Gang That Grew Out of Venezuelan Prisons Fueling U.S. Crime Wave

Two cops shot in New York City. A jogger beaten to death in Georgia. A Texas hotel taken over by armed criminals.

The common thread in a sprawling nationwide web of violence, according to law enforcement officials, is a ruthless Venezuelan prison gang exporting its drug-weapon-human-trafficking operations north to U.S. cities.

But the gang’s leaders have largely eluded any effort to bring them to justice in the U.S., according to analysts who have studied Tren de Aragua, or TDA, as the gang is commonly known.

TDA’s secretive hierarchy has helped its crime bosses stay steps ahead of U.S. authorities, said Gregg Etter, a University of Central Missouri criminologist who has written extensively about the gang.

More than 150 TDA members have been arrested at the border, and dozens more inside the U.S., the past two years. But thanks to the group’s decentralized chain of command, police are mainly capturing low-level gang members, Mr. Etter told The Washington Times. (Read more from “Gang That Grew Out of Venezuelan Prisons Fueling U.S. Crime Wave” HERE)