Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced an “aggressive” crackdown on a Venezuelan gang that authorities fear is gaining a foothold in the state following the closure last week of a crime-ridden hotel housing gang members.
Abbott signed a proclamation designating Tren de Aragua (TDA) as a foreign terrorist organization and a tier-one gang during a news conference in Houston on Sept. 16.
“They have a target on their back, and we’re going after them,” Abbott said of TDA.
“We have one goal in this—to arrest them and make them understand that Texas is the wrong state for them to be trying to do business.”
Venezuelan gang activity has been noted across Texas, particularly at the Gateway Hotel in El Paso, which has now been temporarily closed due to crime activity, Abbott said.
In the last few months, Texas Department of Public Safety agents worked with the El Paso Police Department gang units to arrest suspected TDA members at and around the Gateway Hotel, Abbott said.
More than 20 arrests—including many suspected TDA members—were made on charges that included human smuggling, prostitution, possession of illegal drugs, and other crimes.
Also, Abbott said that more than 100 suspected TDA gang members were arrested after a group of illegal immigrants overpowered and “assaulted” the Texas National Guard at El Paso in March, an incident that was captured on video and broadcast nationwide.
Intelligence on the gang indicated TDA was given the green light to “shoot law enforcement,” Abbott said.
The Republican Texas governor, a fierce critic of the Biden administration’s open border policy, also announced that the Texas Department of Public Safety will create a new TDA strike force and database.
President Joe Biden designated Tren de Aragua as a transnational criminal organization in July.
Abbott said the state’s nine gang centers will work with federal and local law enforcement to identify and arrest members of the Venezuelan gang operating in Texas.
Texas is a “law and order state” and will not allow the gang to become entrenched, he said.
The Venezuelan gang dominates the international flow of illegal immigrants from South America and Central America through Mexico and into the United States.
Gang members usually settle where other Venezuelans are and start to establish a criminal organization, which then begins to spread, Abbott said.
Some 3,000 Venezuelans have been arrested in Texas since 2021, Abbott said, but without a reliable TDA database, there’s no way to tell if they are gang members.
Chris Cabrera, a spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council, said during the news conference that there’s no reliable way to vet TDA gang members at the southwest border because Venezuela doesn’t share criminal information with the United States.
Besides Texas, gang members have been responsible for crime in Colorado, New York, Michigan, and Florida, he said.
Ammon Blair, a former Border Patrol agent who is now a senior fellow for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, applauded Abbott’s efforts and said the database was sorely needed.
He said the only way to track transnational criminal organizations currently is through the FBI’s uniform crime report, which is considered outdated.
“This is a step in the right direction. It’s something the federal government has failed to do,” Blair said.
Alarm in Texas and Colorado
In Texas, the group garnered national attention after El Paso County Attorney Christina Sanchez filed a lawsuit on Aug. 27 to close the Gateway Hotel on Stanton Street in downtown El Paso for multiple code violations.
The lawsuit noted 693 police and service calls to the location over the past two years, including complaints of aggravated assaults, drug delivery and possession, fighting and disorderly conduct, and indecency with a child, according to court documents.
The lawsuit names the Gateway Hotel, Gigante Enterprises LLC, which owns the business, and hotel owner Howard Yun as defendants. When contacted by The Epoch Times, Yun indicated he did not understand English well enough to comment.
An injunction signed last week by District Judge Maria Salas-Mendoza temporarily shut down the hotel, pending a Dec. 9 hearing on a permanent injunction.
TDA, with an estimated 5,000 members worldwide, is feared in Latin America and has been connected to murder, drugs, and human trafficking.
Their members are believed to be taking advantage of the border crisis chaos, illegally slipping across the U.S. southern border.
The law firm Perkins Coie investigated the situation. It represents the lender for Whispering Pines, a 54-unit apartment complex at 1357 Helena Street in Aurora.;
Evidence indicates that the Venezuelan gang members in Aurora also engaged in human trafficking, according to Perkins Coie’s attorney T. Markus Funk.
