Armed members of the Tren de Aragua gang have been trying to force their way across border crossings at El Paso and are planning another attempt to break through on New Year's Day, according to a leaked Texas Department of Public Safety memo.
The warning comes after 20 gang members, armed with knives, broken liquor bottles, and tire irons, tried last week to force their way through a border gate, reported the New York Post Tuesday after obtaining the leaked document.
Victor Avila, a retired Homeland Security Investigations agent, told the Post that the prison gang is becoming desperate to send more of its members into the United States before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in.
"They know that it's going to change in 27 days. It's going to change. It's going to be different, and they're going to be sought after," he said.
An anonymous informant alerted Texas authorities to the attempts, saying that the break-ins would "continue every night" at around 3 a.m.
The informant said the gang wants to "cause harm" to the Texas National Guard soldiers at the border, "especially when they are left alone with no agents" to assist them.
Gunfire has also "picked up big time" near the El Paso border, according to a Texas law enforcement source. The Texas DPS did not respond to the Post's request for comment.
Earlier this year, a riot at the El Paso border crossing occurred when more than 200 migrants got through razor wire and assaulted Texas National Guard soldiers.
Many members of Tren de Aragua come through El Paso before heading out to other parts of the United States, including New York City and Aurora, Colorado, along with other locations.
Avila said that the gang has "teamed up" with cartels in Mexico to carry out smuggling exercises and compared them to terrorists.
"I think that [Tren de Aragua] is coming in with an instruction from their home country, and I think that their ideology is more of a terrorist ideology of destruction," he said. "They hate the United States just like terrorists do, and they will kill, destroy, take over businesses, take over stores, and take over apartment complexes, do whatever they have to do to destroy our way of life in the U.S."
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared the gang a foreign terrorist organization. The state has also deployed state law enforcement resources to push back against the gang's growing presence.
Abbott also announced a 10-year minimum sentence for Tren de Aragua smugglers caught bringing migrants into his state.
"We are not going to allow them to use Texas as a base of operations to terrorize our citizens," the Republican governor said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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