Gang Experts on the ‘Myths’ Around Tren de Aragua

As deportations of alleged Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members look set to resume under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), experts have questioned some of the rationale behind the Trump administration’s claim of an invasion by the group.

To be sure, TdA, as the gang is sometimes referred to, is a notorious transnational criminal enterprise. Its members have been involved in human trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and contract killings, among other crimes, in Venezuela, the U.S. and other countries. The question, according to those who spoke to Newsweek for this story, is not about whether TdA members are dangerous. The question, they say, is how these alleged gang members are being identified and the level at which the organization operates.

For instance, under both the Biden and Trump administrations, certain tattoos have been seen as near definitive signs of TdA membership. More recently, the group has been touted as an arm of the Venezuelan government infiltrating the U.S.

“This all comes in the context of Trump fulfilling his promise to carry out mass deportations, right? He’s been promising that throughout his campaign, and he’s come into office and he’s started to try to deliver on that promise,” Mike LaSusa, deputy director of content at InSight Crime, a think tank that specializes in Latin American organized crime, told Newsweek.

“The Venezuelan migrants in the United States are a very vulnerable group. It’s quite, quite easy to associate them with this gang, even though there may not be evidence of that association in many cases or solid evidence of that association.”

How Organized Is Tren de Aragua?

The U.S. government has been clear that it views TdA as a danger to national security, designating the group, born out of Tocorón prison in the Aragua state of Venezuela 20 years ago, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in February.

That move and President Donald Trump’s invocation of the AEA have led to heightened interest in the group and its motives.

For LaSusa and others who have followed the group closely, some of the claims being made to justify expedited removal of Venezuelans from the U.S. aren’t stacking up.

In the lawsuit J.G.G. v Trump, the challenge to the AEA which hit the Supreme Court on Monday, experts shared their views on the group’s activity in sworn testimony. One of those experts, Rebecca Hanson, an assistant professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Florida, described TdA as a “loose, disorganized group.”

“There is no evidence that the Maduro regime controls TdA or that the Maduro government and TdA are intertwined. Nor is there evidence that the Maduro regime has directed the TdA to enter the United States or directed any TdA activities within the country,” Hanson told the Court. “Moreover, it has no structured presence in the United States, and its members cannot be identified [by] tattoos or hand gestures.”

Before 2024, few Americans had likely heard of Tren de Aragua. But several high-profile crimes were then linked to alleged members of the group, which President Trump highlighted on the campaign trail and in the months since Election Day.

Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old from Houston, Texas, was allegedly murdered by two Venezuelan men linked to TdA. Nursing student Laken Riley was also killed by an alleged gang member in Georgia, prompting rare bipartisan legislation in her name shortly after Trump returned to the White House.

“Members of TdA pose an extraordinary threat to the American public. TdA members are involved in illicit activity to invoke fear and supremacy in neighborhoods and with the general population,” Robert Cerna, acting field office director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in Harlingen, said in a sworn statement.

Is Tren de Aragua Linked to Maduro Regime?

The cases above, along with the gang’s presence in Aurora, Colorado, and other neighborhoods, have been given as signs Tren de Aragua is carrying out a targeted “invasion” of the U.S., with the administration claiming at times this is under the direction of Venezuela’s socialist president.

“There is no evidence that the Tren maintains stable connections with the Venezuelan state or that the Maduro regime directs its actions toward the United States,” Andres Antillano, assistant professor and head of the criminology department at the Central University of Venezuela, said in his sworn statement in J.G.G. v Trump. “There is no evidence that Tren [de Aragua] has a significant presence in the U.S.”

Estimates of how many TdA members are active in the U.S. varyl Last October, the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration identified about 600 individuals in the U.S. with potential links to the gang.

LaSusa, of Insight Crime, said that the gang did used to have stronger ties to the Venezuelan government, until just before its presence became well known in the U.S. LaSusa said he was still working to understand why this relationship had weakened, but political infighting within PSUV, Maduro’s party, was a likely factor.

The Trump administration mentioned Tareck El Aissami in its filings on the gang’s ties to Maduro. Once PSUV’s patron in Aragua, the province where the gang was founded, El Aissami became the country’s oil minister before his arrest around two years ago by the Maduro administration, as part of an anti-corruption purge.

“We analyze that as being a move to basically exert control over his party, to deal with a rival faction within the ruling party, led by El Aissami, so Tren de Aragua lost its political patron, and soon after that the government decided to really turn against the gang itself,” LaSusa said.

The Venezuelan government then captured some TdA leaders working in Colombia and other Latin American countries, further weakening the group’s cross-border influence.

Professor Hanson backed up the idea of the group being limited in its capacity to act in an organized way, particularly as a force directed by Maduro. She described the relationship between the two entities as “conflicted and competitive”.

Hanson also said that there was no credible evidence that the Venezuelan president had directed TdA to enter the U.S. and carry out his wishes, while LaSusa said the gang was likely far weaker now than it was even two or three years ago.

But What About the Tattoos?

Tattoos have become a point of contention when it comes to how DHS determines who is and isn’t a member of TdA. Federal agents use a crib sheet of common artwork allegedly used by members to show they are part the gang – a practice not uncommon among gangs across the world.

That photo sheet was recently analyzed, after its submission as part of the J.G.G. case, and was found to include images taken from Google searches, including a photo posted on X by a Michael Jordan fan in 2015, and a tattoo featuring a clock which was from a cropped photo by a British barber in 2016.

When over 200 immigrants, mostly Venezuelans, were deported to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison on March 15, just as J.G.G. v Trump was being heard, tattoos were among the reasons some migrants were sent there, potentially in error.

A gay makeup artist with crown tattoos and the words “mom” and “dad” beneath them were viewed as confirmation he was a TdA member, his attorneys said. Another man, with a tattoo inspired by the Real Madrid soccer club logo was also sent to the jail.

“Tattoos are not a reliable way to identify members of the group,” Hanson wrote in her testimony. “The TdA, and gangs more generally in Venezuela, do not have a history of using tattoos to indicate membership. Indeed, no credible scholarship or studies of gangs in Venezuela indicate tattooing as a shared common practice among gang members.”

Antillano agreed, saying that TdA “never had a defined membership, nor initiation rites or identity marks such as tattoos that identify its members.” With so much focus on tattoos as an identifying sign, LaSusa believes that members who are active in the U.S. and elsewhere would take care around their body art.

“If you look at the tattoos that they’ve claimed identify people as members of Tren de Aragua, they’re all pretty common tattoos,” he said. “A lot of people get tattoos of stars, a lot of people get tattoos of roses, a lot of people get tattoos of their favorite sports teams. In none of those cases have we identified those as being markers of Tren de Aragua.”

Trump Administration Says TdA Threat Is Real

While alleged TdA members have been linked to serious and violent crimes, including the takeover of apartment blocks in Aurora, these experts believe the gang is too disorganized and fractured to be carrying out anything close to the organized invasion Trump has claimed for the basis of designated TdA as a terrorist organization. That designation provides part of the legal framework for how the administration is justifying expedited removals under the Alien Enemies Act.

When the Supreme Court ruled Monday that AEA removals could continue, as long as immigrants get their day in court, Cabinet members including Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi repeated previous Trump administration messaging.

In a post on X, Noem said that the court had shown that Trump “has the power to stop the invasion of our country by terrorists using war time powers” despite the country not being at war.

While legal challenges are sure to continue related to the deportations, the White House is operating under its perceived electoral mandate to remove as many illegal immigrants it can, as quickly as possible.