In just a few short years, the hyper-violent Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua has gone viral in 16 U.S. states and is eyeing further expansion, worried cops say.
According to a report in the New York Post, Homeland Security officials were warned in an intelligence memo about the group’s rapidly expanding presence.
TdA has most recently landed in the District of Columbia, Virginia, Montana and Wyoming. Already the thugs have a presence in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.
“They go from human trafficking to organized retail crime theft, and then they move into the drug trade, taking on the cartels in very violent, bloody battles that they’ve had,” Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch told Fox News.
And the more entrenched the gang becomes, the more they hike their “violent tendencies”, the memo added.
“As the population of Venezuelan nationals continues to increase, the potential for violent TdA migrants is highly probable,” the memo said.
Washington was targeted because of its proximity to the wealthy suburbs of northern Virginia. There, the gang engages in thefts, robberies and assaults and what the memo described as “lower-level fraud and theft schemes.”
The gang then sends the purloined cash “back to South America as a means of financing additional criminal enterprises.”
President-elect Donald Trump has said that cracking down on Tren de Aragua will be a top priority for the administration. Trump has also vowed to unleash “mass deportation” using ICE and also the U.S. military.
It is unlikely that TdA members will go down without a fight. In New York City, the gang has targeted cops and engaged in assaults, snatch-and-grab robberies and firearms smuggling into migrant shelters. As well, they prey on vulnerable women and force them into sex trafficking.
Gang members have embedded themselves into the tsunami of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Border Patrol sources told the Post that because of sparse information coming out of Venezuela, detecting gangsters has been difficult.
Instead, they have been released into the country.
Making matters worse, the regime in Venezuela has refused to accept deportation flights.
The gang was in the spotlight in October when cops in El Paso, Texas arrested the heavily tattooed Estefania “La Barbie” Primera, the queen bee of the gang’s sex trafficking operations.
A leaked Border Patrol memo reported that the illegal immigrant allegedly drugged one young woman, held her captive in a hotel and brought in men to gang-rape her.
On TikTok, Primera – based in El Paso – uses the handle “barbie underground.” She was arrested on Sept. 27 with her five young children who officials claim she uses as drug mules for the gangs.
At her Gateway Hotel headquarters, officials dealt with more than 700 complaints regarding the joint’s lawlessness.
One sex-trafficking victim named Primera as the queen of the prostitution ring. The victims were allegedly trafficked into the U.S. for the sole purpose of generating money for Tren de Aragua via sex.
Another told cops that the female gangbanger drugged her numerous times with a capsule that contained deadly fentanyl as part of the mix. She would pass out then awake as numerous men raped her.
Court documents say the woman suffered horrific injuries from the gang rape.
And when the victim tried to escape, “Barbie” dragged her back to her hotel HQ where she frequently battered the woman.
@HunterTOSun