Federal authorities announced charges Monday against more than two dozen people they say were associated with Tren de Aragua in a list of mayhem ranging from robbery and sex trafficking to murder of women who tried to escape.
Prosecutors charged two different groups — one involving six people alleged to be current TdA members and another against 21 people authorities said are with Anti-Tren, a group that split off from TdA.
The charges, handed up in two indictments in New York, challenge the claims of some immigration rights advocates that the government is overselling the threat from TdA.
“Tren de Aragua is not just a street gang – it is a highly structured terrorist organization that has destroyed American families with brutal violence, engaged in human trafficking, and spread deadly drugs through our communities,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
The Justice Department said the indictments are the first against TdA under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Sex trafficking looms large in the charges, with authorities describing an operation to smuggle women from Venezuela to the U.S., where they were pressed into prostitution to pay off their debts. The women were referred to as “multadas.”
“Members of Anti-Tren enforced compliance among ‘multadas’ by, among other things, (i) threatening to kill ‘multadas’ and their families, (ii) assaulting ‘multadas’ (for example, by pistol-whipping them), (iii) shooting or killing ‘multadas,’ (iv) seizing United States immigration documents belonging to ‘multadas’ and family members of ‘multadas,’ (v) tracking down and kidnapping ‘multadas’ who tried to flee, and (vi) increasing the debts that the ‘multadas’ owed. Members of Anti-Tren also sometimes raped and sexually assaulted ‘multadas,’” the grand jury charged.
Authorities also tied Anti-Tren figures to illegal firearms sales and to dealing a drug concoction known as “tusi” or “pink cocaine.”
It’s a synthetic drug that contains ketamine, authorities said.
Matthew Podolsky, the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said tusi has become TdA’s “calling card.”
The Justice Department said the second indictment, against people associated with main TdA itself, also alleges sex trafficking as well as carjacking, extortion and firearms offenses.
One of the men charged in the TdA indictment, Jarwin Valero-Calderon, was placed at the scene of one incident based on the ankle monitor he was required to wear by Homeland Security, apparently as part of his catch-and-release as an unauthorized immigrant.
The Justice Department said that of the 27 people charged, 21 are already in federal custody, including 16 who were already being detained for immigration offenses or in state custody. The five others were arrested Monday.
