EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Authorities in Chihuahua, Mexico, two years ago began documenting the arrival of members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua to the U.S.-Mexico border.
But it wasn’t until investigators developed a working relationship with colleagues in southern Mexico, El Salvador, Chile and Colombia that they had a clear picture of how TDA operates in the region.
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Now they know Tren de Aragua gang members sneak into Chiapas and Quintana Roo from Guatemala and form alliances with Mexican gangs as they make their way north to border cities like Juarez.
“They developed a co-dependence with organized criminal groups,” said Chihuahua Public Safety Secretary Gilberto Loya. “We detected this here when we began to have a large number of migrant kidnappings and extortion – from people who came in the caravans and migrants who arrived by themselves to Juarez.”
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