Latest news with #deAragua
New York Post
21-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Dem judge in New Mexico steps down after man with alleged Tren de Aragua ties found in his home
A New Mexico judge tendered his resignation last month after immigration authorities detained a suspect with alleged ties to the Tren de Aragua in his home during a late February raid. Federal agents at the Department of Homeland Security had raided former Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Jose 'Joel' Cano's home on Feb. 28 and arrested 23-year-old Venezuelan national Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, court documents reveal. Authorities also confiscated four firearms from the Cano's daughter's residence, which they conducted after obtaining search warrants in response to social media evidence of Ortega-Lopez's ties to Tren de Aragua, the ruthless Venezuelan prison gang. Advertisement Cano, a Democrat who served as a judge since 2011, made no mention of the arrest in his resignation letter, which came days later on March 3. 'Working with each of you has been a very rewarding experience for which I will remain eternally grateful,' Cano wrote in his resignation letter obtained by The Post. 'All the best to everyone of you. I wish all of you a happy retirement once you are ready yourself.' 3 Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Jose 'Joel' Cano stepped down days after the alleged Venezuelan gangbanger was caught living in his home. Donaanademocrats Advertisement A spokesperson for New Mexico's Administrative Office of the Courts explained that the state supreme court and the Third Judicial District Court, where Cano was based,' did not receive his resignation until March 31. Revelations about the alleged gangbanger living in Cano's residence were first made in court documents seeking to keep Ortega-Lopez in detention. The story has since gained traction in local media, including the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. Ortega-Lopez began interacting with Cano's family a little over a year ago after helping the judge's wife install a glass door and doing other odd jobs for her. 3 Cristhian Ortega-Lopez fessed up to illegally entering the US in 2023. Obtained by Ny Post Advertisement By April of last year, he was booted from his apartment in El Paso that he shared with five others, which prompted Nancy Cano, the judge's wife, to offer him lodging in the 'casita' of their home in Las Cruces, New Mexico. During his stay, Ortega-Lopez seemingly began to bond with the judge's daughter, April Cano, 'who possessed a large number of firearms' and let him hold onto some of them, per court records. Ortega-Lopez, who illegally entered the US in 2023 but was released from a US Customs and Border Patrol facility due to overcrowding, admitted that he knew he wasn't allowed to possess firearms due to his status as an illegal immigrant. He had climbed over a barbed-wire fence near Eagle Pass, Texas, and copped to illegally entering the US, per court documents. Advertisement Authorities had received a tip about Ortega-Lopez and found images of him on social media with tattoos, with clothing and making hand gestures 'commonly associated' with Tren de Aragua, court filings claim. Prosecutors attached images of Ortega-Lopez's tattoos and other evidence they are leaning on to accuse him of affiliation with Tren de Aragua. 3 Cristhian Ortega-Lopez posing with a firearm as pictured in court documents. U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico 'The Defendant is a danger to the community because he is a member of the United States designated Foreign Terrorist Organization Tren de Aragua and regularly associates with other members,' they wrote in a filing to keep him detained. Ortega-Lopez was arrested alongside three other Venezuelan illegal migrants as part of an operation conducted by Homeland Security Investigations. The Post was unable to make contact with Joel Cano for comment. 'The governor will appoint someone to fill the vacancy through the remainder of the judge's unexpired four-year term that runs until the end of 2026,' New Mexico's Administrative Office of the Courts spokesperson Barry Massey told the Post. Advertisement 'Magistrate court judges are elective positions and they will be on the ballot in 2026.' Ortega-Lopez is charged with being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm or ammunition. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years behind bars, according to the Justice Department.
BBC News
17-03-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Tren de Aragua: What is the Venezuelan gang targeted by Trump?
In September 2023, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro sent 11,000 soldiers to storm the Tocorón Prison in the northern state of Aragua. But they were not dispatched to quell a troops were taking back control of the prison from a powerful gang that had turned it into something of a resort, complete with zoo, restaurants, nightclub, betting shop and swimming the gang's boss, Hector Guerrero Flores, the Tren de Aragua organisation is in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump's drive to remove foreign criminals from the US as part of his campaign pledge to mass deport illegal is what we do know about Tren de Aragua. How did the gang start? Tren de Aragua was originally a prison gang that Hector Guerrero Flores turned into a "transnational criminal organisation", according the US state department, which is offering a reward of $5m for information that could lead to his Flores, 41, was in and out of Tocorón for more than a escaped in 2012 by bribing a guard and was then rearrested in 2013. Upon his return, he transformed the prison into a leisure he expanded the gang's influence far beyond the jail's gates, seizing control of gold mines in Bolivar state, drug corridors on the Caribbean coast, and clandestine border crossings between Venezuela and Colombia, according to the US state gang's name translates as "Train of Aragua", and it may have come from a railroad workers' Izquiel, a criminology professor at the Central University of Venezuela, told the BBC that the union controlled a section of the railway that crossed Aragua and would extort contractors and sell jobs on work de Aragua has under Guerrero Flores's leadership expanded into Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile and diversified from extorting migrants into sex-trafficking, contract killing and kidnapping. How big is the gang? By most accounts, Tren de Aragua spread out of Venezuela when the country entered a humanitarian and economic emergency in 2014 that made crime less profitable, and now is believed to have nodes in eight other countries, including the Rísquez, a journalist who has written the definitive book on the group, estimated last year that the organisation has 5,000 members and annual profits of between $10m and $ have estimated its membership at roughly half that figure.A prosecutor in Chile has called Tren de Aragua a "brutal organisation" that uses murder and torture to achieve its it is smaller or less wealthy than other criminal groups in Latin America, Tren de Aragua is often compared to the ultra-violent MS-13 gang from El de Aragua members have been accused of dressing up as Chilean police officers and then kidnapping Venezuelan opposition military officer Ronald Ojeda, whose body was found buried in Santiago, Chile, in March US Treasury, under then-President Joe Biden, sanctioned Tren de Aragua last summer, saying that the gang was involved in sex-trafficking across the US border. Is there a threat to the US? President Trump's administration has declared Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organisation, placing the group in the same category as Islamic State and Boko Haram, Nigeria's Islamist various places such as Texas, Miami, New York and Chicago, alleged Tren de Aragua members have been arrested and charged with crimes ranging from murder to summer NBC News reported that the Department of Homeland estimated that 600 Venezuelan migrants in the US had connections to the gang, with 100 believed to be of 2023, there were 770,000 Venezuelans living in the US, representing slightly less than 2% of all immigrants in the county, according to the Migration Policy had been given protected status by the US and Border Protection reports encountering 313,500 Venezuelan migrants at the border in 2024.
