As Department of Homeland Security officials claim they arrested 27 people with ties to Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua at a San Antonio raid last weekend, two congressmen are demanding transparency about who was actually caught up in the sweep.
Indeed, DHS has so far provided no proof of its allegations about the gang ties, and the feds have only criminally charged two of the 140 people reportedly detained over the weekend, U.S. Reps. Joaquin Castro and Greg Casar said in a letter to the Trump administration.
The two San Antonio Democrats said their offices have been trying for days to get federal law enforcement officials to provide the whereabouts of the 138 other individuals taken into custody during the raid, which took place at 3 a.m. Sunday at a gathering on Basse Road near San Pedro Avenue.
“After attempting to get pertinent information from your respective offices, we are addressing this letter to all of you pursuant to our responsibilities as congressional representatives of the area and pursuant to our duty to conduct rigorous oversight of federal and state activities,” the lawmakers said in the letter, addressed to the directors of DHS, the FBI, the Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Most importantly, we write out of our obligation to ensure transparency for Texans and people across the country,” the congressmen added.
The inquiry comes as federal agencies have trumpeted their attempts to shut down Tren de Aragua as they conduct raids in Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina, which have drawn criticism for their growing brutality. The actions are part of President Donald Trump’s bid to carry out what he promised would be the largest mass deportation in U.S. history.
“Due to the numerous reports this year on agents of Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other agencies overstepping their legal authority, we are extremely concerned about the legality of the detainments and the due process of the detainees,” Castro and Casar said in their letter. “Any operation of this scale demands full transparency regarding the basis for the raid, which agencies participated, and the status of those detained.”
In a statement supplied to the Current on Monday, agencies involved in the San Antonio raid stated without supporting evidence that the operation disrupted a “criminal presence” by Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-based gang Trump has designated foreign terrorist organization.
In a separate statement supplied to the Current Thursday morning, DHS officials alleged that 27 of the people arrested over the weekend have ties to the gang. That statement includes names and photos of seven people with alleged affiliations and adds that investigators found “cocaine, three firearms and approximately $35,000 in cash” at the scene of an underground “Tren de Aragua nightclub.”
The statement describes the seven named individuals as “some of the worst of the worst illegal aliens arrests.” However, it only describes criminal convictions against three of the individuals — larceny, smuggling aliens and conspiracy to commit aggravated assault with a weapon. Two others purportedly have prior arrests for illegal entry and theft, while the statement offers no criminal background on the remaining pair.
Exaggerated claims
The allegations in the DHS statement echo similar claims about victories over Tren de Aragua that the Trump administration made following other recent immigration raids. In several of those instances, the government’s assertion that agents rounded up gang members and shut down criminal enterprises have evaporated in the light of day.
In the highest-profile such case, 300 federal agents stormed a Chicago apartment complex, some rappelling down from a helicopter and hurling flash-bang grenades. After the smoke cleared, they’d arrested 37 immigrants, mostly Venezuelans.
The Trump administration lauded the raid as victory over foreign terrorists, saying they’d arrested two “confirmed” members of Tren de Aragua. Stephen Miller, the architect of the White House’s immigration crackdown, declared the building was “filled with TdA terrorists,” adding that the raid had “saved God knows how many lives.”
However, nearly two months later, federal prosecutors still haven’t filed criminal charges against anyone arrested in the apartment building, an extensive ProPublica investigation found. The feds have also failed to show any evidence linking the two “confirmed” Tren de Aragua members to the criminal group, the news outlet reports.
In another example, state and federal authorities conducted an April 1 raid of a party at an Airbnb rental in suburban Austin, arresting 35 people, mostly Venezuelan immigrants. At the time, the feds bragged that they’d busted a Tren de Aragua gathering.
A subsequent Texas Observer investigation found that the government hasn’t pursued criminal charges against any of those busted at the rental property. Indeed, the Hays County District Attorney’s Office even dropped felony drug cases against a pair of Venezuelan men stopped driving near the Airbnb around the time of the raid.
The Trump administration has regularly exaggerated immigrants’ ties to Tren de Aragua to justify its increasingly aggressive tactics, said Jonathan Ryan, an attorney who leads San Antonio-based immigration legal-aid group Advokato.
“These raids lead to plenty of deportations, but whether they lead to criminal charges is a whole other question,” Ryan told the Current. “What we have seen is that they make plenty of allegations that they’re rounding up criminals then underdeliver on those claims.”
Even so, the administration’s raids have real-world implications for people caught up in them, Ryan said, pointing out that many end up in detention then are booted out of the country. At least six children were detained in the San Antonio raid, the attorney added, saying his organization is now working to represent the minors.
‘Numbers don’t lie’
Indeed, the murky details around the raid and the concerns that people here legally may have been swept up prompted a street protest Monday in San Antonio.
Henry Rodriguez, executive director of Latino civil-rights group LULAC, was among those who marched. He said he wants criminals off the streets, “foreign or domestic,” but he added that the federal government must be transparent about its enforcement actions.
So far, the San Antonio raid has failed that test, he told the Current.
“I want to see the facts come out, and I want names and numbers,” Rodriguez said. “Because numbers don’t lie.”
The only two people charged in relation to the San Antonio raid are Marcos Contreras-Max and Edwin Javier Chinchilla-Lopez, both from Honduras, according to a report by TV station KSAT citing local court records. Both men face charges of illegal re-entry into the United States.
Court records provide no evidence linking either Contreras-Max or Chinchilla-Lopez to Tren de Aragua, according to KSAT’s report.
In a video statement tweeted out this week, Congressman Castro blasted federal agencies for giving his office a runaround as it sought information. He urged people who may have witnessed the raid to come forward with information that shines a light on what actually took place.
“There isn’t much information out there,” the congressman said. “You’d think for a raid that involves 150 people, that you would have cell phone video, for example, from multiple people that’s come out.”
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