US sanctions alleged chief of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua
The State Division has provided as much as $3m for info resulting in the arrest of Giovanni Vicente Mosquera Serrano.
The US Treasury Division has sanctioned the alleged chief of Tren de Aragua (TDA), a Venezuelan gang that the administration of President Donald Trump has used as justification for its immigration crackdown.
In an announcement launched on Tuesday, the Treasury’s Workplace of Overseas Property Management stated Giovanni Vicente Mosquera Serrano was not solely sanctioned but additionally indicted by the Division of Justice.
Based on unsealed court docket paperwork, Mosquera Serrano faces fees associated to drug trafficking and terrorism. He was additionally added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wished listing, with a $3m reward provided for info resulting in his arrest or conviction.
Within the assertion, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused Tren de Aragua, beneath Mosquera Serrano’s management, of “terrorizing our communities and facilitating the movement of illicit narcotics into our nation”.
It was the most recent effort within the Trump administration’s marketing campaign to crack down on legal exercise that it claims is tied to the proliferation of international gangs and legal networks within the US.
Earlier this yr, the Trump administration designated Tren de Aragua and different Latin American gangs as “international terrorist organisations”, a class extra generally used to explain worldwide teams with violent political goals.
However Trump has used the specter of legal networks based mostly overseas to justify the usage of emergency powers throughout his second time period.
As an example, the Trump administration has claimed that Tren de Aragua is coordinating its US actions with the federal government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. That allegation was then used to justify the usage of a uncommon wartime legislation: the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
Claiming that the presence of teams like Tren de Aragua constituted a international “invasion” on US soil, Trump leveraged the Alien Enemies Act because the authorized foundation for pursuing the expedited deportations of alleged gang members.
Greater than 200 individuals had been despatched to a maximum-security jail in El Salvador, the place lots of them stay to this present day.
These deportations have drawn widespread criticism, together with a slew of authorized challenges. Critics have stated that the expedited deportations violated the immigrants’ rights to due course of. In addition they identified that lots of the deported males didn’t have legal information.
Attorneys for a number of the males have argued that they seem to have been imprisoned based mostly on their tattoos and wardrobe decisions. The Division of Homeland Safety, nonetheless, has disputed that allegation.
A minimum of one prime US official has acknowledged that Maduro’s authorities could not direct Tren de Aragua.
An April memo from the Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence, obtained by information retailers like NPR and The New York Instances, likewise forged doubt on the concept that Venezuela was controlling the gang’s actions within the US.
Quite, the memo stated that the Maduro authorities probably sees Tren de Aragua as a menace.
“Whereas Venezuela’s permissive setting allows TDA to function, the Maduro regime most likely doesn’t have a coverage of cooperating with TDA and isn’t directing TDA motion to and operations in the USA,” the memo reads.
Final July, the US and Colombia provided joint multimillion-dollar rewards for info resulting in the arrest of Mosquera Serrano and two different males believed to guide Tren de Aragua.
The group was additionally sanctioned in the identical month as a transnational legal organisation for “participating in various legal actions, corresponding to human smuggling and trafficking, gender-based violence, cash laundering, and illicit drug trafficking”, in line with a Treasury Division assertion.
Quite a few international locations in Latin America have struggled with the gang’s fast progress, which has been linked to political assassinations and widespread human trafficking, although specialists say there’s little to recommend the gang has infiltrated the US.
