8 alleged Tren de Aragua gang members charged with violent crimes
The Justice Department on Wednesday charged eight alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua with violent crimes in two separate districts.
In the Dallas area, a man and his two children were "kidnapped by TdA members who demanded that they pay them money" after the three were zip-tied "in the middle of the night," according to Ryan Raybould, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas.
"Once the alleged TdA members realized the man could not pay them, they pulled over by a bridge in Dallas and told the man to jump off," Raybould said. "When he refused to do so and attempted to flee, a TdA member gunned him down execution style in front of the two children."
Five were charged in the case.
In the Chicago area, officials said three men captured a victim and shot him multiple times in the head and allegedly taunted his mother.
"These violent murders should never have occurred in the first place, because these men should have never been allowed in our country," acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters at the Justice Department Wednesday. "Instead, eight TdA members from Venezuela came here illegally, all eight, every one of them, during the Biden administration, and went on to allegedly commit the heinous crime described in the charges discussed today."
The Trump administration has made a focus of targeting the gang as part of its ongoing immigration crackdown. Last year the administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act -- an 18th century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process -- to deport two planeloads of alleged TdA members to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador by arguing that the gang is a "hybrid criminal state" that is invading the United States.
Numerous family members and attorneys of the deported Venezuelans denied they had gang ties, and an official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged in a sworn statement that many of them did not have criminal records in the United States.
The Venezuelan nationals were ultimately released to their home country from CECOT in a prisoner swap last July.
Last week the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed to hear arguments over a federal judge's attempt to hold the Trump administration in contempt for defying his temporary restraining order blocking the removals.
