A United States Congressman from Texas warned that a violent Venezuelan gang is exploiting America’s open southern border to build its presence and consolidate its power within the United States.
Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX) warned that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua will become the most powerful criminal gang in the country after years of taking advantage of America’s border crisis.
“This gang in several years is going to be the dominant transnational criminal organization throughout the United States. There’s no doubt in my mind,” Rep. Gonzales explained in an interview with Fox News. “They’re very vicious. They have no rules. They gobble up territory almost like a cancer.”
The gang, which engages in kidnapping, sex trafficking, murder, and extortion, may have counted the killer of Laken Riley among its members. Jose Ibarra, the illegal alien charged with the murder of the young nursing student in Georgia, has a number of tattoos associated with the Venezuelan gang, including a five-pointed crown on his neck.
The gang is also tied to the strangling of a retired police officer in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, as well as the beating of a New York City Police Officer.
Gonzalez explained that the only way to solve the crisis is to empower Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hunt down and deport criminal illegal immigrants. “You have to have ICE have the ability to go around and actively hunt these criminal aliens that have committed crimes, hunt them down and deport them,” Gonzales explained. “That has to happen, and when it does happen, it can’t happen in a vacuum. People have to know what’s happening. And it can’t just happen in one part of the country. It has to happen throughout the country.”
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The reported growth of Tren de Aragua within the United States comes as the country has faced an unprecedented border crisis under the Biden administration. Over 10 million people have crossed the border since President Joe Biden took office, with an estimated 1.7 million illegal immigrant gotaways recorded since Biden took office in 2021. There were 415,000 total reported gotaways for 2018, 2019, and 2020 under the Trump administration. There have also been over one million illegal immigrant encounters on the southern border in just the first six months of fiscal year 2024.