Latest news with #TdA
Scoop
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Scoop
Sanctioning Key Members Of Foreign Terrorist Organization Tren De Aragua
Tammy Bruce, Department Spokesperson July 17, 2025 The United States is sanctioning the head and key members of Tren de Aragua (TdA), a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) that originated in Venezuela and has launched a campaign of terror throughout our hemisphere. Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores (a.k.a 'Niño Guerrero') has a history of being involved in criminal activities for over two decades and currently is the detestable leader of TdA. Guerrero expanded TdA from a prison gang involved in extortion and bribery to an organization engaged in terrorism with growing influence throughout the Western Hemisphere. The Department of State, through the Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program managed by the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Guerrero. Today's sanction actions also target five additional key TdA leaders and affiliates, including one of TdA's co-founders and a close Guerrero lieutenant, Yohan Jose Romero (a.k.a. 'Johan Petrica'). INL is also offering a reward of up to $4 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Romero. These other TdA leaders are involved in atrocious crimes such as illicit drug trade, migrant smuggling, human trafficking, extortion, sexual exploitation of women and children, and money laundering, among other activities. This action follows the recent designation of TdA as an FTO and Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). The United States is committed to keeping the American people safe by using all available means to eliminate TdA's threats of violent crime throughout our hemisphere.
Newsweek
3 days ago
- Politics
- Newsweek
Who is Tren de Aragua Leader 'Niño Guerrero' Donald Trump is Sanctioning?
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The United States Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Thursday against Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, also known as "Niño Guerrero," along with five other key leaders and affiliates of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pledged to continue to dedicate his department to "dismantling Tren de Aragua and disrupting the group's campaign of violence." When asked for further comment or clarification, a Treasury spokesman directed Newsweek to a department FAQ on the topic. The Treasury department rarely explains the parameters of such matters due to concerns that it could tip off the target of sanctions and give them time to move assets or funds and avoid punishment. A Department of the Treasury sign is displayed outside the Denver Mint, a branch of the United States Mint on March 20, 2025, in Denver, Colorado. INSET: Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores (a.k.a. 'Niño Guerrero') is... A Department of the Treasury sign is displayed outside the Denver Mint, a branch of the United States Mint on March 20, 2025, in Denver, Colorado. INSET: Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores (a.k.a. 'Niño Guerrero') is the notorious head of Tren de Aragua. More// Treasury Department Handout Why It Matters The sanctions against Guerrero Flores and Tren de Aragua's (TdA) leadership show the U.S. government's continued dedication to limiting the gang's activity, which includes extortion, sexual exploitation, smuggling, and armed violence. The U.S. government designated the group as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) in February 2025, and President Donald Trump highlighted the group as a significant factor in his decision to increase the scale and severity of his immigration crackdown. Designating TdA as a terrorist organization and freezing its leaders' assets are intended to disrupt its financial networks and operational reach. What to Know The OFAC identified Flores as the head of the organization, which has evolved from a prison-based gang to a transnational criminal group operating across the Western Hemisphere. The State Department designations of TdA as an FTO and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group expanded the legal authorities used to disrupt the group's operations in the United States and abroad. President Trump has accused Tren de Aragua of coordinating its U.S. operations with the Venezuelan government under President Nicolás Maduro, a claim that one senior U.S. official has pushed back on, saying Maduro's direct involvement with the gang remains unproven, according to Reuters. Flores, also known as Niño Guerrero, has been involved with the gang for over two decades. The State Department in 2024 offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Flores's arrest or conviction. Under his leadership, TdA grew to become the international threat that the U.S. calls an "influential organization that threatens public safety throughout the Western Hemisphere." This includes mining operations that help fund the group's activities and the importation of military-grade weapons used to establish control of territory and combat Colombian guerrillas, according to the Treasury Department. Guerrero is specifically alleged to have seized control of gold mines, drug trafficking routes, and border crossings, building links with local criminal entities in countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, and, according to U.S. officials, the United States, the BBC reported. The sanctions announced on Thursday allow the U.S. to seize all property and interests in property of the designated persons that are in the United States or controlled by U.S. entities. Americans are prohibited from engaging in almost any transaction involving the subject of sanctions or their assets unless specifically permitted by OFAC. Violations may result in substantial civil or criminal penalties, the Treasury said in its press release. What People Are Saying Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury, in a statement: "Today's action highlights the critical role of leaders like Niño Guerrero and his lieutenants in Tren de Aragua's efforts to increase its destabilizing influence throughout the region." President Donald Trump in a Truth Social post from February: "It is so good to have the Venezuela Hostages back home and, very important to note, that Venezuela has agreed to receive, back into their Country, all Venezuela illegal aliens who were encamped in the U.S., including gang members of Tren de Aragua. Venezuela has further agreed to supply the transportation back. We are in the process of removing record numbers of illegal aliens from all Countries, and all Countries have agreed to accept these illegal aliens back. Furthermore, record numbers of criminals are being removed from our Country, and the Border numbers are the strongest they have been since the First Term of the Trump Administration!" What Happens Next The State Department continues to offer multi-million-dollar rewards for information leading to the capture of the gang's leaders as international law enforcement cooperation intensifies. This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.
Miami Herald
3 days ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
U.S. Sanctions bosses of Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang, citing threat to region
In a new blow to one of Latin America's most feared criminal syndicates, the U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday announced sanctions against Héctor 'Niño' Guerrero and five other top figures in Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-based gang now designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The gang, which originated inside a Venezuelan prison, has rapidly grown into a powerful transnational criminal network involved in drug trafficking, extortion, migrant smuggling and sexual exploitation, with operations reaching key areas of the United States, including South Florida. The group has been linked to human trafficking networks that move migrants north through Central America and Mexico, with stops in border cities like Tapachula and Tijuana — and eventual arrivals in U.S. cities. The sanctions freeze any assets the individuals have under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibit any U.S. citizen or business from engaging in transactions with them. Officials also warned that foreign banks doing business with the gang could face secondary sanctions and risk losing access to the U.S. financial system. Guerrero, a former inmate at Venezuela's notorious Tocorón prison, is credited with building Tren de Aragua — often referred to as TdA — into a global force, using brutal tactics and prison contacts to extend the gang's reach throughout Latin America. 'Guerrero expanded TdA from a prison gang involved in extortion and bribery to an organization engaged in terrorism with growing influence throughout the Western Hemisphere,' the Treasury said in a press release. 'The Department of State is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Guerrero.' In addition to Niño Guerrero, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned: Yohan Jose Romero ('Johan Petrica') – A co-founder of the gang and Guerrero's close lieutenant. He oversees the group's illegal mining operations and weapons trafficking, including military-grade arms. A $4 million reward is being offered for his Angel Santana Pena ('Santanita') – An original member of the gang, accused of coordinating bombings, homicides, and terrorist activity from behind Jose Perez Castillo ('Wilmer Guayabal') – A cell leader involved in drug trafficking, assassinations of law enforcement and military personnel and bribery Marbelys Rios Gomez – Guerrero's wife, who is believed to manage the group's money laundering operations and is tied to terrorist Anner Castillo Rondon ('Pure Arnel') – The leader of Los Gallegos, a Tren de Aragua affiliate in Chile, implicated in human trafficking, sexual exploitation and narcotics activity. All individuals were sanctioned under executive orders targeting both transnational criminal organizations and global terrorist actors. Tren de Aragua has become South America's most feared gang, surpassing even MS-13 and Brazil's PCC in brutality and expansion. Chilean and Colombian authorities have blamed the group for surges in homicides and disappearances in recent years. Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department designated Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, citing its use of violence, corruption and terror to control communities, extort local businesses and infiltrate government institutions. The presence of TdA members in the United States led President Donald Trump to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport Venezuelans suspected of being part of the violent gang to a megaprison in El Salvador, without giving them the opportunity to defend themselves in court. The practice was immediately halted by a federal court, but a recent Supreme Court decision has opened the door for the administration to deport undocumented migrants to third countries. ICE plans show that the administration is preparing to send migrants to distant countries while giving them as little as 24 hours to respond — and, in some cases, as little as six hours. According to the proclamation issued by Trump in March, the Nicolás Maduro regime had launched 'an invasion of the United States' by sending TdA members to infiltrate the U.S. with the ultimate goal of causing havoc. While most experts agree that the presence of TdA members is not as widespread as the administration has suggested, a recently revealed FBI report concluded that the Caracas regime did promote and finance gang members to travel into the United States.
San Francisco Chronicle
29-06-2025
- San Francisco Chronicle
A farmworker had broken no laws. A California sheriff and ICE took him anyway
Fresno County Sheriff John Zanoni stood at the podium, his office's six-pointed star displayed in triplicate: on the breast of his uniform, on a long-necked microphone and larger than life on the swamp-green curtain behind him. On a black video screen under the word 'ARRESTED' flashed five mug shots — a big one in the middle and four small ones arrayed around it. The men were responsible for a series of armed robberies in August 2024, Zanoni said, of a taco stand and two grocers. There was also a carjacking and, Zanoni said, a home invasion. 'These are very violent and very dangerous individuals,' the Central Valley sheriff said. The men, he added, were 'possibly connected to Tren de Aragua, TdA, which is also known as a violent criminal street gang.' What Zanoni did not say at the April 23 news conference was that the mug shot in the bottom left corner belonged to an innocent man. Nonetheless, at that moment, Yan Garcia-Heredia was inside a West Texas detention center, a wrong man in a wrong place. The legal asylum seeker had been living and working in Fresno County when Zanoni's officers arrested and released him without ever requesting that criminal charges be filed, according to the district attorney's office. Garcia-Heredia left the county jail on Feb. 15 and entered immigration custody the same day — under circumstances that suggest cracks in the story the Trump administration is telling about the immigrants it seeks to deport. And the story Zanoni is telling his majority Latino community. In April, Immigration and Customs Enforcement moved Garcia-Heredia to a Texas detention center that has been a waystation for U.S. migrants shipped to El Salvador based on unproven gang claims. ICE posted Garcia-Heredia's photo on its Facebook and Instagram channels, the 22-year-old's startled face crowded by text that said 'Tren de Aragua' and 'robbery & assault with a firearm' — a gang he denies belonging to and crimes he denies committing. Tren de Aragua is the Venezuelan gang that President Donald Trump made the basis of his March 15 executive order activating the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Trump summoned the arcane wartime authority to send at least 288 migrants — including asylum seekers, refugees and those with protected statuses — to a Salvadoran super-prison until more than a dozen federal judges and the Supreme Court intervened. The administration is resisting court orders to identify and return the people it sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador. At the same time, it is appealing injunctions on its efforts to rendition hundreds more, including many who have said in court petitions that they are fleeing the gangs they are accused of serving. Trump recently won the Supreme Court's permission to expel migrants to countries they are not from, including ones where they face possible torture. Even as Trump seeks to ban or sharply restrict asylum, refugee admissions, humanitarian parole, temporary protected status, student visas, travel from 19 African and Middle Eastern countries, and birthright citizenship, among other legal pathways, his immigration enforcers insist that they are prioritizing dangerous criminals on the way to meeting the president's quota of 1 million deportations by the end of the year. Zanoni, who declined to be interviewed, has criticized California's sanctuary laws but says he obeys them, including what's known as the California Values Act, or Senate Bill 54, which says local law enforcement agencies can coordinate with ICE only if the people in their custody have been convicted of or charged with serious crimes. Garcia-Heredia has no criminal record. He had permission to be in the country. He is not the kind of immigrant the Trump administration or Zanoni's office admit targeting. So how did he become a poster child for their synchronized effort? 'My time to go' According to a phone interview from the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, and two declarations he filed with a federal court in California — all translated from Spanish by attorney Victoria Petty of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area — Garcia-Heredia doesn't remember much about where he came from. He was young when the family left Caucagua, a balmy city surrounded by cocoa fields in the Venezuelan state of Miranda. He was 5 when his father was slain. 'I don't remember him much, either,' he told the Chronicle. Garcia-Heredia quit school at 15 and got a job as a machine operator in a plastics factory. As hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan kids do each year, he left a collapsing education system to help his family pay the bills. Like about 2,000 Venezuelans each day, he would later leave a collapsing country to do the same. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, more than 7.7 million Venezuelans have been displaced by hyperinflation, gang violence and food shortages under the decade-long regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Most go to Latin America or the Caribbean. Garcia-Heredia decided on the U.S. His mother and two younger brothers shared doubts. 'But it was my time to go,' he said. Garcia-Heredia said it was important to him to follow the laws and immigration rules of the country he was seeking to enter. 'I wanted to show the United States government that I was a trustworthy person,' he said in an April 28 declaration identifying him by his initials as Y.G.H. Garcia-Heredia left Venezuela in July 2023, when he was 20. He traveled mostly by bus, he said. He reached Mexico City and downloaded CBP One, a notoriously glitchy app that became the Biden administration's gatekeeper for an overwhelmed asylum system. The Trump administration has turned CBP One into a self-deportation app. Garcia-Heredia waited two months for an appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, presented his Venezuelan identification card and requested asylum. In September 2023 — three months before border encounters peaked that December — he was granted temporary humanitarian parole and given an August 2026 immigration court date. He went first to Chicago but found it too cold. He went to Fresno County, which felt more familiar. The Central California county of about 1 million residents is 55% Hispanic or Latino and nearly 20% foreign-born, with about 77,000 unauthorized immigrants, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and Migration Policy Institute. It is also home to an $8.6 billion agricultural industry with 1.9 million acres producing 350 different crops and 20% of the area's jobs, according to the county's 2023 crops report. Garcia-Heredia joined the farming economy's large unauthorized workforce, planting and picking watermelons, tomatoes, squash and broccoli. Sometimes he worked 12-hour days, sometimes seven-day weeks. He found a place to stay in Mendota, a western-county city bisected by two state routes and known for its cantaloupes. Almost everyone there is Latino or Hispanic and speaks a language other than English. On Feb. 12, he was arrested at his home. The sheriff's office would later say its detectives and those from the Mendota Police Department were serving an unrelated search warrant when they connected Garcia-Heredia to the August 2024 robberies. The sheriff's office said this more than two months after it decided not to seek charges. Garcia-Heredia said it was raining when the police came. He put his hands on his head and got into a patrol car, he said. He asked what was happening, but no one answered, he said. Then the investigators arrived. Two detectives interrogated him, he said, one acting as interpreter. 'They asked me if I was a person who participated in the robbery,' he said. 'Then they took me to the jail. They accused me of the (crimes). And I was really afraid because they said I was going to pay 15 years of my life for a crime that I didn't commit.' No one mentioned Tren de Aragua, he said. He said he spent three days in jail, which would violate state laws requiring that he be charged or released within 48 hours. A sheriff's spokesperson said Garcia-Heredia was released after two days, but did not respond to questions seeking specific dates. Garcia-Heredia said he was woken from a sleep, escorted out of his cell and told to change back into his clothes. He asked his jailer if someone had posted his bail. He didn't understand why he had been arrested or why he was being let go. 'He told me that I was already free,' he said. 'As soon as I walked out of the door of the jail, there was ICE right there.' What did that feel like? 'I felt bad,' Garcia-Heredia said. 'I felt so, so bad.' 'About law and order' Zanoni was born, raised and educated in Fresno, where he attended Catholic high school and state college. He joined the sheriff's office as a reserve deputy in 1996 and worked his way up the ranks to assistant sheriff. In June 2022, he won the top job in a two-person race that saw 25% of registered voters participate and 15% of registered voters choose him. Zanoni promised to continue the tough-on-crime approach and lenient concealed gun permitting of the retiring Margaret Mims, the county's first female sheriff. He also telegraphed differences. 'I believe firmly that law enforcement does not exist to avoid mistakes. We exist to accomplish something important, and that is to reduce crime and make our communities safer,' Zanoni said at his January 2023 swearing-in ceremony. 'While many things the sheriff's office does will remain the same, there will be changes.' Maria Romani, the immigrant rights program director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, welcomed one of those changes. In February 2022, she published a report showing that Mims transferred more people to ICE than her office disclosed. She said Zanoni agreed to end his predecessor's practice of letting ICE arrest people in the jail's vestibule, enabling the sheriff's office to claim the person had been released and skirting the state's sanctuary laws and reporting requirements around ICE transfers. 'It spoke volumes of him,' Romani said. 'In a good way, I think.' But Zanoni was not a fan of state laws restricting his ability to cooperate and coordinate with immigration authorities. In a Feb. 12 video with Fresno County Supervisor Nathan Magsig, Zanoni criticized SB54's limits on contacting ICE about people in his jail, saying such policies essentially forced ICE to cast wider nets that also snare immigrants without criminal records. 'Criminals are the focus. Not just people who are here illegally — because that is a crime, but that's not our focus,' Zanoni said. 'We have to make changes. We have to be about law and order.' Trump's immigration lieutenants have said the same thing. But being in the country as an undocumented immigrant is a civil violation and not, on its own, a crime. And ICE agents operating in California from the Oregon border to Kern County are increasingly taking people without criminal records, a Chronicle data analysis found. Of the 56,397 people in ICE detention nationally as of June 15, 72% (40,433) had no criminal record, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. ICE detentions are at their highest number in at least six years. Meanwhile, the administration has exerted tremendous pressure to bend blue states to its signature deportation project. In California, it has sent immigration authorities to schools, clinics, courthouses and worksites, dispatched the military to deal with protesters, roughed up a Democratic senator who questioned the policy, and tried to cut funding to jurisdictions that place legal limits on their assistance. While California limited sheriffs' ability to respond to ICE's detainer requests in 2013 — citing the legality and costs of holding people past their release dates, and the distrust they stoked between immigrants and police — exceptions were granted for people with past convictions or current charges for serious or violent felonies, including gang-related offenses. The administration says that cities such as San Francisco and states such as California abet criminals and endanger the public by preventing immigration agents from entering jails and taking lawbreakers, even though nothing is stopping them from simply waiting outside the jails. Multiple courts have upheld the sanctuary laws. Romani said she attended a March meeting with a small group of immigrant activists in which Zanoni expressed empathy for the county's immigrant community and a willingness to host a public town hall to address its concerns. After that meeting, Romani said Zanoni stopped responding to messages. On May 20, Zanoni told the Fresno County Board of Supervisors that the sheriff's office honored 102 of the 389 detainer requests it received from ICE in 2024 — sharp increases from his first year in office, when the agency received 204 immigration detainers and honored 39. Most supervisors championed the increased cooperation. 'We have seen people murdered, raped by these illegals, who traffic in children, drugs and sex,' said Supervisor Garry Bredefeld. 'And hopefully one day we continually elect people who will stop this in this state and make it safe.' None of the transferred people was accused of murder. Supervisor Luis Chavez asked how many sheriff's office investigations rely on victims and witnesses who are undocumented. Zanoni said he didn't have those numbers, that his deputies don't ask anyone's immigration status, that his office doesn't give ICE information the public doesn't have. 'There is no special pipeline,' said Zanoni, whose term was extended two years through 2028 after a judge ruled against Fresno County's bid to hold sheriff and district attorney elections during lower-turnout governor elections. 'This isn't about politics. This is about public safety.' On June 10, Zanoni became the only California sheriff to publicly endorse Trump's choice to activate the military in a U.S. state against its governor's will. Neither Amador County's sheriff, who said he would violate California's sanctuary laws in a county with few immigrants, nor Yuba County's sheriff, the last to let ICE rent his jail, released statements supporting the deployments. Trump, Zanoni said on Facebook, 'did what he had to do.' Gov. Gavin Newsom, he said, 'failed his duties.' 'A good person' On Feb. 15, ICE transported Garcia-Heredia to the Golden State Annex detention center in McFarland (Kern County), run by the GEO Group. Kathleen Kavanagh met him there on April 4 in a big, open room used for family visitations and, once a month, legal clinics hosted by the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. Kavanagh, the Oakland nonprofit's supervising attorney, registered Garcia-Heredia's hair — dense, curly and whimsily half-bleached — and his youth. In a crowd of dozens, 'He stood out to me right away,' Kavanagh recalled. 'He looks and is incredibly young.' The two spoke Spanish, Garcia-Heredia telling Kavanagh what he had told her colleague: He came to the U.S. to escape gang violence. After he was granted entry to pursue asylum, he went to Chicago, found it too cold and headed west, landing farmwork in California's Central Valley. 'Someone like Yan did it the 'right way' more than anyone else could,' Kavanagh said. 'Yan followed all of those protocols. All of those rules. All of those background checks. He made every attempt to pursue asylum in a legal way. And the way the administration has reneged … it's unprecedented and so cruel.' Garcia-Heredia said it was at the for-profit detention center that he was first asked about Tren de Aragua. He said he was told his tattoos incriminated him. Garcia-Heredia has the names of his brothers and dead father tattooed on his arms. The names are dressed in crowns, Garcia-Heredia said, signifying 'the king of my life' whom he struggles to remember and 'the little princes' he hopes to see again. A cousin told Garcia-Heredia about ICE's March 26 Facebook post. ' ARRESTO Tren de Aragua,' the post read beside Garcia-Heredia's photo. 'Yan Ernesto García Heredia — robo y agresión con un arma de fuego.' Kavanagh said she became instantly worried on Garcia-Heredia's behalf. Just a few weeks earlier, on March 16, the U.S. transported 261 alleged Tren de Aragua and MS-13 members to El Salvador in a highly choreographed transfer that saw the men bent low, roughly marched into the country's terrorism confinement center, CECOT, shaved bald and put in cages. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele posted a video on X, boasting that the deal with the U.S. would financially benefit his government and help the $200 million CECOT sustain itself through free prison labor. 'I was real with him that he was in a very dangerous situation,' said Kavanagh, whose organization sued the U.S. Department of State this month over its agreement with El Salvador, contending it violates constitutional protections of due process and against torture. 'Yan got swept up into something way bigger than him.' She handed him a document with the email address to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and a speed-dial code for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that handles removal proceedings and appeals, and reiterated that he should use it if they moved him. At the top of the document, it said, 'This is a notification establishing that if I am transferred to Guantánamo Bay, or if ICE plans to remove me to a third country where I am not a citizen, I wish to have legal representation.' Ten days after that meeting, on April 14, Garcia-Heredia said, guards woke him before sunup and ignored his requests to retrieve the document. He said he was put in a van, driven to a big building, put in an icy cell with another Venezuelan man, put back in a van, driven for a long time, put on a plane with other men, flown in chains and relative silence to one location, then another, then another. He said he exited the plane and boarded a bus. An hour later, he left the bus in a single-file line, entered a dirt-yellow building and then a barred cell where he and the other men spent the night on the floor. They were at Bluebonnet in Anson, Texas, where 31 detainees would form a human 'SOS' in the dirt yard two weeks later, in a desperate attempt to prevent their expulsion to CECOT, Reuters reported. On April 15, a federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to keep Garcia-Heredia in the country and within the judge's jurisdiction. When U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sherriff, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden, learned that Garcia-Heredia was already in Texas, he ordered the government to explain why it had moved someone with a 'pending immigration proceeding before the Immigration Court in Adelanto, California,' and to say how frequently ICE does this to other detainees. But on May 22, the judge granted the Trump administration's request to dismiss the case. Writing that the 'cases raises important questions concerning the lawfulness of the President's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act,' Sherriff concluded that he couldn't hear the petition because the Trump administration had moved Garcia-Heredia from his jurisdiction when it was filed. The Lawyers' Committee appealed the ruling and accuses the federal government of forum shopping — transferring detainees to red-state jurisdictions in the hopes of arguing before sympathetic judges. Ironically, Garcia-Heredia won a reverse decision in immigration court, which said his removal proceedings can shift from El Paso to Adelanto, meaning he will argue for asylum in California and for his freedom in Texas. For now, he remains in a white-walled dormitory crowded with bunk beds, a table and two dozen men like him, from Venezuela, with tattoos they've been told are proof of criminality. Every day is dreary and absurd. It's sweltering inside and outside the facility. There is no library and not much to do. The guards shout orders and take away the detainees who don't obey quickly enough, he said. Sometimes they are gassed, he said. He sleeps on a thin mattress with a thin pillow. He eats bread and grains. He sees the outside world 90 minutes a day. He wears an old, torn uniform and doesn't think about how many other men wore it or what happened to them. 'Truly, I don't know what's going to happen next,' Garcia-Heredia said, his voice faint over the susurrous connection. 'In the future, I want to work, I want a family and I want to be a good person.' He would return to Fresno County if he could, he said. It will be a different place than he left, local activists say. Recent rumors of an ICE raid kept immigrants from a popular flea market. Grocery stores in Latino neighborhoods are empty, the ACLU's Romani said. The people who pick the produce are too scared to buy it. 'People are more afraid than they ever have been,' said Romani, a Fresno resident. In one of his court declarations, Garcia-Heredia said he is scared of Tren de Aragua, scared that ICE will deport him to CECOT, scared that his mother won't know how to find him. What does his mother tell him now? 'She tells me that she prays to God and that she's worried about me,' he told the Chronicle. 'I tell her that I'm still here and that I still have hope.'
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
FBI offers $3 million reward for first alleged Tren de Aragua leader on its most wanted list
Giovanni Vicente Mosquera Serrano, an alleged senior leader of the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua has been added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted list. Known as 'El Viejo,' the old man, Mosquera Serrano is the first member from the gang on the FBI's top fugitives list, according to the agency. The FBI is offering a $3 million reward for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Mosquera Serrano, 37, who faces federal charges that include conspiring to provide and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, as well as conspiracy and distribution of cocaine in Colombia intended for distribution in the US, the agency announced on Tuesday. Tren de Aragua, also known as TdA, allegedly sends gang members to the US to engage in drug, human and weapons trafficking, as well as violent crime, the FBI said. TdA was designated as a foreign terrorist organization after an executive order was signed by President Donald Trump on January 20. The criminal organization originated in a Venezuela prison and has slowly spread both north and south in recent years. It now operates in the United States. Investigators believe Mosquera Serrano may be in Venezuela or Colombia, the agency said. Tren de Aragua has not only terrorized Venezuela for years but also countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, Chile and Peru, CNN has reported. In Colombia, Tren de Aragua and a guerrilla group known as the National Liberation Army 'operate sex trafficking networks in the border town of Villa del Rosario' and Norte de Santander, according to a US State Department 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report about Colombia. The criminal groups exploit Venezuelan migrants and displaced Colombians in sex trafficking, taking advantage of economic vulnerabilities and subjecting them to 'debt bondage,' the report stated. Police in the region reported the organization has victimized thousands through extortion, drug and human trafficking, kidnapping and murder. Insight Crime, a think tank dedicated to organized crime, said in October that Tren de Aragua's 'reputation appears to have grown more quickly than its actual presence in the United States.' 'Additionally, there is no evidence, thus far, of cells in the United States cooperating with one another or with other criminal groups,' according to Insight Crime. Tren de Aragua adopted its name between 2013 and 2015 but its operations predate that, according to a report by Transparency Venezuela, an anti-corruption nonprofit. 'It has its origin in the unions of workers who worked on the construction of a railway project that would connect the center-west of the country and that was never completed' in both Aragua and Carabobo states, according to the report. The gang's leaders operated out of the notorious Tocorón prison, which they controlled, the report said. Venezuelan authorities say they have dismantled the leadership of Tren de Aragua and freed Tocorón prison, one of the largest in the country, from the control of its members.
