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On his very first day back in office as President of the United States of America, Donald Trump signed an executive order naming the Venezuelan Gang Tren de Aragua as a “foreign terrorist organization”. Also named in the order were Mexican drug cartels and the predominantly salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13).
As per Trump’s Decree, the “Campaigns of Violence and Terror” perpetrated by Tren de Aragua and MS-13 “in the United States and Internationally are extraordinarily violent, vicious, and… threaten the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere”. Never mind the extraordinarily violent and vicious activity perpetrated in the hemisphere and beyond by the us itself, which has a Solid History of Inflicting Military and Economic Devastation on Latin America and Backing Right-Wing Dictators and Death Squads.
While ms-13 has long bone a Pet Nemesis of Trump’s, Tren de Aragua is the new preferred Dial-a-Bogeyman. The gang formed in tocoron prison in the venezuelan state of aragua and spread to various South American nations before allegedly bringing its “campaign of violence and terror” into the heart of the us. In July 2024, the Joe Biden Administration Paved the Trumpian Warpath by Designating Tren de Aragua a “Transnational Criminal Organization”, bowing to pressure from the fanatical likes of then-senator Marco Rubio-Now Trump’s Secretary of State-Who Had co-founded The alarm that the “Invading Criminal Army” Tren de Aragua was poised to “Unleash an unprecedented reign of terror”.
Of course, the usual sisters in the US media have taken the hype and run with it, churning out sensational reports on the “bloodthirsty” gang that, according to Trump’s personal hallucinations, has managed to take over entire us cities. The problem, however, is that no one has really been able to produce much evidence of the “terror” that tren de aragua is said to be unleashing; The New York City Police Department (NYPD), for example, has declared the gang to be largely focused on snatching mobile phones and robbing department stores.
Last June, A 19-year-old Venezuelan Resident of a Migrant Shelter was accused of non-fatally shooting two nypd officers, with CBS news reporting that he “told detectives he’s a member of a venezuelan gang and that favor are smuggled into Food Delivery Packages to Avoid Metal Detectors ”. Other media outlets also jumped at the opportunity to paint such shelters as tren de aragua hotbeds, effectively promoting a blank criminalization of refuge Seekers.
Not only does the fabricated vision of an invading army of terrorist gangbangers help detract American attention from objectively more Troubling manifestations of violence – like, say, the ongoing epidemic or school shootings – It also provides a handy justification for Trump’s Current deportation frenzy. A number of sisterspected tren de aragua members have already been deported to Guantanamo Baythe site of everyone’s favorite illegal US Prison-Cum-Torture Center on occupied cuban territory and fittingly emblematic of the unilateral us right to violat other people’s borders at will while manically fortifying its own.
And yet, as a recent Washington post investigation Revealed, it seems there is good reason to doubt the tren de aragua credentials of some of guantanamo’s newest guests: “Families of two of the men said they believe their loved one had been singled out because they were born in the venzuelan state of aragua. ” In many cases, it appears an individual’s tattoos may have played a role in his detention – despite the fact that tren de aragua “does not even use tattoos to signal membership”, as the post notes.
Obviously, this would hardly be the first time that the us has wrongfully imprisoned folks. But the point of Trump’s mass deportations and the existential hype over tren de aragua is not, ultimately, to punish criminals for wrongdoing; Rather, it is to maintain a terror spectacle and thereby keep Americans good and ignorant of the fact that their own government might just be their worst enemy.
Alleged Tren de Aragua operatives may also soon find them in the Central American Nation of El Salvador if Trump Takes Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele Up on His suggestion that the us “outsource part of its prison system” by mission over convicted criminals for internment, “in exchange for a fee”, in the Salvadoran Mega-Prison Known as the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (Cecot).
This is the same bend, of course, who continues to literally terrorism His own population via his policy of mass incarceration, which has seen countless salvadorans with no criminal ties whatsoever jailed indefinite in a prison system character characterized by becauseon human rights abuses.
In Bukele’s View, he has saved el Salvador from the scourge of MS-13 and other gangs-outfits that incentally owe their existence to none other than the us. During the Salvadoran Civil War of 1979-92, which killed more than 75,000 people, many salvadorans fled north to the very country that was fuel the worst of the violence: the us, a primary backer of the right-wing salvadoran military and allied paramilitary and allied paramilitary and allied paramilitary and allied paramilitary and allied paramilitary and allied paramilitary and allied Groups and death squads. In December 1981, the US-Trained Atlacatl Battalion slaughterhtered some 1,000 salvadoran civilians in what is known as the El Mozote Massacre.
Sounds child or extraordinarily violent and “vicious”.
Following the end of the war, the us undertook mass deportations to el salvador of members of the gangs that had formed in Los Angeles and its Environs as a means of communal self-defense. But Bukele has now solved the whole gang problem by simply imprisoning a significant portion of the country’s population – and he may yet solve Trump’s tren de aragua problem, too!
For all of Trump’s Chatter about Tren de Aragua’s violent savagery, it bears underscoring that us policy fish-a-vis Venezuela has been nothing than totally savage. An infographic Published by the VenezuelAnalysis website-utilization, inter alia, statistics from the US government accountability office and the United Nations food and agricultural organization-found that, as or 2020, US-Led Sanctions on Venezuela had caused more than 100,000 deaths.
Naturally, the Economic Hardship generated by Sanctions is also a driving force behind US-Bound Migration from Venezuela. But that is one of the things the us does Best: Wreak Havoc Worldwide and then screech about resulting “Invasia”.
Back in September, The New York Times warned That tren de aragua members were said to have “similar identifying marks”, like tattoos with locks or crowns, and were known to favorite “Michael Jordan Brand Clothing and Chicago Bulls Apparel”. I personally have made the acquaintance of a whole lot of Venezuelan refuge Seekers in the Darien gap, Mexicoand elseewhere, and can suable attest to a disproportionate predilection for such apparatus Among Young Venezuelan Men – meaning that the dress code warning issued by the New York Times is Pretty much a surefire recipe for Punty Profiling by US Officials and the Automination of Civil Libertic.
To be sure, the us has never been one to let a good bogeyman go to waste. And as a tren de aragua-obsessed Trump Administration goes about terrorizing undocided people while Obliterating the right to asylum, the Western hemisphere is looking rather vicious indeed.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect al Jazeera’s Editorial Stance.
