New York City’s mayor and police commissioner and a top White House immigration official announced on Tuesday two indictments charging 27 people they said were linked to Tren de Aragua, a gang that the Trump administration has said poses a unique threat to America.
“Tren de Aragua is not just a street gang — it is a highly structured terrorist organization that has destroyed American families with brutal violence,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement touting the charges, adding that the arrests “will devastate TdA’s infrastructure” in three states.
Six defendants were named as members or associates of Tren, which the Trump administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The other 21 people, prosecutors said, had broken away to join a violent splinter group called anti-Tren.
Still, officials argued, in displaying dozens of seized handguns and rifles, the existence of both groups showed Tren de Aragua’s singular harm. Members of the gangs had engaged in murders and assaults, sex trafficking and human smuggling, according to the indictments.
At a news conference, Thomas D. Homan, whom President Trump appointed as “border czar,” said the indictments showed the necessity of his immigration policies.
“New York City — you’re a sanctuary city, you’re sanctuary for criminals,” said Mr. Homan, the so-called border czar.
As he spoke, Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams looked on and did not respond.
The indictments, first announced by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan on Monday, and the news conference on Tuesday, arrived as the Trump administration has been deporting people it says are members of Tren de Aragua, without affording them hearings or other forms of due process.
The Trump administration designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization in February. Last month, Mr. Trump said in an executive order that the group operated in conjunction with the regime of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, a conclusion disputed by American intelligence agencies. In the order, Mr. Trump said the gang had committed brutal crimes like murder and kidnapping and was “threatening an invasion” into the United States.
On Tuesday, questioning at the news conference grew heated as reporters asked Mr. Homan about the administration’s aggressive drive to deport the undocumented.
Mr. Homan said that the American people elected Donald Trump to enforce immigration laws “and that’s exactly what we’re doing.” He added, “If you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table.”
The deportations of Venezuelans, many to a Salvadoran prison notorious for harsh treatment, have been cast by the U.S. government as immigration enforcement. The indictments accuse the defendants of criminal wrongdoing.
The indictments include counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking conspiracy, drug trafficking conspiracy, robbery and firearms crimes, but offer few details about the offenses, a vagueness that is not unusual when prosecutors first announce charges.
Government court filings indicate that investigators relied on interviews with “current and former self-identified TdA members” and witnesses who identified people as gang members.
Commissioner Tisch said at the news conference that the gang members had come to New York City “to build something, but they never got the chance.”
Commissioner Tisch said Tren de Aragua began making its way into the city about two years ago, starting with coordinated robberies, using scooters as getaway vehicles, and quickly graduating to more serious crimes. Members attacked people on the street for their wallets, pursues, watches — “anything that they could get their hands on,” the commissioner said.
“These robberies were connected, networked, and they were citywide,” she added.
Investigators began paying closer attention to the gang after January 2024, when a group of migrants from Venezuela were charged with assaulting police officers in Times Square, the commissioner said. The assailants were Tren members, Commissioner Tisch said.
Then, last June, two officers were shot in Queens when they tried to arrest a suspect in one of the robberies.
Commissioner Tisch said the newly unsealed indictments describe a violent network responsible for multiple shootings, home invasions, carjackings and sex trafficking.
“They targeted vulnerable women from Venezuela, forcing them into sex work and threatening to kill their families if they didn’t comply,” she said.
A federal inquiry began in October, during the Biden administration, according to court filings signed by Michael Bonner, a special agent with Homeland Security investigations.
Agent Bonner described Tren as having established a foothold in the United States, including in New York. In particular, he wrote, the members had a considerable presence in the Bronx and near 79th Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Queens.
As a result of substantial conflicts within the gang, some Tren members “have disavowed the organization and described themselves as ‘anti-Tren,’” the agent said.
Hostilities between Tren and anti-Tren members drove much of the violence, including over women and girls who were being sex trafficked by the gang, he noted.
A gang member’s self-identification as Tren or anti-Tren “can be fluid,” Agent Bonner added, and the same gang member may switch between the two affiliations depending on circumstances.
Of the 27 defendants, 21 were in custody and the other six are fugitives, Mr. Homan said at the news conference.
The Trump administration has used the threat of the gang as justification for its plans to create the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, and Tuesday’s news conference became a broad defense of that goal.
Commissioner Tisch has consistently said that the Police Department will not enforce immigration laws, even as members of the Trump administration have pressured Mayor Adams to help the president enact its agenda. The Justice Department dropped corruption charges against the mayor specifically to enable his cooperation.
During the news conference, Mayor Adams appeared to reference a false accusation that Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator from Maryland, had drunk margaritas with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Venezuelan immigrant who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.
“I won’t have a tequila drink with a gang member,” Mayor Adams said during the news conference. “I won’t be hanging out with them and hugging them, acting like they are victims.”
Mayor Adams said that Mr. Homan had “never asked the N.Y.P.D. to enforce civil immigration.”
But he nodded to the Trump administration’s talking points, saying that crime had fallen in the city since “we have secured our border.”
Benjamin Weiser is a Times reporter covering the federal courts and U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and the justice system more broadly.
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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