Since Tren de Aragua was first noticed in Aurora CO their presence has been reported in NYC, Springfield OH, Chicago and Florida. Actually, they’ve been in Florida since 2022 https://voz.us/en/society/221013/1237/tren-de-aragua-criminal-organization-has-arrived-in-florida.html and went public when they committed murder a year later https://adnamerica.com/en/florida/venezuelan-tren-de-aragua-gang-members-face-death-penalty-murder-former-police-officer
We’ve been constantly told they are a danger to US and commonly portrayed as more dangerous than other gangs but were not clear about why that is.
I consider myself a patient man so I’ve been waiting for the big name news sources ABC, CNN, FOX and the established internet news providers to tell US the rest of the story because the way they were selling it I knew there was a bigger story behind it.
However, since there are only so many ways the official political news sources can stretch a story while keeping it in a box, when the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that has advocated for immigrants for decades, rebuked the governor for his statement:
“We are disappointed to see you participate in disinformation and stereotyping,” the organization wrote the governor on Facebook. “In Colorado we value accurate and complete investigations and being provided facts. This post provides neither and doesn’t provide a starting point for real conversations about the tensions we see in community.” as reported at https://denverite.com/2024/09/04/venezuelan-gang-aurora-colorado-factcheck/ I just had to start poking around. And did it get interesting; so interesting it took me back to my line in the sand days and because Gang Notes became a reminder of past concerns it is why I’m starting there.
#1 https://www.bucksafa11.org/line-in-the-sand-2005/
In addition to the criminal activities and violence of the cartels on our Southwest border, there is an ever-present threat of terrorist infiltration over the Southwest border. Data indicates that there are hundreds of illegal aliens apprehended entering the United States each year who are from countries known to support and sponsor terrorism.
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations have revealed that aliens were smuggled from the Middle East to staging areas in Central and South America, before being smuggled illegally into the United States.
- Members of Hezbollah have already entered the United States across the Southwest border.
- U.S. military and intelligence officials believe that Venezuela is emerging as a potential hub of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. The Venezuelan government is issuing identity documents that could subsequently be used to
obtain a U.S. visa and enter the country…
There was a lot going on in those days; much too much to worry US citizens about, bsides, South America was almost a world away for most of US focussed on work and family. That’s why we pay the public servants the big bucks, right? To keep an eye on things? You might be surprised then if you open the united against nuclear Iran about/leadership page down aways. Especially since his family purchased property in South America back then.
It just goes to show, you never can tell who your political friends are that are trustworthy.
#2 https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/No-3-LatinAmerican-2011g.pdf
…It is impossible to quantify the level of criminal activity taking place in the TBA, but some estimate that Islamic extremist groups there and in other suspect areas in Latin America remit $300 to $500 million per year in illicit profits to radical Islamic groups in the Middle East.3 US authorities have been well aware of the wanton criminality occurring in the TBA through the years and have cited some individuals and entities for providing financing to terrorist groups and achieved some extraditions, but the overall effort to combat the menace has been hampered by uneven levels of cooperation from the governments of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay.
It is not appropriate, though, to see this as simply a law enforcement issue, as if the illicit business activities and fundraising were ends in themselves. In fact, the nature of the threat has changed considerably. Hezbollah is a preeminent international terrorist organization dedicated to waging Islamic jihad against its enemies, which include the United States and its allies, and the threat it poses should be dealt with accordingly by all law-abiding nations.
The Hezbollah Modus Operandi
Building cells abroad in the service of Hezbollah’s mission involves substantial time and investment. The group sends only its most committed and intrepid operatives into new regions with no support. They must establish a network from scratch among which they can raise money to send back to the leadership in Lebanon, familiarize themselves with the territory and potential targets, and begin planning operations. Invariably, their missions involve infiltrating or establishing mosques or “Islamic centers” to help Hezbollah to spread its influence, legitimize its cause, and promote jihad on a global scale. Each Hezbollah cell is a complex organization with multiple components: a dawa (proselytizing) and recruitment component, utilizing religious clerics, Islamic centers, Internet sites, and local media broadcasting; a fundraising component that oversees illicit and legitimate business activity and relationships; and an operational component, which covers logistics, planning, surveillance, and execution of missions…
#3 https://hezbollah.org/about-hezbollah
A PROJECT OF UNITED AGAINST NUCLEAR IRAN <<<<
Lebanon-based Hezbollah is a transnational Shiite Islamist group founded by Iran in 1982, following the ideology of absolute Wilayat al-Faqih, as expounded by Tehran’s late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini. Since its inception, Hezbollah has engaged in terrorist activities, targeting its own and Iran’s enemies, both in Lebanon and abroad. Its activities have earned the organization and many of its members terror designations by the United States Departments of State and Treasury, as well as by other countries.
The group runs a vast social services network – including hospitals, schools, vocational institutions, and charities — in predominantly Shiite areas of Lebanon, which has earned it the gratitude and support of a community traditionally neglected by the Lebanese state. Through its “Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc,” Hezbollah also holds parliamentary and ministerial representation in Lebanon’s government.
Qassem said that, “in Lebanon there is one Hezbollah, named Hezbollah. We don’t have a military wing and a political wing. We don’t have Hezbollah and the Party of Resistance, because Hezbollah is a political party, a resistance party, and the party of striving in the path of God Almighty and service of the human being. This, in short, is Hezbollah.” He added that all of Hezbollah’s resources, “including leadership, members, and different capabilities, is in the service of the resistance and supporting the resistance, and we have nothing but resistance as our priority – from the leadership of Hezbollah down to its last mujahid.”
The Party of God’s leaders are not grandstanding. A cursory view of Hezbollah’s organizational structure demonstrates that the group’s political and military branches are indeed symbiotic and mutually reinforcing. For example, the Islamic Resistance Support Association (IRSA) is Hezbollah’s official fundraising branch. It is controlled by the Executive, and not the Jihadi, Council. Yet, as its name suggests, all of its funds and activities go towards supporting, arming and supplying Hezbollah’s military activities.
The same applies to the Mahdi Scouts, which acts as a gateway to membership in the ranks of the group’s fighters, and to Hezbollah’s vast charity and social services network, which aims to link the hearts and minds of Lebanese Shiites to the group. These “political” organs of the party are instrumental in creating what Hezbollah calls a “Society of Resistance,” a protective environment for its fighting core that extends its influence beyond its own institutions, giving it the veneer and legitimacy of a Lebanese political force, and thus governmental influence. All of these organs – including the Jihadi Council responsible for Hezbollah’s armed activities and the Political Council – which controls its Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc – answer to the same leadership, that of the Shura Council…
Hezbollah in Service of Iran
Iran exploited the chaos of Lebanon’s Civil War and the subsequent 1982 Israeli invasion to catalyze the rise of Hezbollah. Iran created mutinies within the Amal Party – a nationalist Lebanese Shiite party founded by Imam Musa al-Sadr – splitting off a faction (known as Islamic Amal) that would later become the nucleus of Hezbollah. Tehran then united this offshoot with an ideologically similar motley crew of Shiite militias, sending 1000 Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) members and clergy to the Beqaa Valley to provide them with military and ideological training.
Hezbollah has also incubated Iranian proxies throughout the region. At Tehran’s behest, the group created Unit 3800 in 2003 to train and assist Iraqi Shiite militias fighting against US and multinational forces. Using the techniques they learned from Hezbollah, these militias – like Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) and Kataeb Hezbollah (KHA) in Iraq – killed hundreds of U.S. servicemen in Iraq. Particularly since the rise of ISIS in 2014, these groups spawned a seemingly endless list of Khomeinist Iraqi militias, most of which have now joined Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. According to PMF deputy commander and commander of KHA, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis,
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/irans-soleimani-and-iraqs-muhandis-killed-in-air-strike-militia-spokesman-idUSKBN1Z201C/ fighters “benefited greatly” from Hezbollah’s support, which continues to play a “central” and “very important role” in the PMF’s battle readiness. Al-Muhandis also observed that Hezbollah even “offered martyrs” on the Iraqi battlefield and even claimed Hezbollah’s presence in Iraq dated back to the 1980s, when its storied commanders Imad Mughniyeh https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/imad-mughniyeh-and-hezbollahs-shadow-war-washington-institute-backgrounder and Mustafa Badreddine https://english.alarabiya.net/features/2017/03/08/Al-Arabiya-investigates-Who-really-killed-Hezbollah-s-Mustafa-Badreddine- came to Iraq to train Shiites to fight Saddam Hussein.
Iran’s Support for Hezbollah
It is difficult to know how much Iran provides Hezbollah annually, with estimates ranging from $100 to $200 million per year in cash outlays alone according to U.S. intelligence estimates, to $800 million annually according to IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkott…
Iran also provides Hezbollah with weapons – everything from small arms and Katyusha rockets, to more advanced platforms, including anti-tank rockets, longer-range surface-to-surface missiles, and anti-ship missiles. With Iranian assistance, Hezbollah grew its rocket arsenal from an estimated 12,000 projectiles in 2006 to a current estimate of more than 150,000 rockets. While the vast majority of these are inaccurate, short-range, and low-payload katyushas, in the same time period, Hezbollah’s arsenal of mid- and long-range missiles has grown from mere dozens to thousands and hundreds, respectively…
…Tehran also trains Hezbollah’s fighters and commanders at IRGC-run camps in both Lebanon and Iran, and has fought alongside the group in multiple engagements – including in the Second Lebanon War against Israel, and in the Syrian Civil War. Additionally, Iran has reportedly built up Hezbollah’s cyberwarfare capabilities.
Hezbollah’s “Resistance Economy”
Hezbollah is by no means solely dependent on Iran for its finances. In order to ensure its financial security, the group has established its own shadow economy in Lebanon that is semi-impervious to U.S. financial sanctions. Some of this is done through the innocuous cover of legitimate businesses and religious and social charities, as well as through its Islamic Resistance Support Association (IRSA)…
The group also derives part of its income from tapping into transnational criminal activities, including counterfeiting currencies, documents and goods, credit card fraud, money-laundering, arms smuggling, and drug-trafficking – particularly marijuana, cocaine, and captagon.
…Consider Hezbollah’s involvement in drug trafficking and trade-based money laundering (TBML). Hezbollah handles cocaine shipments and their distribution. It also launders proceeds through complex commercial schemes. Official estimates assume that the value of the global cocaine trade hovers between $425 and $650 billion annually, with counterfeiting – the largest source of illicit revenue globally, and a key component of Hezbollah’s TBML schemes – worth twice that, up to $1.13 trillion a year. While hardly the only global player, Hezbollah’s engagement in both activities is significant…
Beyond Narcotics
Moreover, the illicit global narcotics trade isn’t Hezbollah’s only source of revenue. Hezbollah plays a large part in the illicit economy of the Tri-Border region of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, which is said to generate at least $5 billion a year in illicit transactions. The group likewise helps Venezuela’s regime launder money through multiple way points, and it runs several fraudulent schemes in West Africa. Hezbollah’s presence in West Africa is even more widespread and influential than in Latin America. U.S. authorities, for example, seized $50 million in 2019 from convicted Hezbollah financier Kassim Tajideen as part of a civil forfeiture action against his money laundering activities on behalf of Hezbollah. Tajideen’s family companies and networks are still active in Africa, as are others…
…Hezbollah’s militia commanders and clerics have relatives managing businesses across the world. For example, Sheikh Khalil Rizk, a Hezbollah cleric who plays a key role inside the group’s foreign relations department, has a brother who runs a cell phone business in São Paulo, Brazil. Mohamad Mansour, a Hezbollah operative arrested in Egypt over a decade ago, also has a brother running a business in São Paulo, just two blocks away from Sheikh Rizk’s sibling. The de facto leader of Hezbollah’s financial operations in the Tri-Border Area, Assad Ahmad Barakat, is the brother of Sheikh Akram Barakat, another figure in Hezbollah’s clerical hierarchy. The Barakat family’s business interests extend across Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, and Angola. Joumaa ran his business from Colombia with his brother and his cousin, who is still there. And throughout the years, communities across Latin America have periodically mourned Hezbollah’s fallen fighters, revealing the deep familial ties that connect the diaspora to the party and its militant struggles.
In short, Hezbollah relies on a worldwide network of familial ties, much like its Christian Mediterranean counterpart, the Italian Mafia…
#4 The Tri-Border Area and the Clans
Whether Hezbollah was directly involved in the Italian shipment is not yet known, but investigators say the episode fits a pattern of recent drug cases in the Middle East and Europe linked to the powerful Lebanese militia. Facing extreme financial pressures because of U.S. sanctions, the coronavirus pandemic and Lebanon’s economic collapse, Hezbollah appears to be growing increasingly reliant on criminal enterprises, including drug smuggling, to finance its operations, U.S. and Middle Eastern analysts said.
Law enforcement officials have linked Hezbollah to a string of major drug seizures, in locations ranging from the empty desert along the Syria-Jordan border to urban centers in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to central and southern Europe. Many of the cases involve counterfeit Captagon, a synthetic drug that Hezbollah operatives began manufacturing more than a decade ago and has gained prominence as a moneymaker as the group’s military and financial commitments have expanded, intelligence analysts say.
Clans
From https://iranwire.com/en/features/68940/ dated February 15, 2021
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, thousands of Arab refugees fleeing the ensuing war found refuge in Latin America, beginning a new chapter in their lives. This wave of migration has led today to a community of more than 10 million Lebanese now living on the continent.
Back then, open immigration policy allowed many Lebanese arrivals to move mainly to Venezuela and Colombia. In Venezuela alone, more than one million citizens today are of Lebanese origin. Significantly many of these immigrants also settled in the Tri-Border Area: a 200 square-kilometre zone at the intersection of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay that comprises one city from each country: Puerto Iguazú in Argentina, Foz de Iguazú in Brazil, and Ciudad del Este in Paraguay…
…The pro-Hezbollah “clans” today are made up of Lebanese families who exert control over given territories in South America. Speaking to IranWire, Joseph Humire, a security expert and Director of the Center for a Free and Secure Society, said Brazil is currently playing host to the largest number of pro-Hezbollah clans. “The country that has the most clans abject to the ‘Party of God’ is Brazil,” he said. “The Lebanese community in that country is really large. This does not mean that they are all part of Hezbollah; on the contrary, it is a generous community that participates in different charities. They are its other victims.”
Venezuela, Humire adds, also has a significant number of clans: at least nine all in all, operating outside of government control. Some members of these clans even hold key positions within the Venezuelan state and therefore influence over economic decisions taken in the country…
Rada
https://iranwire.com/en/features/68268/ Pirates of the Caribbean:Venezuela, Iran and Hezbollah
https://www.counterextremism.com/extremists/amer-akil-rada
https://www.gfatf.org/archives/samer-akil-rada/
https://www.barrons.com/news/us-hits-colombia-based-hezbollah-group-with-sanctions-539f4969
Barakat
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/js1720 6/10/04
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Barakat
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2020/07/22/hezbollah-operative-extradited-to-paraguay/
Selah
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/1/12/ali-abdullah-salehs-assassination-and-yemens-tribes
The Houthis, a group of Shia rebels that currently control the capital, Sanaa, and large expanses of the country, emerged on Yemen’s political scene equipped with deeply rooted social connections and an extensive understating of the best practices in tribal mobilisation. They shrewdly exploited the increased gap between rich tribal leaders and their economically deprived tribesmen.
Thus, when Saleh called for his tribal allies to stand up against the Houthis, just two days before his assassination, nobody came to his rescue. Instead, the Houthis acted very swiftly and surrounded his residence before killing him and officially rendering his patronage system obsolete.
Shia is a plural reference; Shi’ite is a singular reference to the people who practice that branch of Islam.
From https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10703 September 20, 2024
The 2024 ATA states that Hezbollah “maintains the capability to target U.S. persons and interests in the region, worldwide, and, to a lesser extent, in the United States.” In 2023 congressional testimony, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated, “FBI arrests in recent years also indicate that Hizballah has tried to seed operatives, establish infrastructure, and engage in spying here domestically— raising our concern that they may be contingency planning for future operations in the United States.”
Nasr al-Din / Nassereddine
https://www.counterextremism.com/extremists/ghazi-nassereddine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazi_Nasr_Al-Din
#5 The Gang Connection
https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/fear-grows-over-iranian-and-hezbollah-threat-in-latin-america/ May 24, 2024
“According to different investigations, Hezbollah’s ties in the region include important gangs such as the First Capital Command in Brazil and the Los Zetas and Sinaloa cartels in Mexico,” reported Argentine daily La Nación on April 21. “The central activity of the Shiite group in the region, experts agree, is financial, by facilitating mechanisms to launder money for narcotrafficking and organized crime organizations, mainly to sustain their operations in the Middle East.”
Amid heightened tensions between Iran and Israel, experts do not rule out a new attack in Buenos Aires like those Iran and Hezbollah carried out in the past. In fact, Argentina’s Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation ruled that Iran and Hezbollah were behind the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), which left 85 people dead and injured some 300…
…The access that Paraguay affords to the Brazilian and Argentine markets through Mercosur has transformed Ciudad del Este, which borders both neighbors, into not only a hub for manufacturing and trade, but also a center of the illicit economy and a base of operations for the islamic extremist organization Hezbollah. The demand for guns by the large number of violent gangs in neighboring Brazil, has transformed the country into a center of firearms trafficking for t[h]e region…
…Brazil’s powerful First Capital Command (PCC) has established a significant presence in Paraguay, largely through the cocaine trade, although its principal Brazilian rival the Red Command (CV),[8] and the smaller group “Bullet in the Face” (Bala na cara)[9] have established a presence as well. Homegrown Paraguayan criminal organizations, most notably the Rotella clan, which expanded from a base in microtrafficking[10] to an estimated size of 1,000 persons,[11] have compete with their Brazilian rivals over drug route.
Each of the groups have established a significant presence and influence in Paraguay’s prisons. The PCC notably expanded its presence from 2010, with over 500 members of the PCC in Paraguayan penitentiaries.[12] The groups have periodically had violent clashes within Paraguayan prisons, illustrating the limited reach of state control there, including violent incidents in San Pedro prision in 2019, and in Misiones in 2020… [13]
From https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/media/1958
…As the Muslim community in the TBA grew, so did its need for educational, cultural, and religious institutions catering to the local Arab and Muslim communities. One such institution, the Profeta Mahoma mosque in Ciudad del Este, was reportedly built by a prominent member of the local Arab community, Mohammad Yousef Abdallah, who had been living in the city since July 1980. According to Argentine intelligence officials, Abdallah was one of the first Hezbollah members to settle in the TBA, though they did not know it at the time.6 Only four years later, in April 1984, would the Argentine Federal Police see the first indications of a Hezbollah network in the TBA.7 By mid-2000, experts would put the estimated number of Hezbollah operatives living and working in the TBA at several hundred.8 The number of supporters or sympathizers who are neither trained operatives nor official group members, but still provide services or support (out of a more general affinity or to improve the lot of their families back home in Lebanon), is believed to be much larger…
…But Hezbollah will work with criminals in other contexts and in other regions as well. In November 2014, Brazilian police reports revealed that Hezbollah helped a Brazilian prison gang, the First Capital Command (PCC), obtain weapons in exchange for the protection of prisoners of Lebanese origin detained in Brazil.75 The same reports indicated that Lebanese traffickers tied to Hezbollah reportedly helped sell C4 explosives that the PCC allegedly stole in Paraguay…76
#6 https://invisibles.info/en/train-aragua-venezuela-explainer/
Eight countries.
El Tren de Aragua has a presence in more than half of Venezuela’s states and its activities have already expanded through cells in at least eight Latin American countries.
Authorities in Peru, for example, have identified members of the organization operating since at least 2018. In Brazil, members of the mega-gang have been found operating in conjunction with the First Capital Command, the country’s largest criminal organization, and one of the largest in Latin America. There is more. The Tren controls the border crossing between Táchira and Norte de Santander in Colombia, and has expanded into the country’s capital. There are also indications that they operate on the Colombia-Ecuador border as well as the border shared by Chile and Bolivia. In October 2023, US authorities announced the arrest of an alleged member of the Tren de Aragua in the United States.
So there’s my version of what the Tren de Aragua are doing in our country and who they are aligned with even if some will call it misrepresentation. If you doubt https://invisibles.info/en/ credibility, take a few minutes and read their work.
You might want to put some serious thought to the invasion.