The State Division has supplied 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 Overseas 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 fees associated to drug trafficking and terrorism. He was additionally added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wished listing, with a $3m reward supplied for info resulting in his arrest or conviction.
Within the statement, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused Tren de Aragua, beneath Mosquera Serrano’s management, of “terrorizing our communities and facilitating the stream of illicit narcotics into our nation”.
It was the newest effort within the Trump administration’s marketing campaign to crack down on prison exercise that it claims is tied to the proliferation of international gangs and prison networks within the US.
Earlier this yr, the Trump administration designated Tren de Aragua and different Latin American gangs as “international terrorist organisations”, a class extra generally used to explain worldwide teams with violent political goals.
However Trump has used the specter of prison networks primarily based 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 international “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 have been despatched to a maximum-security jail in El Salvador, the place lots of them stay to at the present time.
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. In addition they identified that most of the deported males didn’t have prison information.
Legal professionals for a number of the males have argued that they seem to have been imprisoned primarily based on their tattoos and wardrobe decisions. The Division of Homeland Safety, nonetheless, has disputed that allegation.
At the very least one prime US official has acknowledged that Maduro’s authorities could 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 Instances, likewise solid doubt on the concept that Venezuela was controlling the gang’s actions within the US.
Somewhat, the memo mentioned that the Maduro authorities possible sees Tren de Aragua as a menace.
“Whereas Venezuela’s permissive atmosphere permits TDA to function, the Maduro regime in all probability doesn’t have a coverage of cooperating with TDA and isn’t directing TDA motion to and operations in the USA,” the memo reads.
Final July, the US and Colombia supplied 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 “participating in numerous prison actions, comparable to human smuggling and trafficking, gender-based violence, cash laundering, and illicit drug trafficking”, based on a Treasury Division statement.
Quite a few nations in Latin America have struggled with the gang’s fast progress, which has been linked to political assassinations and widespread human trafficking, although specialists say there may be little to counsel the gang has infiltrated the US.
