Ex-ICE official warns Tren de Aragua has grown faster inside US than murderous rival gang: ‘Put them out now’

October 17, 2024:

A former ICE field director is warning that a violent Venezuelan gang is more organized than the infamous MS-13, and is backing former President Donald Trump’s plan to stamp out the gang in Colorado and across the U.S.

John Fabbricatore, who served as an ICE field director and is currently a GOP congressional candidate in Colorado, told Fox News Digital that he would not describe Tren de Aragua as a gang. The organization has popped up throughout the U.S. and has been linked to a number of crimes amid the crisis at the southern border.

“TdA is a true organization. They’re not a gang. They have a better structure than MS-13 ever had. So I think that’s the difference and if we look at TdA, just in the amount of time that TdA have been in the United States and how fast they’ve grown. When you look at that, you need to realize that they’ve grown faster and gotten into certain aspects of crime better than MS-13 did and MS-13 has been here for 25 years,” he said.

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Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait during an event with the Economic Club of Chicago, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Tren de Aragua is believed to have started in the Tocoron prison in the Venezuelan state of Aragua and has since expanded into Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and the U.S. There have been numerous crimes in the last year that have been linked to TdA, in states including Georgia, Illinois, Texas, Colorado and New York.

This week, an apartment management company in Colorado sounded the alarm on the troubles it has been facing as the group has taken over multiple apartment blocks in Aurora.

Fabbricatore says that the U.S. should look to other countries where TdA has a presence.

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These images from a CBP intelligence bulletin, show tattoos and identifiers for Tren De Aragua. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a $5,000 reward for information leading to the identification and arrest of known or suspected members TdA members. (ICE)

“TdA has put a foothold and has built up structure and foundation in other South American countries after leaving Venezuela in just a few short years. And when we look at that and we see what they’re already doing in the United States, that’s the worry,” he says.

“And I think enough news organizations are not looking into that to see how fast TDA has grown in such a short amount of time. And that’s why we have to do what we have to do. We have to put them out now. We have to make sure that they don’t grow to get a strong foothold,” he warned.

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Suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang occupy Texas hotel, left, suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang drink and party with children present, right

Suspected members of the Venezuela-based transnational gang Tren de Aragua were seen on surveillance footage shared by the El Paso County Attorneys Office at the Gateway Hotel. (KFOX14/El Paso County Attorneys Office)

Former President Donald Trump announced last week that he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target and dismantle “every illegal migrant criminal network operating on American soil.”

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Trump said, if elected, the federal government would “send elite squads of ICE, Border Patrol and federal law enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest and deport every last illegal alien gang member until there is not a single one left in this country.”

Fabbricatore, who was given a shout-out by Trump at the rally, said he thinks those opposing the program are misunderstanding it.

‘I think President Trump’s basic want on this is just to protect the United States, protect United States citizens from the crimes that are being committed against them from foreign born criminal organizations. And if this is something that he’s got to pull out of a hat because no one else is doing anything about it, then it’s something that that needs to be needs to be tried,” he said.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Emma Woodhead contributed to this report.

Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital, primarily covering immigration and border security.

He can be reached at adam.shaw2@fox.com or on Twitter.

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