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President-elect Donald Trump's reported plan to deport the more than 800,000 migrants, including members of the brutal prison gang Tren de Aragua, has been revealed.
Tom Homan, who Trump named as the border czar, said the upcoming administration has a lot of leverage to force Venezuela to start accepting deportations, which would include threatening more sanctions and withholding aid totaling $209 million last year.
“He got El Salvador to take back MS-13, he got Mexico to agree to the Remain in Mexico program. So I got faith in President Trump to work with the president of Venezuela,” Homan said via the New York Post.
The Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua has reportedly expanded its territory to at least 16 U.S. states, which includes areas accounting for half of the country's population, Homeland Security officials confirmed to the New York Post. An internal department intelligence memo warned officials of the gang's growing presence in Washington, D.C., Virginia, Montana and Wyoming after it already had already been present in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.
The gang has also reportedly increased its "violent tendencies" as it grows larger in different areas. Tren de Aragua's presence in D.C. and Virginia reportedly coincided with "increases in migrant populations" in both areas, according to the memo.
“As the population of Venezuelan nationals continues to increase, the potential for violent TdA migrants is highly probable,” the memo stated.
Three Tren de Aragua suspected members were arrested for a shoplifting incident in Fairfax County, Virginia, in August 2023, which found that one suspect had a fake Venezuelan ID and all three had signature gang tattoos. The gang is suspected to be targeting the D.C. area as its easy to travel to nearby Virginia suburbs to commit thefts, robberies, and assaults, the memo states.
Tren de Aragua members are reportedly increasingly engaged in "lower-level fraud and theft schemes," which includes sending stolen funds “back to South America as a means of financing additional criminal enterprises," according to the memo.