President Donald Trump’s rationale for abruptly deporting migrants to an El Salvador mega prison has been knocked down by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Those agencies, including the CIA and NSA, determined that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his acolytes do not direct the activities of the Tren de Aragua gang, which was the White House’s justification for invoking the Alien Enemies Act.
“While Venezuela’s permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA’s movement to and operations in the United States,” an internal U.S. intelligence memo read, according to Politico.
Trump has deported hundreds of migrants under the 18th-century wartime law, invoked just three times in U.S. history, by claiming that the Tren de Aragua gang was operating at the behest of Maduro and his acolytes. That claim would mean the U.S. was engaged in a war with a foreign government and, thus, the Trump administration had the legal justification to rapidly deport migrants without due process under the Alien Enemies Act.
The intelligence agencies determined Tren de Aragua is an adversary of the Venezuelan government and is “too disorganized” to carry out orders from Caracas, according to The New York Times, which first reported on the internal intelligence memo.
The Trump administration has written in legal challenges to its El Salvador prison deportations that Tren de Aragua was committing crimes stateside to destabilize the U.S. “at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.”
That argument has not held up in court. Last week, a federal judge appointed by Trump blocked further deportations under the act and said the White House had unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act in a time of peace. In other cases, the families of those removed under the act—like the family of Kilmar Abrego Garcia—have claimed the deportees have no ties to criminal gangs.
Trump administration lawyers signaled they would appeal the ruling blocking future deportations under the act. That task is likely more challenging given the release of the latest intelligence memo, which was provided to the Freedom of the Press Foundation after it made a Freedom of Information Act request. The nonprofit then distributed the memo to other media outlets, starting with the Times.
The National Intelligence Council’s “sense of the community” memo said Tren de Aragua likely takes advantage of lawlessness under Maduro but has no direct government ties. It further added that there is little evidence to suggest Tren de Aragua poses a national security threat.
“The small size of TDA’s cells, its focus on low skill criminal activities and its decentralized structure make it highly unlikely that TDA coordinates large volumes of human trafficking or migrant smuggling,” the memo read.
The memo confirmed April reports from the Times and The Washington Post, which first revealed that findings from U.S. intelligence agencies were not in line with the White House’s claims regarding Tren de Aragua’s supposed ties to Maduro. Only the FBI “partly dissented” and determined there was possibly a link between the gang and the Venezuelan government, but the Times reported it was “based on information the other agencies thought was not credible.”
Last month’s newspaper reports led the DOJ to open a criminal investigation into who in the intelligence communities leaked such information. Even with a new memo now available to the public, the Trump administration is not changing its stance that Tren de Aragua is an arm of the Maduro regime.
“It is outrageous that as President Trump and his administration work hard every day to make America safe by deporting these violent criminals, some in the media remain intent on twisting and manipulating intelligence assessments to undermine the president’s agenda to keep the American people safe,” Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement to the Times.
The White House did not return a request for comment.
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