At least 600 Venezuelan migrants associated with the violent Tren de Aragua gang are now living across the United States, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data reveals, after nearly four years of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s policy at the border that has welcomed millions of migrants to American communities.
DHS data, obtained and published by NBC News, shows more than 600 Tren de Aragua gang members, all from Venezuela, are now living in 15 states and possibly eight more states. Experts, though, called that estimate “disturbingly low.”
The actual total number of Tren de Aragua gang members living in the U.S. is likely far higher, the experts suggested. Because the Venezuelan government does not share crime data, the experts said DHS has no idea whether migrants arriving at the southern border have an association with Tren de Aragua or not.
DHS has requested that about 100 of the 600 Tren de Aragua gang members be added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) watchlist as they are considered “subjects of interest.”
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has arrested more than 100 Tren de Aragua gang members accused of crimes since October 2022, while 75 more have been arrested for violating federal immigration law. About 20 of those gang members have been referred for prosecution to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Despite the growing presence of Tren de Aragua gang members in the U.S., less than 30 are currently in ICE custody, while some others are in the custody of local law enforcement.
“The officials said that ICE may also not know where they are or that their connections to TDA or crimes may not be confirmed or that arresting them might interfere with ongoing criminal investigations,” NBC News reported.
Analysis has found that Biden and Harris’s expansive Catch and Release network at the southern border has helped drive illegal immigration from Venezuela to record levels. At the beginning of the year, Venezuelans had become the second most commonly encountered migrants at the border.
Through the Biden-Harris administration’s CHNV program, a parole pipeline where migrants can fly to the U.S. and receive humanitarian parole, more than 120,000 Venezuelans have arrived in American communities who would otherwise have no basis to be in the U.S.
It is not clear how many of the 600 Tren de Aragua gang members identified by DHS were released into the U.S. interior by the Biden-Harris administration.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.
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