The alleged ringleader of a brutal robbery in an upscale Dallas neighborhood that shocked Texans is a confirmed Tren de Aragua gang member who was welcomed into the country just last year, sources told The Post.
Venezuelan illegal migrant Wilmer Colmenares Gonzalez, 27, allegedly held police at bay for hours after the robbery squad followed the victim into her garage, pistol-whipped her and forced her into her home in Northwest Dallas, where they made off with the valuables inside the woman’s Gucci handbag on Sept. 21, according to cops.
Colmenares Gonzalez crossed the border illegally into Brownsville, Texas, with his wife, who is also Venezuelan, and a Chilean child in April 2023. They were was quickly released into the country with a future court date in Chicago, Homeland Security sources told The Post.
Since his arrest in the Dallas area, federal immigration authorities have labeled him as a confirmed Tren de Aragua member, per sources.
He also has a pending application for temporary protected status, which the Biden-Harris administration gives to certain Venezuelan migrants seeking to stay in the US without the threat of deportation.
The group of migrants allegedly tied up the woman and threatened to cut off her fingers if she didn’t show them where her expensive jewelry stash was located, according to Fox affiliate KDFW-TV.
Hernandez-Hernandez told cops he didn’t know his alleged accomplices, adding that the crew was instructed to collect money from a prostitute who owed the gang, according to police records reviewed by the station.
During his standoff with police, Colmenares Gonzalez allegedly barricaded himself inside a home as Dallas cops and the Irving Police Department SWAT team deployed outside, WFAA-TV News reported.
Along with Colmenares Gonzales, police arrested three other illegal migrants — Yean Brayhan Torralba, 20, Alberto Martinez Silva, 34, and Manuel Hernandez-Hernandez, 28 — who are suspected TdA gang members who were also allegedly involved in the tense 8-hour standoff with police after carrying out the violent $75,000 jewelry heist.
Cops tracked the suspects down using surveillance video from the victim’s garage and fingerprints collected at the scene, WFAA said.
Another one of the suspected gangbangers Manuel Hernandez-Hernandez, 28, was arrested just weeks before the robbery by North Richland Hills for a DWI, but was ultimately let go.
Following the robbery, ICE issued a detainer seeking to take him into federal custody.
Before that, Hernandez-Hernandez crossed the border illegally into El Paso, Texas, in March this year before being quickly released into the US with a future court date in Chicago, where he told border agents he would be living.
Tren de Aragua members have made their way into the US posing as asylum seekers at the border to get released into the US, where they’ve engaged in gun smuggling, shootings, drug smuggling and sex trafficking.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently designated TdA as a terrorist organization and deployed state law enforcement to counter the gang’s growing presence in the Lone Star State.
Authorities in Texas have already arrested dozens of suspected and confirmed TdA ganbangers, including at the since-shuttered Gateway Hotel in the border town of El Paso and at an apartment complex in San Antionio last week.
Over 100 suspected TdA gangbangers are also believed to have taken part in a violent mob riot at the El Paso border in March, where Texas soldiers were brutally assaulted.
