Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect that Aurora police have documented 10 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and arrested six of them. A previous version indicated 10 TdA members had been arrested.
Following the announcement of the arrest of confirmed and suspected Venezuelan gang members in Aurora, Denver7 sat down with an organized crime expert to discuss the challenges that come with trying to identify members of Tren de Aragua (TdA).
The Aurora Police Department confirmed to Denver7 that it had documented 10 members of TdA in the city. Six TdA members had been arrested and were in custody, including two brothers allegedly connected to a July shooting on Nome Street, the department said.
A police spokesperson said the arrests were related to crimes "assumed to stretch beyond just Nome Street."
Aurora
APD confirms additional arrests of confirmed, suspected Venezuelan gang members
Mike LaSusa is the deputy director of content for InSight Crime, which studies organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“In the past, you'd have big, sort of hegemonic cartel type groups, like Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel is probably the classic example," LaSusa explained. "Today, you have much more diffused networks and nodes that rely less on a powerful top leader and more on sort of the relationships that are built around these illegal activities."
TdA is a Venezuelan prison gang that built up its criminal power beyond the prison and into the outside world, according to LaSusa.
"They got involved in things like smuggling of drugs and people, and also predatory crimes like extortion," he said. “As the Venezuelan political and economic crisis deepened, the migration from Venezuela grew, and this group was able to take advantage of that migration to smuggle the migrants and earn money off of them that way, and also exploit them for purposes of sexual exploitation or labor exploitation, extortion, in the communities where they arrived in other countries. So that was how the gang was able to expand beyond Venezuela into other countries in South America, by following those migration flows.”
LaSusa could not speak to the prevalence of TdA within Colorado but did say it's unlikely that top leadership within the gang would be directing the activities of any alleged members in the United States.
“The reason I say that is because last year, the Venezuelan government did a raid on several prisons that were controlled by Tren de Aragua, including its main headquarters, the Tocoron Prison. And since that time, the gang members have fled [and] become sort of dispersed, probably throughout South America," said LaSusa. “We have seen this gang expand into other countries, particularly in South America. So far, they have not seemed to make inroads in a sort of coordinated way in the United States.”
Hear more from LaSusa in the video player below:
There are several reasons why it's challenging to identify TdA members, according to LaSusa.
“It's really difficult to identify folks as a member of this gang in particular, because the Venezuelan government itself either isn't willing or isn't able to provide that information, right?" said LaSusa. “The more fear is generated about the gang, the more likely you are to have impostors that assume the gang's name to intimidate victims, and the more difficult it's going to become to identify the real gang members."
LaSusa would love to learn how Aurora PD made the TdA connection with the individuals arrested.
“I would really like to know more about how they identify these gang members," LaSusa said. “It's difficult to identify these gang members. Some of them may be using the name as impostors. So I would just caution everybody to examine the evidence before they jump to a conclusion that somebody is a member of a particular gang.”
For its part, an APD spokesman told Denver7 the department's work in identifying gang members is an evolving process.
“Every day we learn more about TdA, how it operates and how we can identify suspected members,” APD public information officer Joe Moylan told The Denver Post. “…It’s still too soon to try to quantify TdA’s presence in Aurora one way or the other.”
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