Does Trump’s favorite punching bag, Tren de Aragua, pose a threat to the U.S.?

Mexico City – A comprehensive campaign to deport deportation repeated a mantra for an unprecedented strike to an extraordinary US military accumulation in the Caribbean and a boat trafficking in the Caribbean: President Trump repeated a mantra: Aragua.

He insists that the street gang, founded in Venezuela ten years ago, tried the US’s “invasion ve and threatened the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere”. Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump described the group as “enemy of all humanity” and the arm of Venezuela’s authoritarian government.

According to experts examining the gang and Trump’s own intelligence officials, none of this is true.

Although the train is linked to human trafficking, extortion and kidnapping cases, and Venezuela’s diaspora expands the footprint as it spreads to America, there is little evidence that it pose a threat to the US.

“Train de Aragua does not have the capacity to invade any country, especially the most powerful nation in the world,” said Venezuela journalist Rna Rísquez, who wrote a book about the gang. He said that the heroism of the group was largely exaggerated by the Trump administration for the deportation of immigrants, the militarization of US foreign policy in Latin America, and perhaps even attempting to push the President of Venezuela from power.

“It is instrumentalized to justify political actions, the gang said. “It does not endanger the national security of the United States in any way.”

Before last year, several Americans had heard Aragua.

The group spread in a prison in Aragua, Venezuela and then escaped from poverty and political pressure under the regime of about 8 million Venezueli Nicolás Maduro. Gang members were accused of sex smuggling, drug sales, murders and other crimes in countries such as Chile, Brazil and Colombia.

When a large number of Venezuela Migrants demanded political asylum on the southern border, when they started to enter the United States, the authorities in a handful of states attributed a crime to the gang members.

It was Trump who put the group on the map.

While campaigning to be re -elected last year, Colo, who accused law enforcement officers of various crimes, including the murder of Aragua, took part in an event in Aurora. Trump was standing next to the large posters of Venezuelan immigrants.

“The occupied America. TDA gang members,” they were reading. The posters said: “Now illegal deportation.”

Shortly after he started to work, Trump declared Aragua’s “invasion” and calling The Act of the Act of the 18th century, rarely used, allowed the President to deport immigrants during the war. The management of 200 Venezuelalans flew, where they took part in a bad prison prison, but very few of them documented the connections with Aragua, and most of them had no criminal records in the United States.

In recent months, Trump has aroused the threat of explaining the deployment of Aragua’s thousands of US troops and a small ships and warplanes to the Caribbean.

In July, the train announced that Aragua was a terrorist group led by Maduro. The same Moon ordered Pentagon to use military force against Latin American cartels labeled by his government tagged terrorists.

Three times in recent weeks, US troops said that the train trafficking from the coast of Venezuela has carried Aragua members.

The administration did not present evidence of these claims. Fourteen people were killed.

Trump warned the future of more strikes. In his speech to the United Nations, “For every terrorist bandit that smuggled toxic drugs to the United States, please warn you that we will remove you from existence,” he said.

While insisting that strikes aim to disrupt drug trade-without evidence that the boat carries enough medicine to kill 25,000 Americans-the Analysts say that the train has little evidence that Aragua was exposed to high-level drug trafficking, and there is no evidence that Fentanil was imported from China in Mexico. DEA estimates that only 8% of the cocaine trafficking in the United States has passed through the Venezuelan territory.

This fueled speculation as to whether the real goal was a regime change.

Irene Mia, a senior member of the International Strategic Studies Institute, said Irene Mia, a thought -tank focusing on global security, said, “Everyone is wondering about Trump’s last game.”

Although there were officials who appear to be willing to work with Venezuela in the White House, they are open to the desire to overthrow Maduro and other leftist men in the region, including Foreign Minister Marco Rubio.

Rubio told Fox News this month, saying, “We will not be a cartel operating or masked as a government operating in our own hemisphere,” he said.

Best US intelligence officials, Maduro’nun train in Aragua does not believe that they do not believe.

Classified memory Produced by the National Intelligence Director, he did not find any evidence that there was a widespread cooperation between the regime and the gang. In addition, the train said that Aragua does not pose a threat to the USA: “The small size of TDA cells, the focus of low -resource criminal activities and the non -decentralized structure of TDA, the great volumes of TDA makes it possible to coordinate human trafficking or immigration smuggling.”

Michael Paarlberg, a political scientist who reads Latin America at the University of Virginia Commonwealth, said Trump used it to achieve political goals, and he believed that he had been away from internal debates, such as the decision to close the investigation into the convict sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

The train de Aragua said it was much less powerful than other gangs in Latin America. “But it was a Boogayman for Trump administration.”