How La Barbie and her Venezuelan thugs could swing the US election: The brutal Tren de Aragua gang who bury their enemies alive couldnt establish a toehold in the US... then Biden opened the floodgates - and it might seal the deal for Trump
At first glance, the shabby Gateway Hotel, which advertises that it lets rooms by the hour, doesnt seem a place on which the fate of the world might turn.
At first glance, the shabby Gateway Hotel, which advertises that it lets rooms by the hour, doesnt seem a place on which the fate of the world might turn.
Yet this now infamous establishment in the downtown heart of the Texas city of El Paso has earned itself an eleventh-hour role in the US presidential election – as part of a border security scandal that may help return Donald Trump to the White House.
Recent events at the crime-plagued hostelry, its windows now plastered with Closed and No Trespassing signs, have exposed yet again the disastrous failings of the Biden-Harris immigration policy – and allowed Trump to show Americans heading to the polls why he takes such a hard line on migrants.
The rundown hotel was allegedly the base for a brutal sex-trafficking ring run by an international Venezuelan crime gang, whose base is only a half-hour walk away across the Mexican border in Ciudad Juarez – one of the worlds most dangerous cities.
Notorious for burying its victims alive or dismembering them, the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang – which means Aragua Train, Aragua being a state in Venezuela and the train a reference to the gangs reported links to a rail union – has a reputation for ruthlessness thats terrifying even by the depraved standards of Latin American criminals.
Estefania Primera, 36, the alleged leader of the Tren de Aragua gang. Her street name is La Barbie and she is a heavily-tattooed and pierced illegal migrant
And, thanks to a Democrat government that rashly relaxed Trumps border controls, theyve been able to spread their tentacles across the United States.
In recent months, its members have been accused of shooting point-blank two police officers in New York, beating to death a nursing student out jogging in Georgia, executing a man in Connecticut, sex trafficking in Louisiana, and turning hotels and apartment complexes as far afield as Florida, Colorado and Texas into bases for prostitution and drug-dealing.
The gang, whose myriad activities across Latin America include drug and people trafficking, contract killings and illegally mining gold, was founded in around 2000 inside a Venezuelan prison – a prison that it was able to control to such an extent that it installed a bar, restaurant, disco and zoo.
But before the advent of the Biden administration – which has allowed more than 700,000 Venezuelans to settle in the US after many more fled poverty and the oppressive rule of socialist president Nicolas Maduro – the gang had never been able to establish a toehold in the States.
One of the favourite money-spinners of an operation thats been dubbed the epitome of evil is to offer to smuggle migrant women into the country – often via El Paso – and then force them into prostitution as payment. The gangsters invariably twist the terms of the arrangement so the debt can never be paid off.
The Democrats decision to give special treatment to Venezuelans due to the privations they were suffering under Maduro has created a nightmare scenario for American law enforcers.
Donald Trump speaks at a rally earlier this month. The former US president is focusing on immigration and the threat from criminals slipping over the border in the final days of the election campaign
The Venezuelan gang took over a Texas motel earlier this year, turning it into a base for prostitution and drug-dealing
As Washington has imposed sanctions on Maduros regime, which range from blocking oil and gas sales to banning access to the US financial system, Venezuela is now one of a handful of countries that refuses to tell US officials if migrants have a criminal history.
While the vast majority of the arrivals are law-abiding, the thugs that hide among them are now being referred to by some police forces as ghost criminals, since there is little to identify them except their gang tattoos. (Tren de Aragua tattoos typically include five-point crowns, stars, clocks, trains and roses.)
In the final days of the election campaign, Trump is focusing on immigration and, particularly, the threat from criminals slipping over the border.
Last week, he told a rally that the US was now like a garbage can for the rest of the world. He specifically flagged up the Tren de Aragua gang, claiming that the Colorado town of Aurora (over 600 miles to the north of El Paso) was being taken over by the Venezuelans, turning it into a war zone.
His claims came after a video showing heavily armed gang members patrolling an apartment building in Aurora went viral.
However, even Auroras Republican governor accused him of exaggerating the problem – something of a Trump habit – prompting Democrats and much of the US media to dismiss it as another lie – like his claim that Haitian migrants had been eating peoples pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Yet it should be plain to even the most starry-eyed Harris supporter that, even if it isnt about to destroy America, Tren de Aragua is a growing menace.
The Department of Homeland Security has identified more than 600 migrants in the US who may have connections to TdA and has established it is operating in 15 states, and possibly eight others. Since 2021, there have been more than 100 arrests of suspected gang members.
There has been a dramatic increase in the number of migrants illegally crossing the southern border in the US - an average of 2 million per year from 2021 to 2023
In San Antonio, Texas, police say members of the gang have been squatting in empty apartment buildings for months, using them as a base to deal cocaine and pimp out women
Last month, Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think-tank, warned: I think the Tren de Aragua in the US could help elect Donald Trump.
Other experts have agreed, noting how voters, who identify immigration as a key concern, need no reminding of how Biden and his border tsar, Kamala Harris, presided over a dramatic increase in the number of migrants illegally crossing the southern border – an average of 2 million per year from 2021 to 2023.
The Democrats critics already have – in 36-year-old Estefania Primera, the alleged leader of the gang that operated out of the Gateway Hotel – their poster child for the evils of TdA and the failings of Washington.
Primera, whose street name is La Barbie, is a heavily-tattooed and pierced illegal migrant who, until she was locked up last month on charges of people smuggling and prostitution, liked to post on social media photos showing off her body decorations.
It is claimed that Primera trafficked women across the Mexican border to work as prostitutes and even used her five young children as drug mules to move narcotics.
El Paso police say that until a judge temporarily closed it, pending a hearing in December, theyd received a jaw-dropping 693 calls in two years about criminal activities at the anarchic Gateway Hotel, including assaults and suspected prostitution.
According to court papers, a migrant woman living there alleges that, to force her to work as a prostitute, La Barbie drugged her with the potentially lethal synthetic opioid fentanyl and brought men into the hotel to rape her repeatedly while she passed in and out of unconsciousness. When she woke and tried to flee, Primera, she says, dragged her back inside.
The conservative New York Post recently hailed Primera as the face of Biden-Harris immigration policies, detailing how she illegally crossed the border in August 2023. She was apprehended but, under the Biden governments controversial catch-and-release policy, was allowed to stay in the US with the sole proviso that she wore an ankle monitor (which she immediately ditched).
Though she is now behind bars, La Barbie will remain a problem for the US since Venezuela refuses to take back almost all its citizens – a fact that has long appalled critics of the Biden-Harris policy of allowing hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans into America.
It is certainly quiet around the Gateway Hotel without La Barbie. Despite being just across the bridge from the drug-violence plagued Ciudad Juarez, and being a major crossing point for illegal migrants, El Paso has enjoyed a reputation for being one of Americas safest cities.
Resident Joshua Harris, an athletics trainer, was sceptical that the gangsters of Tren de Aragua posed much of a threat to El Paso. This is Texas – youve got to assume everyone has a gun, and theres also a s***load of military and veterans here, he told me.
Police forces are calling some members of the gang ghost criminals as there is little to identify them except their gang tattoos. Typical Tren de Agua tattoos include five-point crowns, stars, clocks, trains and roses
Some of his fellow Texans arent nearly so bullish. Last month, the states Republican governor, Greg Abbott, designated Tren de Aragua a terrorist organisation and called El Paso ground zero for the gang in the US.
Tren de Aragua has spread terror and carnage in every country theyve been in, and Texas will not allow them to gain a foothold in our state, Mr Abbott said in a statement.
The gang relies on staying ahead of police. Its members often live in migrant shelters, where other residents provide both their victims and their new recruits. Earlier this month, a TdA gang member was arrested in Houston for trying to recruit children from two local middle schools.
Two Venezuelan men accused of raping and murdering a 12-year-old girl, Jocelyn Nungaray, after she walked to a convenience store in Houston in June are suspected of being TdA members.
In another Texas city, San Antonio, police say TdA members squatted in empty apartment buildings for months, using them as a base to deal cocaine and pimp out women and – according to neighbours – even children.
Earlier this month, police – backed by considerable firepower – conducted a major raid and arrested 19 people.
For the past year, the majority of migrant arrivals to cities like New York, Chicago and Denver have been Venezuelans, prompting concern from local mayors that they were being swamped by incomers they knew nothing about.
In New York, a TdA hotspot, police say the gang has been recruiting children as young as 11 in migrant shelters and using them to rob New Yorkers and tourists from the backs of mopeds and even at gunpoint, knowing theyll be dealt with leniently under the citys relaxed prosecuting regime.
They first targeted Central Park and have now gravitated to Times Square. They call themselves Los Diablos de la 42, or the Devils of 42nd Street and, according to police, if new recruits refuse to commit crimes as part of their gang initiation rite, they are forced to lick the floor of New Yorks notoriously dirty subway.
Theyre reckless, and as ruthless a crew as weve seen, said Jason Savino, one of New Yorks most senior detectives.
In the New York borough of Queens, where the gang is accused of operating a street-front prostitution racket known as the Market of Sweethearts, two NYPD officers were shot by a 19-year-old suspected TdA member, though the officers survived.
Like La Barbie, the alleged gunman had been caught crossing into Texas illegally, only to be released into the US to await an asylum hearing (which can take years to come up).
In Denver, in June, a leaked federal memo revealed that officials had received intelligence that members of TdA had been given the green light by their bosses to attack and open fire on local police.
Meanwhile, it is a recurring theme that TdA members arrested for crimes in the US didnt slip into the country undetected but were intercepted by the Border Patrol and then allowed to stay.
That includes Jose Ibarra, a suspected TdA member who has denied a charge of beating to death Laken Riley, a 22-year-old student nurse in Athens, Georgia.
The TdA mayhem has even reached Stamford, which sits on Connecticuts wealthy Gold Coast in New England, where police suspect two alleged gang members shot dead a man execution-style in a local motel room, using a pillow to muffle the gunshot after apparently torturing him for his financial details.
They were later arrested, along with two very young children, as they tried to use one of the victims credit cards.
The TdA has provided Trump not only with a cudgel with which to bludgeon the Democrats but with the perfect opportunity to boast that a second Trump term will be tougher than the first.
Theyre a savage gang, one of the worst in the world, and theyre getting bigger all the time because of our stupidity, he has said.
At rallies across the country, hes been talking of his Operation Aurora (named after the town he said was a TdA war zone), a federal plan to immediately invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act if he is re-elected.
The law – controversially used to intern Japanese-Americans in World War II – gives the president the power to arrest and deport any non-American man older than 14 if they come from a country at war with the US.
Trump said hed use it to deport all undocumented gang members. He said hell also demand the death penalty for any migrant who kills an American citizen.
Many Americans will be voting with their wallets on November 5. For others, this new bogeyman from the border may just seal the deal for Trump.
