The Take: Who is behind Tren de Aragua?
Tren de Aragua was a little-known gang in Venezuela – until recently. US President Donald Trump's focus on the group has thrust it into the spotlight, as hundreds of Venezuelans have been deported from the United States.
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This episode was produced by Amy Walters and Ashish Malhotra, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Remas Alhawari, Mariana Navarette, Kisaa Zehra, Kingwell Ma and our guest host, Natasha Del Toro. It was edited by Noor Wazwaz.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad Al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take's executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.
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Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
As Trump raises deportation quotas, advocates fear an expanding ‘dragnet'
Washington, DC – There were shackles at her wrists. Her waist. Her ankles. The memory of being bound still haunts 19-year-old Ximena Arias Cristobal even after her release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. Nearly a month after her arrest, the Georgia college student said she is still grappling with how her life has been transformed. One day in early May, she was pulled over for a minor traffic stop: turning right on a red light. The next thing she knew, she was in a detention centre, facing a court date for her deportation. 'That experience is something I'll never forget. It left a mark on me, emotionally and mentally,' Arias Cristobal said during a news conference on Tuesday, recounting her time at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. 'What hurts more,' she added, 'is knowing that millions of others have gone through and are still going through the same kind of pain'. Rights advocates say her story has become emblematic of a 'dragnet' deportation policy in the United States, one that targets immigrants of all backgrounds, regardless of whether they have a criminal record. President Donald Trump had campaigned for a second term on the pledge that he would expel 'criminals' who were in the country 'illegally'. But as he ramps up his 'mass deportation' campaign from the White House, critics say immigration agents are targeting immigrants from a variety of backgrounds — no matter how little risk they pose. 'The quotas that they are pushing for [are] creating this situation on the ground where ICE is literally just trying to go after anybody that they can catch,' said Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director of America's Voice, an immigration advocacy group. She explained that young, undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, are among the most vulnerable populations. 'In the dragnet, we're getting long-established, deeply rooted Dreamers and other folks that have been in the United States for a long time,' Cardenas explained. An avid runner who studies finance and economics at Dalton State College, Arias Cristobal is one of the 3.6 million people known as Dreamers. Many were sent to the US as children, sometimes accompanied by family members, others alone. For decades, the US government has struggled with how to handle those young, undocumented arrivals to the country. In 2012, then-President Barack Obama announced a new executive policy, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). It provided temporary protection from deportation for younger immigrants who had lived in the US since June 2007. About 530,000 Dreamers are protected by their DACA status. But Gaby Pacheco, the leader of the immigration group said that number represents a small proportion of the total population of young immigrants facing possible deportation. Some arrived after the cut-off date of June 15, 2007, while others have been unable to apply: Processing for new applications has been paused in recent years. Legal challenges over DACA also continue to wind their way through the federal court system. 'Sadly, in recent months multiple scholars and alumni have either been arrested, detained and even deported,' Pacheco said. She noted that 90 percent of the Dreamers that her organisation is supporting during their first year of higher education have no protections under DACA or other programmes. All told, she said, the last few months have revealed a 'painful truth': that 'Dreamers are under attack'. But advocates like Pacheco warn that the first months of the Trump administration may be only a harbinger of what is to come. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller informed ICE agents that the Trump administration had increased its daily quota for immigration arrests, from 1,000 per day to 3,000. The current draft of Trump's budget legislation — known as the One Big Beautiful Bill — would also surge an estimated $150bn in government funds towards deportation and other immigration-related activities. The bill narrowly passed the House of Representatives and is likely to be taken up in the Senate in the coming weeks. Both actions could mean a significant scale-up in immigration enforcement, even as advocates argue that Trump's portrayal of the US as a country overrun with foreign criminals is starkly out of step with reality. Studies have repeatedly shown that undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes — including violent crimes — than US-born citizens. Available data also calls into question Trump's claims that there are large numbers of undocumented criminal offenders in the country. The rate of arrests and deportations has remained more or less the same as when Trump's predecessor, former President Joe Biden, was in office, according to a report by the TRAC research project. From January 26 to May 3, during the first four months of Trump's second term, his administration made an average of 778 immigration arrests per day. That is just 2 percent higher than the average during the final months of Biden's presidency, which numbered about 759. The number of daily removals or deportations under Trump was actually 1 percentage point lower than Biden's daily rate. All told, Pacheco and Cardenas warned that the pressure to increase arrests and deportations could lead to increasingly desperate tactics. The administration has already rolled back a policy prohibiting immigration enforcement in sensitive areas, like churches and schools. It has also sought to use a 1798 wartime law to swiftly deport alleged gang members without due process, and revoked temporary protections that allowed some foreign nationals to remain in the country legally. In an effort to increase immigration arrests, the Trump administration has also pressured local officials to coordinate with ICE. Drawing on section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the administration has even delegated certain immigration powers to local law enforcement, including the right to make immigration arrests and screen people for deportation. In one instance in early May, the Tennessee Highway Patrol coordinated with ICE in a sweep of traffic stops that led to nearly 100 immigration arrests. Another large-scale operation in Massachusetts in early June saw ICE make 1,500 arrests. Swept up in that mass arrest was Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, an 18-year-old high school student on his way to volleyball practice. His arrest sparked protest and condemnation in Gomes Da Silva's hometown of Milford, Massachusetts. Cardenas pointed to those demonstrations, as well as the outpouring of support for Arias Cristobal, as evidence of a growing rejection of Trump's immigration policies. 'I think we are going to see more and more pushback from Americans,' she said. 'Having said that, it is my belief that this administration has all the intention to implement their plans… And if Congress gives them more money, they're going to go after our communities.'
Al Jazeera
3 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Family of suspect in Colorado firebomb attack held in immigration custody
Federal officials in the United States have taken into custody the family of a man suspected of attacking a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado, over the weekend. In a video on Tuesday, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the family of Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 'This terrorist will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,' Noem said in the video. 'We are investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it.' Police have accused the 45-year-old Soliman of throwing Molotov cocktails into a crowd that had gathered for an event organised by Run for Their Lives, a group calling for the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza. According to an affidavit, Soliman yelled 'Free Palestine' while hurling the incendiary devices. The firebombs injured 12 people, three of whom remain hospitalised. Police have said Soliman planned the attack for more than a year. He is facing federal hate crime charges. 'When he was interviewed about the attack, he said he wanted them all to die, he had no regrets, and he would go back and do it again,' J Bishop Grewell, Colorado's acting US attorney, said during a news conference Monday. Soliman said that he acted alone and that nobody else knew of his plans. But officials with the administration of US President Donald Trump said they will investigate whether his wife and five children were aware of the suspect's intentions. Administration officials have also highlighted the fact that Soliman, an Egyptian national, was in the US on an expired tourist visa, tying his arrest — and that of his family — to a larger push against undocumented immigration. 'The United States has zero tolerance for foreign visitors who support terrorism,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday. 'Under the Trump administration, aliens will only be admitted into the United States through the legal process and only if they do not bear hostile attitudes towards our citizens, our culture, our government, our institutions or, most importantly, our founding principles.' Soliman's family includes a wife and five children. The official White House account on the social media platform X indicated that they 'could be deported by tonight'. 'Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed's Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon,' Tuesday's post read. The attack comes amid rising tensions in the US over Israel's continued war in Gaza, which United Nations experts and human rights groups have compared to a genocide. It also comes less than two weeks after the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy employees outside a Jewish museum in Washington, DC. Jewish as well as Muslim and Arab communities have reported sharp upticks in harassment and violence since the war began. Trump and his allies have used concerns about anti-Semitism as a pretext to push hardline policies on immigration and a crackdown on pro-Palestine activists. 'This is yet another example of why we must keep our Borders SECURE, and deport Illegal, Anti-American Radicals from our Homeland,' Trump said in a social media post on Monday. But the president and his supporters have themselves faced allegations of leaning into anti-Semitic rhetoric. And his administration's push to expel foreign nationals has caused alarm among civil liberties groups. The administration is currently attempting to deport several international students involved in pro-Palestine activity, including a Turkish graduate student named Rumeysa Ozturk. Her legal team argues that Ozturk appears to have been arrested for co-signing an op-ed calling for an end to the war in Gaza. Ozturk was released from immigrant detention in May following a legal challenge, but she continues to face deportation proceedings.
Qatar Tribune
4 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Israeli attacks kill 27 aid seekers in Gaza, says health ministry
Agencies Gaza Israeli forces have killed at least 27 Palestinians and injured 90 more as they opened fire close to an aid distribution site in Rafah, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. The latest killings came early on Tuesday at the Flag Roundabout, near an aid hub operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). It was the third such incident around the Rafah hub in as many days. Gaza's authorities report that more than 100 aid seekers have been killed since the United States- and Israel-backed GHF started operating in the enclave on May 27, with reports of violence, looting and chaos rife. The Israeli military said it had fired shots as 'a number of suspects' deviated from the regulated routes, on which a crowd was making its way to the GHF distribution complex. The 'suspects' were about 500 metres (approximately 550 yards) from the site, the military said in a statement on Telegram, adding that it was looking into reports of casualties. The death toll was confirmed by Zaher al-Waheidi, head of the Gaza Health Ministry's records department. A spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Hisham Mhanna, said 184 wounded people had been taken to its field hospital in Rafah, 19 of whom were found dead on arrival, and eight others died later of their wounds. Video verified by Al Jazeera's Sanad fact-checking agency showed the arrival of dozens of injured people at the hospital. Gaza's Government Media Office accused Israel of 'a horrific, intentionally repeated crime', saying it has been luring starving Palestinians to the GHF centres – controversially opened following an 11-week total blockade to take over most aid distribution from the United Nations and other aid agencies – and then opening fire. It said Tuesday's death toll brought the number of aid seekers killed at aid sites in the Rafah governorate and the so-called Netzarim Corridor since GHF launched operations to 102, with 490 others injured. The United Nations on Monday demanded an independent investigation into the repeated mass shootings of aid seekers in Gaza. 'It is unacceptable that Palestinians are risking their lives for food,' said Secretary General Antonio Guterres. 'I call for an immediate and independent investigation into these events and for perpetrators to be held accountable.' 'We heard from witnesses that there was chaos,' said Al Jazeera's Hind Khoudary, reporting about Tuesday's killings from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. 'The Israeli forces just opened fire randomly, shooting Palestinians … using quadcopters and live ammunition.' Health Ministry officials and doctors said most of the wounded have been hit in their chest and head, she added. The bloodshed, she continued, had unfolded in the same way as on the previous two days, amid ongoing chaos around the aid distribution centres. 'There's no process. There's no system,' she said. 'You just need to run first to be able to get the food.' Rasha al-Nahal told The Associated Press news agency that 'there was gunfire from all directions', and that she saw more than a dozen people dead and several wounded on the road. When she finally made it to the distribution hub, there was no aid, al-Nahal said, adding that Israeli troops 'fired at us as we were returning'. Another witness, Neima al-Aaraj, from Khan Younis, described the shooting as 'indiscriminate'. 'I won't return,' she said. 'Either way, we will die.' The Israeli military, in its statement on Telegram, said troops had fired warning shots as people deviated from 'designated access routes' and 'after the suspects failed to retreat, additional shots were directed near a few individual suspects who advanced toward the troops'. However, it denied firing on civilians or blocking them from accessing aid. This account echoes statements around similar incidents on Sunday, when 31 aid seekers were reportedly killed, and on Monday, when three more were killed.
