The illegal immigrant charged with Laken Riley’s murder was linked to the “bloodthirsty” Venezuelan gang, “Tren De Aragua,” and one immigration lawyer is warning Americans that the gang is now operating within the U.S.
“Some very dangerous people are coming through the border,” Rolando Vasquez, a Miami-based immigration lawyer told Frontlines. “They’re set up, they’re already open for business is what the United States needs to know.”
Julio Rosas, reporting from Miami, Florida on behalf of TPUSA Frontlines, interviewed several individuals who had been victimized by the brutal gang, all of whom kept their identities hidden while on camera for their safety.
One victim of the violent gang was a former police officer who told Rosas that in Miami currently, several families are living in constant fear that the gang will kill their family members still living in South America if they do not send “Tren De Aragua” money.
“Here in Miami, there are families who have to send “Tren De Aragua” money to them from the United States, because if they don’t, they’ll kill their family back home,” he explained. “Many colleagues of mine— they were brutally murdered.”
“These people are armed. They don’t have any morals or any basic concept of respect for human life,” he added.
Another victim who spoke to Rosas and Vasquez said that the gang attempted to extort $40,000 from him under the threat that they would kidnap his wife and child.
“They started threatening us, my parents, they started to threaten that they would mess with my girls, that they were going to kill my girls and my wife,” another victim of the gang said. “I started receiving texts that they were going to kill me,” he continued, “as soon as they would get an opportunity. Until the day I could pay.”
“These are people who are really coming to threaten the national security of this country,” the victim added.
Vasquez explained that people with a background of gang violence in South America are not going to be “reformed” after entering the U.S., and he fears that the violence will only continue the longer the U.S.-Mexico border remains open and hospitable to these “life-long criminals.”
The supposed first murder of this brutal gang on U.S. soil occurred just last month in Miami and left a 43-year-old retired Venezuelan police officer dead. However, the man charged with murdering 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley was also linked to “Tren De Aragua,” which was only discovered after he was arrested in New York for child endangerment.
Though Florida is thousands of miles from the southern border, illegal immigrants have managed to not only infiltrate the state but also operate and facilitate criminal activity. Vasquez is committed to continually sounding the alarm in hopes that the U.S. government will act to protect Americans.
This piece first appeared at TPUSA.
