While the liberal media continues to attempt to claim violent migrant criminal gangs are a manufactured campaign narrative, even pushing talk that violent crime in American's democrat-run cities is declining, border hawks are reminding Americans otherwise.
President-elect Donald Trump has warned for nearly a decade that Latin American countries were emptying prisons to send their violent criminals to America's border — much to the liberal protestations devoid of fact — but the true facts remain that the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua is a product of President Joe Biden's open border crisis unleashed on America's sanctuary cities and states, including the now-sentenced murderer of Laken Riley.
"There hasn't been an arrest of a Tren de Aragua member in reported CBP data before 2021," former acting ICE chief Ron Vitiello told the New York Post.
"Think of that: That's incredible. I was in the government for 34 years. I never heard of Tren de Aragua until after I left in 2021 when it became a thing in New York."
Newly tapped "border czar" Tom Homan said Trump will root out Venezuela's Tren de Aragua from America's Democrat-run sanctuary cities and states just as he did Los Angeles' MS-13, which is Mara Salvatrucha 13 street gang that was set up as a criminal enterprise for Salvadorian migrants in L.A.
"He got El Salvador to take back MS-13, he got Mexico to agree to the 'Remain in Mexico' program: So I got faith in President Trump to work with the president of Venezuela," Homan told the Post.
Amid the shaky communist regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, there were tens of 1,000s of Venezuelan migrants flooding the U.S. border under Biden's open border, because Biden granted them temporary protected status, shielding them from deportation and fast-tracking work permits.
But, as Trump and his border hawks have long warned the Biden administration and their media allies, the criminal cartels sought to take advantage of a window of opportunity, according to the Post.
Tren de Aragua (TDA) members — including Jose Ibarra sentenced to life in prison without parole for murder and attempted rape of a Georgia college student — posed as asylum seekers to gain entry into Biden's U.S.
TDA has set up gang enterprises in 16 states, the Post reported, and Biden's protected status on Venezuelans is keeping local law enforcement and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials from deporting even the most violent and criminal of the gang members, according to the report.
The protections will end under Trump even if Maduro opposes to take his migrant criminals back, according to former Drug Enforcement Administration official Wes Tabor to the Post.
"They won't have a choice with Trump because if he extends his hand and tries to do something with them reasonably," he said, "and if he [Maduro] puts his little finger up at Trump, Trump is going to . . . do everything he can to crush them economically."
Like the forceful return of violent Haitian migrants under the former Trump administration, Trump can use force to send the criminal illegals back to Venezuela, according to what Venezuelan dissident Daniel Di Martino told the Post.
"In at least one occasion when this happened with Haiti, the U.S. Coast Guard forcefully sent people back to the coast of Haiti without the consent of the Haitian government," Di Martino, now a Manhattan Institute fellow, told the Post.