The State Division has provided as much as $3m for info resulting in the arrest of Giovanni Vicente Mosquera Serrano.
The US Treasury Division has sanctioned the alleged chief of Tren de Aragua (TDA), a Venezuelan gang that the administration of President Donald Trump has used as justification for its immigration crackdown.
In an announcement launched on Tuesday, the Treasury’s Workplace of International Belongings Management mentioned Giovanni Vicente Mosquera Serrano was not solely sanctioned but additionally indicted by the Division of Justice.
Based on unsealed courtroom paperwork, Mosquera Serrano faces costs associated to drug trafficking and terrorism. He was additionally added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wished record, with a $3m reward provided for info resulting in his arrest or conviction.
Within the assertion, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused Tren de Aragua, beneath Mosquera Serrano’s management, of “terrorizing our communities and facilitating the circulation of illicit narcotics into our nation”.
It was the most recent effort within the Trump administration’s marketing campaign to crack down on prison exercise that it claims is tied to the proliferation of overseas gangs and prison networks within the US.
Earlier this yr, the Trump administration designated Tren de Aragua and different Latin American gangs as “overseas terrorist organisations”, a class extra generally used to explain worldwide teams with violent political goals.
However Trump has used the specter of prison networks based mostly overseas to justify the usage of emergency powers throughout his second time period.
For example, the Trump administration has claimed that Tren de Aragua is coordinating its US actions with the federal government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. That allegation was then used to justify the usage of a uncommon wartime regulation: the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
Claiming that the presence of teams like Tren de Aragua constituted a overseas “invasion” on US soil, Trump leveraged the Alien Enemies Act because the authorized foundation for pursuing the expedited deportations of alleged gang members.
Greater than 200 folks had been despatched to a maximum-security jail in El Salvador, the place a lot of them stay to today.
These deportations have drawn widespread criticism, together with a slew of authorized challenges. Critics have mentioned that the expedited deportations violated the immigrants’ rights to due course of. Additionally they identified that lots of the deported males didn’t have prison data.
Legal professionals for a few of the males have argued that they seem to have been imprisoned based mostly on their tattoos and wardrobe selections. The Division of Homeland Safety, nonetheless, has disputed that allegation.
Not less than one high US official has acknowledged that Maduro’s authorities might not direct Tren de Aragua.
An April memo from the Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence, obtained by information retailers like NPR and The New York Occasions, likewise solid doubt on the concept Venezuela was controlling the gang’s actions within the US.
Reasonably, the memo mentioned that the Maduro authorities seemingly sees Tren de Aragua as a risk.
“Whereas Venezuela’s permissive atmosphere allows TDA to function, the Maduro regime most likely doesn’t have a coverage of cooperating with TDA and isn’t directing TDA motion to and operations in america,” the memo reads.
Final July, the US and Colombia provided joint multimillion-dollar rewards for info resulting in the arrest of Mosquera Serrano and two different males believed to guide Tren de Aragua.
The group was additionally sanctioned in the identical month as a transnational prison organisation for “partaking in numerous prison actions, equivalent to human smuggling and trafficking, gender-based violence, cash laundering, and illicit drug trafficking”, in accordance with a Treasury Division assertion.
Quite a few nations in Latin America have struggled with the gang’s speedy progress, which has been linked to political assassinations and widespread human trafficking, although consultants say there’s little to counsel the gang has infiltrated the US.
