Maikelys Espinoza's Bernal's grandmother speaks out on her son's detention in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador
María Escalona Fernández, grandmother of Maikelys Espinoza Bernal, joined a protest in front of the United Nations headquarters in Caracas, Venezuela. She says she won't be at peace until her son is released from a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
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Fox News
2 hours ago
- Fox News
WATCH: US intel's take on TdA gang misses mark on ties to Maduro regime, ex-Venezuela army officer says
A former high-ranking officer in the Venezuelan military is contesting a recent report by the U.S. intelligence community about the massive Tren de Aragua gang present throughout the country. Jose Arocha, who is a former lieutenant colonel in the Venezuelan military, told Fox News Digital that the recent intel community report denying Tren de Aragua is linked to the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro is missing a key aspect: the socialist regime's animosity towards the United States and penchant for asymmetric warfare. Tren de Aragua, also known simply as TdA, is a violent Venezuelan gang that has been terrorizing U.S. cities over the last several years. The group is linked to high-profile murders such as the killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley and the seizure of an entire apartment building in Aurora, Colorado. As one of his first moves back in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump directed the State Department to designate TdA a "foreign terrorist organization." Speaking with Fox News Digital via Zoom, Arocha, a national security expert at the Center for a Secure Free Society, said he agrees with the Trump administration's moves against Tren de Aragua, which he believes is an "asymmetrical warfare" tool of the Maduro regime to sow discord in the United States and other countries in the Western Hemisphere. "The Maduro regime doesn't need to send troops to the USA. It sends criminals instead," he said. "TdA is a plug-and-play insurgency – assembled in prison, deployed abroad." Arocha's statements, however, contrast with a new public memo released by U.S. intelligence agencies last month that denied any solid connection between the Maduro government in Caracas and the gang. "While Venezuela's permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States," the report states. The report says that the intelligence community based its conclusion "on Venezuelan law enforcement actions demonstrating the regime treats TDA as a threat; an uneasy mix of cooperation and confrontation rather than top-down directives [that] characterize the regime's ties to other armed groups; and the decentralized makeup of TDA that would make such a relationship logistically challenging." Arocha, meanwhile, said that "the missing point here is that the intelligence report is too narrow a lens about the TdA." "It's about crime and migration, but they're missing the warfare dimension," he said. "They are missing that for the Maduro regime, the United States is the enemy, has been the enemy for years." "The TdA is not a gang," he went on. "It's the enabler arm of the Venezuelan regime in the hybrid warfare strategy, the asymmetrical tour of war. That's the missing point. And that is the point that explains how a local gang is right now in more than 10 countries, including the United States. That's incredible, and that is not possible without a state sponsor behind them." While the report points to law enforcement actions the Maduro government has taken against TdA, Arocha explained that in reality Venezuelan prisons, including the "Tocorón" prison where the gang started, are more like resort hotels. "Tocorón, [which] they said is the epicenter of the crime in Venezuela, it wasn't a prison, it was a palace for organized crime. Full equipment, we have a zoo, nightclubs and even a pool for the prisoners there," he said. Arocha also posited that the 2023 raid the Venezuelan government conducted on Tocorón "appears choreographed" and that key TdA leadership was able to escape through pre-made tunnels. "While the regime gained optics of cracking down on crime, TdA's mobility remained intact," Arocha told Fox News Digital. The intel report admitted that the escaped TdA members were "possibly assisted by low-level Venezuelan military and political leaders." But to Arocha, the connection goes straight to the top. He pointed to the kidnapping and murder of Venezuelan political dissident Ronald Ojeda in Chile, which, according to Reuters, is being investigated by the Chilean government as a possible Tren de Aragua operation sponsored by the Maduro government. Reuters reported in March that Chilean Attorney General Angel Valencia said that Ojeda's murder "doesn't have the characteristics of a normal crime" and "all the evidence we have at this state of the investigation lets us conclude that a cell or group linked to the Tren de Aragua that was politically motivated that originated from an order of a political nature." The outlet also reported that the Venezuelan government denied the accusations as baseless. Arocha further pointed to former Maduro Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who has alleged ties to Hamas and Hezbollah, as evidence that the Venezuelan government is embedded with America's worst enemies. El Aissami was arrested on corruption charges and is currently in prison. "He has a strong influence with Iran and China and Russia, too. Right now, he's in prison, which means that he's living in the palace in prison," Arocha remarked, smiling. "The Venezuelan regime is a proxy of Russia, China and Iran, especially China right now," he went on. "They use Venezuela [to] create chaos in Latin America especially … not confronting directly the United States, but indirectly, using criminals, using disinformation, using every single tool they have." In response, Arocha urged the Trump administration to continue to take a whole-of-government approach in combating TdA. He urged the administration to "increase our scope" by reaching out to Latin American countries with experience with TdA, such as the Chilean government. "They have a knowledge right now about the TdA. We have to understand what they've learned about, and we have to put all the pieces together to have the big picture instead of the local one," he said. "And then I'm very sure that we are going to realize the missing and the main link is in Caracas."
Washington Post
2 hours ago
- Washington Post
How voting for judges erodes democracy
Throughout history, authoritarian rulers have done all they can to bring judiciaries to heel. In Latin America, the governments of El Salvador, Bolivia and Nicaragua have moved to take over the courts. In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has purged thousands of judges and prosecutors. Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines removed his country's chief justice and packed the Supreme Court with his allies. President Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe gave himself unchecked authority to appoint the most senior judges in the country. In Hungary, Viktor Orban took control over judicial appointments.
New York Times
13 hours ago
- New York Times
JD Vance's Campaign Plane Is Being Used for Migrant Deportation Flights
In its former life, the charter plane with the tail No. N917XA went by the moniker Trump Force Two. The ubiquitous red, white and blue livery logged thousands of miles last year as the campaign plane of JD Vance, who was elected as President Trump's vice president in November. But that plane — the same one the campaign offered rides on to entice donors to give money — is now carrying out a much different and clandestine kind of task for the Trump administration. The Boeing 737 has been chartered more than a dozen times this year by the federal government to deport migrants to several Central American countries, according to public aviation logs and a group that tracks the flights. The Trump-Vance campaign rode to victory in part on its vow to undertake the largest deportation push in American history. The Trump administration has since expanded the range of people who can be targeted for removal, sped up the deportation process for others and, in some cases, tightened the rules for legal immigrants. In 2018, during President Trump's first term, the plane was used for at least three deportation flights that took about 360 migrants to El Salvador and Guatemala, according to the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington. The center obtained the data through a public records request. A fourth flight, chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of what is known as its ICE Air program, was used to transfer about 144 migrants between detention centers in the United States. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
