Tennessee officials are fighting their own battles against members of a violent Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua, as officials on the left and right push back the deportation of illegal immigrants, including gang members.
The Trump administration recently deported nearly 240 TDA members to El Salvador. This is what President Donald Trump made his actions despite an order to suspend orders from US District Judge James Boasberg under wartime power laws that he called out on Friday.
The Alien Enemy Act of 1798 allowed the deportation of indigenous peoples and citizens of enemy nations without hearing, and was called three times before during the war of 1812, during World War I and the Second World War.
“President Trump has the full constitutional authority to deport criminally illegal foreigners, particularly members of foreign terrorist organizations like Tren de Aragua,” Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn told Fox News Digital in a statement. “With the deportation of hundreds of gang members to El Salvador, the president is fully observing judicial orders and supporting the rule of law.”
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R-Tenn. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of the country said, “Tren de Aragua is plaguing communities across the country with violent crimes in Tennessee, which established a transnational sex trafficking ring that forces women into modern slavery.” (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call by Getty Images)
The senator added that the TDA “has plagued communities with violent crimes across the country. In Tennessee, members have established a transnational sex trafficking ring that forces women into modern slavery.”
“These violent criminals have no right to be in our country, and activist judges trying to stop their legal deportation burn their credibility.”
Ice officers and agents at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation are preparing to link illegal foreigners from Venezuela with the Trenda Aragua gang. She was arrested from July 2022 to March 2024 for roles in illegal commercial sex and sex trafficking companies from Nashville Motels. (ice)
State Department On February 20th, TDA was designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The gang has thousands of members. Many say the Trump administration has illegally infiltrated the United States from South and Central America, “engaged irregular wars and hostile actions against the United States.”
The White House on Sunday said the TDA is running in partnership with Cartel de los Salles, a Venezuela-based narco terrorism gang hosted by the Nicolas Maduro administration. The gang are known for brutal crimes such as murder, tricks, terror, human and drug trafficking. According to the White House, TDA's mass immigration to the United States will promote the Maduro administration's purpose to hurt American citizens and undermine public safety.
A map of the existence of trending aragua in the United States as of December 2024. (Fox News Digital)
TDA has grown significantly, but Tarek El Aisami served as Governor of Aragua between 2012 and 2017.
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Former DEA agent Wesley Tabor was stationed in Venezuela from 2010 to 2013, and was the only agent to meet El Aisami during that time.
“What you really see is the result of a tolerant environment,” said Wesley Tabor, a former DEA agent. “And… when TDA first started coming to the US, they were being matched against big cities. You got Chicago, you got New York. You got other cities.
“[T]I was looking for a quiet area. ”
In these “quiet” states and cities, TDA members establish networks with their families and other connections, and take other TDA members to those locations.
TDA commits a variety of crimes that can be detected as something related to a gang, unlike other gangs, such as MS-13 in the sense that members do not have a specific identifier, such as a tattoo that links them.
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Nicolas Maduro (Fox Nation)
Tabor added that the Maduro regime sent groups of people to the United States from prisons and crazy exiles in Venezuela to the prisons and to destroy communities through Central America.
“Many of these Venezuelan criminals were sent here for purposes from Venezuela, sent by the Maduro regime.”
“And then, behold, you know that many of them, not all of them, but many of them, will become members of Tren de Lagua,” he said. “And you start to see these sporadic reports becoming more and more frequent, and it's just a snowman.”
On February 14, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office (ICE) announced the arrests of eight Tennessee TDA members.
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Two of eight TDA members accused of organizing a sex trafficking ring in Nashville (TBI)
The eight defendants are allegedly run illegal commercial and sex trafficking companies from Nashville Motels between July 2022 and March 2024, ICE said in a press release citing court documents.
“The success of this operation to stop Tren da Aragua, operating in our community, is an important step in the ongoing battle between human trafficking and organized crime across borders.” “This study exemplifies the importance of cooperation between local, state and federal agencies in ending these crimes in our communities. Human exploitation leaves a trajectory of suffering afterwards.”
David Rausch, director of TBI, said the state agency would not “permit TDA or criminal organizations to acquire bases in Tennessee.”
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The ICE Officer will obtain fingerprints on one of the known or suspicious peers of the Venezuelan Trenda Araga Gang after the successful joint operation to dismantle illegal commercial trafficking companies from Nashville Motels from July 2022 to March 2024. (ice)
“We are grateful to our local, state and federal partners who participated in the investigation of this case, and we are ready to continue to actively investigate state trafficking, take responsibility for traffickers and buyers, and help victims take their first steps to becoming survivors,” he said.
Robert E. McGuire, a US lawyer for the Central District of Tennessee, said officials “come after cross-border criminal organizations like the TDA, but this case shows they do whatever it takes to stop women and girls from transport, regardless of who is behind their suffering.”
Last year, Tennessee officials made two other important TDA arrests.
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Four suspects, including members of Tren de Aragua, have been arrested for sex trafficking stab wounds in Hamilton County, Tennessee. (Hamilton County/Valérie Schlemphahn/St. Louis Post Dispatch/Tribune News Service)
On November 19, 2024, Iceero officials arrested Louis Alejandro Louis Godoy, who wanted an outstanding international warrant, a spokesman for the Memphis Police Department said. A few days later, FBI officials arrested four individuals, including one Tren de Aragua member, during Chattanooga sex trafficking Sting.
The Tennessee Trafficking Task Force has obtained information that led them to a hotel in Hamilton County. There, law enforcement encounters four suspects and they Human trafficking business.
Tabor said “100%” is “100%” for state and state law enforcement agencies that don't usually deal with gangs like TDA to identify and acquire members rather than metropolitan cities like New York, Chicago and Houston.
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“What you're looking at is that these gangs and related criminals were taking advantage of the fact that many of these small town sheriff's offices and metropolitan police stations had no clue as to who they were,” the former DEA agent explained. “They didn't know how to get help in knowing who these people were because the federal government didn't care.
By calling foreign enemy laws, the administration has made it easier to cut “through through many red tapes” to detain TDA members, Tabor said.
Emma Colton and Alexandra Koch of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.
