Today, America First Legal (AFL) released a second tranche of documents from the Illinois Cook County Sheriff’s Office exposing the growing threat that criminal illegal aliens, including the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) and the politicians who protect them, pose to American citizens in the “sanctuary city” of Chicago.
After conflicting reports on TdA’s activities in the City of Aurora, Colorado, in September 2023, AFL launched an investigation into TdA’s presence in Colorado, Illinois, and Wisconsin. On October 2, 2024, AFL released the first set of records from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office. AFL released additional data and documents from the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois Governor’s Office on November 14, 2024.
This second set of records from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office shows:
- By exploiting migratory movements across Latin America and establishing alliances with other Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs), Tren de Aragua has doubled its presence in the United States from 8 states in 2022 to 16 states in 2024.
- Chicago law enforcement learned over a year ago that TdA was engaging in human trafficking, sex exploitation, drug trafficking, and retail theft rings, and employing extreme brutality — including dismemberment — to intimidate their adversaries.
- In October 2023, Chicago Police identified graffiti matching a TdA slogan in the Magnificent Mile district, signaling the gang’s involvement in retail theft and boldness in claiming territory near tourist destinations.
- On July 29, 2024, the Chicago Police Department warned its own police officers that TdA gang members had a “green light” to shoot police officers in the sanctuary city of Denver, Colorado.
- Reportedly, TdA gang leaders work jobs as cab drivers or cleaners to maintain a low profile.
As AFL previously revealed, law enforcement officers have been aware that Tren de Aragua was “embedded in the South American migrant communities” in cities like Chicago, where at least 30 were arrested between January 1, 2023, and September 10, 2024.
An FBI National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC) document states that TdA “exploit[s] migratory movements destined for the United States” and has an “ability to assimilate with other criminal actors and local gangs in new regions.” The leader of the organization, Hector Guerrero Flores “El Niño” Guerrero, “whose whereabouts are currently unknown,” has “directed key members to new countries including the United States and Canada to oversee new criminal revenue streams” — to supplement its existing “extortion, kidnapping, human trafficking, human smuggling, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, fraud, and homicide” — by “exploiting migratory movements” and “establish[ing] alliances with Latin American based TCOs (transnational criminal organizations).” The NGIC document from November 29, 2023, further states that TdA then had a “reported presence” in “Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, New York, and Texas.”
Notes from an FBI briefing on March 14, 2024, state that TdA “expanded into at least 8 states since 2022” and is believed to be involved in “narcotics, human and sex trafficking and extortion [and] Running retail theft rings.” The New York Post recently reported that TdA has expanded its territory to at least 16 states. The FBI also advised that users of “Pink Cocaine” (TdA’s drug of choice) should be treated as if it contains Fentanyl because “it is often used as well.”
In late October 2023, a Chicago police officer discovered graffiti matching a TdA slogan, “Real Hasta la Muerte,” on a light post in the 160 block of East Ohio Street, which is in the Magnificent Mile premium shopping district and suggests that TdA is boldly marking its territory to protect its retail theft rings. This location is also surrounded by popular destinations, including the Navy Pier, the Water Tower Place, Ohio Street Beach, and the Chicago Children’s Museum.
Another document reveals that TdA posts messages that “basically threaten their opposition with death if they don’t leave their territory within 48 hours.” It explains that “the brutality of the Tren de Aragua is above all a strategy to intimidate their adversaries,” for example, by “dismember[ing] someone and leav[ing] them in a bag.”
AFL also obtained a Chicago Police Department “Officer Safety Alert” from July 29, 2024, warning that TdA gang members “have been given a ‘green light’ to fire upon or attack law enforcement personnel in Denver, Colorado,” so “Officers are to use caution and tactical awareness when encountering individuals believed to have an affiliation with ‘Tren de Aragua (TdA).’”
This Officer Safety Alert was likely based on similar “Credible human sources from Colorado” cited in the federal Homeland Security Investigations memo uncovered by the New York Post earlier this year.
Last Friday, rather than take action to protect Denver’s law enforcement officers from this real threat, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston instead threatened to deploy police to stop federal officials from carrying out deportations. Likewise, in New York, after TdA gang members attacked NYPD officers, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to prosecute some and released others after charging. Just last week, another illegal Venezuelan migrant with ties to TdA allegedly robbed a Manhattan prosecutor.
As early as September 2023, the Cook County Sheriff’s Police Department circulated English versions of Spanish news to learn more about the Venezuelan gang’s foreign criminal activities. According to the article shared by a Special Victims Unit and Special Operations Sergeant, the gang leader, Niño Guerrero, ran the Tren de Aragua gang from the Tocorón prison (before his escape), where there were no “prison officials, but armed prisoners who acted as guards,” and “the prisoners ha[d] taken over the jail and turned it into luxury suites [with] swimming pools, sports courts, restaurants, clubs and even a zoo.” The article warned that TdA took over the small-time loans business in Peru because “Wherever there is a shopping mall, a market, or a group of bars or restaurants, they are there.” It further warned that “Unlike other gangs, the bosses of Tren de Aragua are not ostentatious and instead use low-profile jobs as a front. One day, they may be cab drivers and another a cleaner.”
The warnings circulated in the Cook County Sheriff’s Police Department seem to have foreshadowed how TdA’s insidious criminal network has spread into cities across the United States and how its violent criminal activities continue to expand into the heartland of America.
In willful violation of federal law prohibiting any person from harboring or concealing illegal aliens and/or from opposing or impeding federal law enforcement, and with total disregard for the safety of American citizens and lawful residents of their communities, leftist sanctuary city politicians have announced plans to resist mass federal immigration enforcement. For example, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson stated, “Our city’s police department is not going to (double) as ICE agents — we’re just not going to do that.” Colorado Governor Jared Polis stated, “Obviously, it would devastate our economy and our society if someone were to come in and forcibly take our neighbors away from us.”
American citizens like Laken Riley are murdered, raped, and robbed because sanctuary city politicians favor criminal illegal aliens over lawful American citizens. AFL will continue fighting to expose the danger created by unscrupulous politicians who ignore our immigration laws, to hold accountable the “sanctuary cities” that shower criminal illegal aliens with benefits and favors at the expense of our American citizens and residents, and to protect the rule of law.
Statement from Reed D. Rubinstein, America First Legal Senior Vice President:
“These records illustrate, in graphic detail, the perversity of the Biden-Harris open border. They also show that the politicians who run “sanctuary cities,” protect illegal aliens, and obstruct federal immigration law enforcement, have a deep-seated contempt for America’s citizens and sovereignty, and a shocking disregard for the rule of law. Harboring illegal aliens, and obstructing federal law enforcement, are crimes; it is long past time for the illegal immigration complex of leftist politicians and taxpayer-subsidized “nonprofits” to be held accountable,” said Reed D. Rubinstein.
Read the documents here.
