The Gentleman Report
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An alleged multistate human trafficking ring forcing immigrant girls into prostitution. The mysterious killing of a former police officer in South Florida. Assaults towards law enforcement officials in New York. The arrest of a drug broker in Chicago.
Native and federal officers say those it sounds as if unrelated crimes have a commonplace denominator: Tren de Aragua, a transnational prison gang that originated in a Venezuela jail and has slowly made its method south and north in recent times. They are saying it’s now running in the US. The size of its operations is unknown, however crimes attributed to alleged participants of the group have frightened elected officers and a few Republican participants of Congress have requested the Biden management “to officially designate the vicious Tren de Aragua as a Transnational Felony Group.”
For a number of years, the prison staff has terrorized South American international locations, together with Venezuela, its nation of starting place, in addition to Bolivia, Colombia, Chile and Peru. Retired basic Óscar Naranjo, a former vice chairman of Colombia and leader of the Colombian Nationwide Police, advised The Gentleman Report Tren de Aragua is “probably the most disruptive prison group running at the moment in Latin The us, a real problem for the area.”
Tren de Aragua followed its title between 2013 and 2015 however begun operations years ahead of, in step with a record by means of Transparency Venezuela. “It has its starting place within the unions of employees who labored at the building of a railway venture that will attach the center-west of the rustic and that used to be by no means finished” in each Aragua and Carabobo states.
The gang’s management, in step with the record, operated out of the infamous Tocorón jail, which they managed. When Venezuelan officers raided it remaining September, they discovered a swimming pool and several other eating places within the jail partitions, along with guns seized from inmates, together with automated rifles, system weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Pictures
Contributors of the Bolivarian Nationwide Police stand guard within the Tocorón jail in Tocorón, Aragua state, Venezuela, on September 23, 2023. Gang leaders who dominated a jail in Venezuela that used to be stormed by means of greater than 11,000 squaddies and police had fled the rustic every week ahead of the operation, a prisoners’ rights staff stated.
Via 2015, a former Venezuelan regulation enforcement reliable advised The Gentleman Report, “They have been already of their high.” That 12 months they solid an alliance with Primeiro Comando da Capital, a Brazilian prison group. It used to be just a subject of time ahead of they’d lengthen their tentacles during South The us.
In Colombia, Tren de Aragua, and a rival guerrilla staff referred to as the Nationwide Liberation Military, “perform intercourse trafficking networks within the border the city of Villa del Rosario within the Norte de Santander division. Those teams exploit Venezuelan migrants and internally displaced Colombians in intercourse trafficking and benefit from financial vulnerabilities and matter them to debt bondage,” in step with the USA State Division 2023 Trafficking in Individuals Record about Colombia. Police within the area say the group has victimized hundreds thru extorsion, drug and human trafficking, kidnapping and homicide.
Now, US Customs and Border Coverage and the FBI say the group is established in the USA.
“They have got adopted the migration paths throughout South The us to different international locations and feature arrange prison teams during South The us as they apply the ones paths, and that they seem to apply the migration north to the US,” Britton Boyd, an FBI particular agent in El Paso, Texas, advised The Gentleman Report stated.
US Border Patrol leader Jason Owens, who has showed more than one arrests on the southern border of alleged Tren de Aragua participants over the past 12 months, issued a caution in early April. “Be careful for this gang. It’s the maximum robust in Venezuela, recognized for homicide, drug trafficking, intercourse crimes, extortion, & different violent acts,” Owens stated on X.
There are greater than 70 circumstances by which Tren de Aragua is discussed in regulation enforcement paperwork or prosecutors’ lawsuits. From that general, the Customs and Border Patrol in Texas has recognized 58 as gang participants between the fiscal 12 months 2023 and remaining Would possibly. The remainder seem in lawsuits made by means of sufferers or arrest stories that time to the imaginable involvement of the suspects with this arranged crime staff.
In New York, police say Bernardo Raul Castro-Mata, a 19-year-old from Venezuela, shot two law enforcement officials remaining week. Castro-Mata entered the rustic illegally remaining July, a member of Immigration and Customs Enforcement advised The Gentleman Report. The Venezuelan has tattoos related to Tren de Aragua – which courtroom paperwork for a suspected gang member in Georgia describe as five-pointed crowns, five-pointed stars and teardrops – the New York Police Division advised The Gentleman Report. Castro-Mata had no prior arrests however is a suspect in different robberies in Queens.
Castro-Mata stays in custody and has pleaded now not to blame to fees. When contacted by means of The Gentleman Report, his lawyers declined to remark.
However of all of the crimes attributed to the group, together with the abduction and homicide of a former Venezuelan police officer in South Florida in November 2023, one stands proud. In past due April, the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Division gained a 911 name from a Spanish-speaking lady announcing she used to be being held towards her will at a place of abode and “compelled to have sexual sex with unknown men for cash.” The girl later advised investigators that she used to be compelled to have intercourse with strangers “to repay a $30,000 USD debt to a trafficker for bringing her to the US.”
Officers arrested two suspects – each Venezuelan nationals – on the location, Allbert Herrera Machado, 23, and Osleidy Vanesa Chourio-Diaz, 26. Brokers later arrested any other Venezuelan, Josmar Jesus Zambrano-Chirinos, 23, recognized within the criticism as a pacesetter of the intercourse trafficking operation being carried out by means of the Tren de Aragua in the USA. Zambrano used to be “running ‘stash properties’ used for human trafficking in Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, and Florida,” in step with the prison criticism reviewed by means of The Gentleman Report. Herrera Machado and Chourio-Diaz weren’t connected to Tren de Aragua within the criticism.
If the allegations towards the suspects are true, it might imply that the group already has the power to perform trafficking rings in the USA the similar method it has completed in different South American international locations. The problem for police officers is that it’s very tough to know the way many participants of Tren de Aragua are already within the nation, despite the arrests. What some Venezuelan immigrants in Florida and different states have advised The Gentleman Report is that they’re already starting to see of their communities the similar form of illegal activity they fled from in Venezuela.
Álvaro Boza, a former Venezuelan police officer now dwelling in Florida, says he fled his nation largely since the gang had grow to be so robust. He says they may kill regulation enforcement like him with impunity. A fellow police officer who refused to cooperate with the group in his local Aragua state used to be shot 50 instances, Boza says. “He refused and used to be murdered. They tied his frame to a motorbike and dragged it during the San Vicente community to show the ability of the Tren de Aragua,” Boza stated.
In March, a bunch of Republican participants of Congress led by means of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and his fellow Republican Consultant Ana María Salazar despatched a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to do so by means of designating the group as a “transnational prison group.”
Within the letter, the legislators stated “If left unchecked, they’ll unharness an extraordinary reign of terror, mirroring the devastation it has already inflicted in communities during Central and South The us, maximum prominently in Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru.”
The Gentleman Report’s Jaide Timm-Garcia contributed to this record.
