(The Center Square) – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has challenged Vice President Kamala Harris to designate the violent Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).
He did so after calling on the president to do so and after he was the first governor to designate them as an FTO in September.
He challenged Harris before and after she traveled to Houston to celebrate abortion with celebrities while former President Donald Trump met with Border Patrol agents and Houstonian angel mom Alexis Nungaray in Austin. Trump has vowed, if he’s elected, to implement harsher penalties for illegal border crossers who commit crimes against Americans, including TdA members released into the country by the Biden-Harris administration who allegedly killed Alexis’ 12-year-old daughter, Jocelyn.
“Vice President Kamala Harris conveniently claims she cares about securing our border, yet her open border policies have allowed over 11 million illegal immigrants and dangerous criminals, like Tren de Aragua, into our country in the last four years – putting the lives of every American at risk,” Abbott said. The total is closer to 14 million, including those who evaded capture, known as gotaways, The Center Square reported.
Harris visited Houston, “the same city where innocent 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray was raped and murdered by two Tren de Aragua gang members. Jocelyn, her family, and all Americans deserve better. Vice President Harris must follow Texas’ lead and designate Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization immediately,” Abbott said. “But that’s just a start. The Biden-Harris Administration must use the full weight of the federal government to eradicate them once and for all – for Jocelyn and for every American.”
Nungaray, who endorsed Trump, said “Kamala Harris has never reached out to me just even as a human to give her condolences as a humane person running this country. I think it’s very sad that she can’t even just give me an open apology, a sincere apology,” The Center Square reported.
Abbott challenged Harris after he launched a statewide initiative in September to target TdA gangs operating in Texas. The state is also offering up to $5,000 in rewards for information that leads to the arrest of TdA members. The most recent TdA arrests were made in a Dallas suburb on capital murder and aggravated kidnapping charges, The Center Square reported. Other multi-agency operations have led to arrests in Texas’ major cities of Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.
Harris hasn’t responded to Abbott’s challenge, nor has she responded to any of his invitations to visit areas of Texas hardest hit by illegal border crossings.
In July, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated and sanctioned TdA as a transnational criminal organization (TCO).
OFAC said TdA “is expanding throughout the Western Hemisphere and engaging in diverse criminal activities, such as human smuggling and trafficking, gender-based violence, money laundering, and illicit drug trafficking.”
Designating it as a TCO “underscores the escalating threat it poses to American communities,” Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said. “As part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to target Transnational Criminal Organizations, we will deploy all tools and authorities against organizations like Tren de Aragua that prey on vulnerable populations to generate revenue, engage in a range of criminal activities across borders, and abuse the U.S. financial system.”
In addition to human smuggling, TdA has “developed additional revenue sources through a range of criminal activities, such as illegal mining, kidnapping, human trafficking, extortion, and the trafficking of illicit drugs such as cocaine and MDMA,” OFAC said.
The U.S. Department of State also announced it was offering rewards up to $12 million in total for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of several TdA leaders “for conspiring to participate in, or attempting to participate in, transnational organized crime.”
A TCO-designation allows OFAC to seize all property and interest in property of the designated entity in the U.S. and to seize the assets of individuals associated with the TCO-designated entity.
The FTO designation enables Texas courts “to halt their operations using civil asset forfeiture, take their property, and use enhanced criminal penalties to keep them in jail behind bars for longer periods of time,” Abbott said.
TDA gang members have recently become entrenched in major cities nationwide, Abbott and other law enforcement officials argue, because after illegally entering the country, they were released into the U.S. because of Biden administration policies.
More than one million Venezuelan illegal border crossers have been reported under the Biden-Harris administration, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, first reported by The Center Square.
In Texas, law enforcement officials have arrested more than 3,000 Venezuelan illegal border crossers; more than 200 are wanted, Abbott said.
