Posted on Sunday, May 11, 2025
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by Outside Contributor
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The Venezuelan government was facilitating the illegal immigration of dangerous gang members into the United States, according to multiple intelligence reports, and the legacy media is trying to portray this as bad news for the Trump administration.
On Monday The New York Times ran a story with a headline “Declassified Spy Memo Contradicts Trump on Venezuela Gang Ties.” Other legacy media outlets ran with similar headlines.
The stories are referring to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang that the Trump administration has designated a terrorist organization.
If you just read the headlines, you might think that the declassified intelligence report says the Venezuelan government had nothing to do with the exportation of Tren de Aragua gang members to the U.S., as President Donald Trump has said.
However, not every outlet ran with these headlines. The New York Post had a very different angle.
“Corrupt Venezuelan officials ‘facilitated’ Tren de Aragua gang’s reign of terror in U.S.” read its headline on Monday.
So why the enormous discrepancy? What’s the intelligence report actually say?
According to the report titled “Venezuela: Examining Regime Ties to Tren de Aragua,” intelligence officials think the Venezuelan socialist regime led by President Nicolas Maduro has “facilitated” the illegal migration of gang members into the U.S. “to advance what they see as the Maduro regime’s goal of destabilizing governments and undermining public safety.”
According to the assessment, Venezuela has been doing this for years and during the peak years of illegal border crossings—the Biden years—the intelligence report concludes that there were likely Tren de Aragua members slipping into the country.
“From 2021 to 2024 there was a spike in Venezuelan encounters at the US-Mexico border, in which some TDA members could have been present as they have generally moved with Venezuelan migrant communities and profit from human trafficking and migrant smuggling,” the report said.
No kidding.
Here’s where the legacy media says the “gotcha” comes in.
The New York Times argued that the report doesn’t draw a direct connection between the Venezuelan government and Tren de Aragua. As in, the government doesn’t literally give the gang marching orders. So, this undermines the Trump administration’s legal case to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal aliens on a mass scale, it argues.
Again, if you read the report, it is ambiguous as to what level of confidence the intelligence sources have that there is no connection between the gang and the government. It only says that the Maduro government “probably” doesn’t direct Tren de Aragua in part because doing so with such a decentralized crime organization would be difficult.
A month ago, the FBI assessed, according to Fox News, that “some Venezuelan government officials are likely using Tren de Aragua members as proxies for the Maduro regime in an effort to destabilize Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and the United States.”
This intelligence report is simply a watered-down version of what the FBI said. And it doesn’t contradict the most important aspect of the whole affair.
Both reports say the Maduro regime was eager to drop Tren de Aragua gang members on the United States and did what it could to clear the path for it to do so. This new assessment even says that harm to the U.S. might have been the “principal intent” of the policy.
Whatever Maduro’s intent, the effect was the same. The Venezuelan government cleared the way for potentially huge numbers of Tren de Aragua gang members to come to the United States.
“Whether [Tren de Aragua] exclusively murders, smuggles drugs, and traffics illegal immigrants over our borders on the orders of Venezuelan leaders, or freelances for self-enrichment is beside the point,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in a Fox News op-ed last week. “It has killed on behalf of a hostile foreign government, that government has fostered its growth, and that government has encouraged it to invade the United States to advance its interests.”
Despite the excellent work the Trump administration has done to put a halt to new arrivals, Tren de Aragua continues to cause mayhem in our country.
The gang has taken over hotels, terrorized residents of Aurora, Colorado, and has seemingly put down roots in New York City.
On Friday, a group of 11 suspected Tren de Aragua members allegedly attacked two NYPD officers in Times Square.
A former resident of Aurora who had been a victim of Tren de Aragua pleaded with the federal government at an April House Judiciary hearing to step in and do something.
This is the evil that Maduro’s government and the Biden administration hath wrought.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is correct here. Tren de Aragua is a hostile, invading force. It has caused enough suffering in its country of origin, and it needs to be stamped out here in the U.S.
Nothing in this recent intelligence report suggests that we should act otherwise. It’s being used to create a bogus media narrative directly at odds with the reality on the ground and the sentiments of the American people.
Jarrett Stepman is a columnist for The Daily Signal. He is also the author of “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.” Send an email to Jarrett
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Jarrett Stepman.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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