HOUSTON, Texas — More than 100 suspected members of Tren de Aragua (TdA) were a part of the group that violently stormed the border at El Paso, Texas in March — as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has declared the Venezuelan prison gang a foreign terrorist organization.
“Earlier this year, more than 100 suspected TdA members were arrested after the riots at the El Paso border, when immigrants assaulted the Texas National Guard,” Gov. Abbott revealed Monday, as he announced a plan to crack down on the group’s growing presence across the US.
The wild border rush, captured exclusively by The Post, saw hundreds of illegal migrants break through razor wire to dash into the US — shoving Lone Star State troops in the process.
In one case, a migrant stomped on a service member’s knee as they tried to desperately make their way across the besieged southern border.
Abbott labeled the Venezuelan gang a “foreign terrorist organization” as he detailed his plan to quash the gang’s threat.
“Texas is aggressively going after these foreign terrorist organizations of TdA,” the governor declared during the Monday press conference.
The plan would institute a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for TdA smugglers bringing people into Texas, create a database to track members of the gang and beef up law enforcement’s capabilities to target the transnational criminal organization.
“Our goal among law enforcement in the state of Texas is to defend our state from the growing threat of TdA. We are not going to allow them to use Texas as a base of operations to terrorize our citizens,” he fumed.
Following the March melee, a judge dismissed charges against 211 of the migrants accused of rioting and then Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) let dozens of them go free into the US.
Since then, the gang has created footholds across the country, allegedly taking over apartments in Colorado, seizing hotels near the Texas border in El Paso and shooting cops in New York.
Texas authorities recently made 20 arrests, many of whom were suspected members of TdA, at the since-shuttered Gateway hotel in El Paso for allegedly engaging in human smuggling, prostitution and drug possession, Abbott said.
A Motel 6 in El Paso was also housing fugitive Venezuelan migrants accused of engaging in a violent jewelry store heist in Denver that took place in June, The Post first reported.
During Abbott’s announcement, National Border Patrol Council President for Texas Rio Grande Valley Chris Cabrera emphasized that stopping the “infestation” of TdA has been a challenge for border agents.
He called out the “weak-minded” Harris-Biden administration for allowing the gang to infiltrate the US due to the lack of thorough background checking, which he likened to an “honor system.”
This is because Venezuela doesn’t share any criminal history information to US officials.
In testimony before a committee panel last year, Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott blasted the “vetting” as akin to referencing them “against a blank sheet of paper.”
“With this gang, they’re not like MS-13s where you can see them coming a mile away with the crazy tattoos they have all over their faces,” Cabrera said.
“These guys fly under the radar. As a federal agent, we have no way of vetting these people, other than the honor system,” he added.
Within recent months, TdA has grown more “organized” in the US, where they plan to stay, a Texas law enforcement source recently told The Post.
