(The Center Square) – Eight Venezuelan men, all illegally in the U.S., have been arrested in Texas and Illinois on murder, kidnapping and firearms offenses.
All are believed to be members of the violent foreign terrorist organization, Tren de Aragua, prosecutors allege. They also all illegally entered the country during the Biden administration between December 2021 and April 2024, according to federal immigration records.
“Eight TdA members illegally entered the United States between 2021 and 2024 and are alleged to have committed horrific crimes, including murdering a father in front of his teenage daughter,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a news. conference. “This should never have happened in the first place, but under the Biden administration, open-border policies left the doors wide open, and hundreds of suspected and convicted Tren de Aragua terrorists poured into this country.”
During the Biden administration, more than one million Venezuelans, including some connected to TdA, illegally entered the country, The Center Square reported.
Nationwide, by December 2024, TdA members were reported to be committing crimes in at least 22 states, The Center Square exclusively reported. TdA is known for violence, murder, kidnapping, extortion, bribery and human and drug trafficking and its members are linked to hundreds of law enforcement investigations nationwide. TdA is operating nationwide, in Mexico and Central and South America, the DOJ said.
President Donald Trump was the first to designate TdA as a foreign terror organization. Since he’s been in office, nearly 350 TdA members and associates have been charged in 28 districts with “egregious violent crimes – murders, sex trafficking, kidnapping – along with weapons and drug trafficking, robbery, and widespread financial crimes,” Blanche said.
The charges were announced Thursday in the Northern District of Illinois and the Northern District of Texas.
In Illinois, on June 29, three alleged TdA members were charged with participating in a conspiracy to kidnap and murder a man who was walking down the street near Meyering Park on the South side of Chicago.
The victim was forced into a car and initially driven to a Chicago apartment where his wrists were bound behind his back and he was transported to an abandoned building, according to the charges. Chicago police officers found him dead inside an abandoned apartment, shot multiple times and with other injuries, according to the complaint.
The kidnapping and murder were tied to TdA activity in Chicago, authorities allege. Since 2024, law enforcement in Chicago have been investigating acts of violence, including murders and shootings, involving alleged TdA members and Anti-Tren members.
One of the defendants was wearing an ankle monitoring bracelet at the time of his arrest as he’d already been released for another crime he allegedly committed in Cook County, the DOJ said.
In Texas, on June 30, a grand jury indicted five TdA members, also all men from Venezuela who were illegally in the country, authorities say. Their charges include racketeering, murder, kidnapping and other violent offenses.
The charges relate to “a pattern of racketeering activity, which consisted of multiple acts involving murder, kidnapping, robbery, and bank fraud,” and the kidnapping of three people in August 2024, “for the purpose of maintaining and increasing position in TdA,” according to the charges.
Three men were charged with “murder in aid of racketeering for allegedly aiding and abetting each other in committing the murder of one of the individuals who was kidnapped” in August 2024. Another was charged with firearms offenses.
If convicted, all eight Venezuelans face up to life in prison. Five Venezuelans could face the death penalty in Texas, the DOJ said.
Multiple federal, state and local law enforcement agencies were involved in the Illinois and Texas investigations, which are ongoing and linked to other potential TdA crimes.
Investigators are part of a Homeland Security Task Force “dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings” operating in the U.S. and abroad.
They are also part of a DOJ Joint Task Force Vulcan created in the first Trump administration in 2019 to eradicate MS-13. It has since been expanded to target TdA.