Mural in Caracas with faces of the Venezuelan migrants illegally imprisoned in El Salvador. Photo: Reuters/Gaby Oraa.
By Misión Verdad – May 2, 2025
Last Tuesday, April 29, US President Donald Trump insisted, without proof or empirical evidence, that the Venezuelan government sent the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang to his country to destabilize it and foment “violence” there. This was part of his speech marking his first 100 days in office at an event at Macomb Community College, Warren, Michigan.
“This month, two Venezuelan members of Tren de Aragua were arrested in Washington state for kidnapping a 58-year-old woman. They drilled her with a drill to steal her bank information, shot her, and she survived by a miracle, but she is not feeling very well,” said the US president in his customary dissemination of unconfirmed information, as there is no proof of such an accusation.
Although a confidential assessment published by the US National Intelligence Council in mid-April confirmed that the gang has never been controlled by the Venezuelan government, Trump said, “Recently, the FBI determined that these gangs have been sent by the Venezuelan regime to foment violence and instability in the United States.”
The tycoon-turned-president returned to his delirious narrative, claiming that “they [Venezuela] emptied their prisons sending people to our country, but they also come from Africa, from Asia, from South America, from the worst places. That is why I have invoked the Alien Enemies Act to expel these terrorists from the country as soon as possible. They must not forget that we will no longer put up with this nonsense.”
Lies instead of justice
Trump’s path forward is evident in his statements. His government is trying to divert public attention from the case of a two-year-old Venezuelan girl, Maikelys Espinoza, who has been abducted and separated from her parents under unfounded accusations by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The act implicates his government in yet another blatant human rights violation, in addition to sending over 250 Venezuelans to a maximum-security Salvadoran prison under the false accusation of belonging to the criminal gang in question. To do so, Trump invoked an 18th-century law that provides for expulsions without trial, which has been called a crime against humanity by Venezuelan authorities.
The Venezuelan government is falsely accused of sending gangs to a foreign country by the same president who covered up the hiring, training, and incursion of over 80 mercenaries into Venezuela as part of the 2020 Operation Gideon.
As an expression of the unilateralism characterizing it, the United States criminalizes Venezuelan migrants through a scale based on photos from the internet, demonstrating the absence of the rule of law. The use of basketball shirts or tattoos alluding to AK-47 rifle silhouettes and phrases such as “Real until death” is reason enough to be linked to the TdA without the right to defense, violating court orders.
Trump’s usual thing is to lie, but his effort on the immigration issue is remarkable. Although his country has intelligence agencies with high levels of meticulous work, none of them have been able to corroborate, for example, that “many” migrants of the Biden era came from prisons or psychiatric institutions in other countries and that those countries were “emptying” their prisons to send them to the United States. Many of the president’s other claims lack evidence or support, but what is most serious is that his falsehoods impact the fate of innocent people.
Myth and delusion above all else
The construction of the TdA myth in the United States is based on the fabricated narrative of the media and agencies orbiting around the State Department. Included in this constellation are media such as Insight Crime, which establishes tendentious, selective criteria on threats and enemies based on US geopolitical interests. There is also the OCCRP project, an investigative portal that usually focuses on US adversaries and is comprised of mainstream media such as CNN and Telemundo, among others.
It is striking that Trump puts the story about this gang over criminal structures such as the Mexican Cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation, which have US weapons and receive training from the United States, are present in more than a hundred countries, and have over 45,000 members, associates, and facilitators.
Both cartels act in collaboration with the Los Choneros and Los Lobos gangs in the formation of a narco-state in Ecuador. In addition, Trump ignores the Salvadoran government’s involvement in the deployment of the maras. Although President Nayib Bukele has apparently pushed for exceptional measures to combat the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), the US State Department has evidence that he has negotiated with this and other gangs to facilitate their purported demise in exchange for benefits to their leaders.
President Maduro at May Day March: We Will Rescue Maikelys and 252 Kidnapped in El Salvador
The First Capital Command (PCC) is the largest criminal gang in Brazil and has expanded into Peru, Argentina, and Chile. It has over 35,000 members and already dominates most of the prisons in Paraguay and Bolivia. Although its leaders have been sanctioned by the US government, there has been minimal visibility of the potential impact of their activity.
Colombia has a narco-paramilitary holding company that has scaled up and industrialized the processing and export of drugs to the United States itself. Its most prominent organizations are the Clan del Golfo, also known as Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC), Los Urabeños, or Clan Úsuga, which are also responsible for the internal armed conflict. In addition to some sanctions, it is not known whether the White House has taken any action against its members in the United States.
None of the governments of the aforementioned countries have been accused of participating in the actions of these criminal gangs, nor have the incoming administrations in the White House done so against the outgoing ones, despite high-profile cases such as that of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent José Irizarry, who until 2020—the last year of Trump’s first presidency—operated a money laundering and fraud scheme in conjunction with a Colombian drug cartel along with dozens of other federal agents, prosecutors, and informants.
The TdA was dismantled by the Venezuelan government in September 2023 through the Gran Cacique Guaicaipuro Liberation Operation carried out in the Aragua Penitentiary Center, better known as Tocorón. Some of its fugitive leaders have been recaptured or remain wanted, with Interpol red notices against them. Neither the United States nor its allies in the region have been proactive in the search for the indictees.
There are only some gang strongholds in Venezuela linked to conspiratorial plans that, according to the Venezuelan government, are financed by the extremist opposition and sponsored by the United States. There is also no clear evidence that the TdA possesses the logistical and economic capacity necessary to “invade” the US, which is the false premise used by the Trump administration to deport Venezuelans as “alien enemies.” However, this narrative has been supported by the Venezuelan far-right leader María Corina Machado.
The narrative of “infiltrated criminals” is an excuse to strengthen the siege against Venezuela by demolishing the dignity of its people, inside and outside the country. Neither Trump nor his administration has been able to legitimately justify their inhumane policies of detention and family separation.
By falsely accusing the Venezuelan government of being behind a plan to “invade” its territory, the US is setting the path to turn Venezuela into a war target and is returning to the “maximum pressure” strategy, which, during its time, had as its collaborator Juan Guaidó and, now, Machado.
Trump’s criminalizing claims, pronounced a few days before Venezuela signs new agreements with China, are part of Washington’s onslaught against the rest of the planet, particularly the Global South, the so-called “worst places.” Hence, the justification of human rights violations against Venezuelan migrants, with the complicit silence of the “international community.”
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/SF
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
