federal assistance is not available. Without it, he said, the situation would only become more “difficult” and “frustrating.”
“Without federal support for these crimes that cross different state lines, it’s difficult for local police to crack down on some of these crimes,” he said.
“We haven’t had many federal partners knocking on our door to help us with this crime,” Nielsen said of the recent TdA bust.
Meanwhile, the police chief said officers were “monitoring” the “activities” of several other suspected Torren de Aragua members in the area.
“As the chief of police for this community, I will work to ensure that whoever commits a crime in our community is held accountable for their actions. We want to be able to remove people from the community,” Nielsen said.
Theis illegally crossed the border into El Paso, Texas, last year and was released into the United States by Border Patrol agents with a future court date, a Homeland Security official told the Post.
Then, in August 2024, Tice was arrested on DWI charges in Lewisville, Texas, but was later released for unknown reasons.
He was arrested again on Nov. 1 for the ATM crime, when he was arrested on suspicion of having $24,000 in bank cash, a face mask and black latex gloves in his car.
“I think the number one concern for police chiefs in any part of the country is that these people are in the country illegally,” Nielsen said. “Secondly, they are being arrested for a crime. And we are releasing (them) into a country where they are not supposed to be.”
ICE recently filed a detainer application with the Cass County Jail to take Tice into custody.
The arrest of a suspect in North Dakota, one of the most remote and sparsely populated states, confirms that TdA is now in 17 states.
Nielsen said he hopes that will change once President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. The police chief said he would do everything in his power to help with the mass deportations promised by President Trump.
“If we were given an order from Tom Homan to assist the federal government in apprehending people who are here in our community illegally, I think we would comply with that order and assist the federal government in any way possible. “They needed us to do that,” he said, referring to President Trump’s border czar.
