The United States Department of Justice announced this Wednesday the presentation of charges against eight alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TdA) for their alleged participation in several violent crimes committed in two different jurisdictions in the country.

Five of the defendants face charges in the Northern District of Texas, while three others were indicted in the Chicago area, federal authorities said during a news conference in Washington.

Five alleged members charged with kidnapping and murder in Texas

According to the federal prosecutor for the Northern District of Texas, Ryan Raybould, the case occurred in the Dallas area, where a man and his two children were allegedly kidnapped by members of the Aragua Train.

According to the accusation, the victims were immobilized with plastic ties during the early hours of the morning and the alleged kidnappers demanded money in exchange for their release.

Raybould assured that, upon realizing that the man could not pay, the suspects took him to a bridge in Dallas and ordered him to jump into the void.

“When he refused and tried to flee, a member of the Aragua Train allegedly shot him and executed him in front of his two children,” the prosecutor stated.

Three defendants face charges in another Chicago homicide

In a separate case, federal authorities said three men captured a victim in the Chicago area and allegedly shot him multiple times in the head.

In addition, investigators maintain that the defendants communicated with the victim's mother to mock her while the events were taking place.

The Department of Justice did not offer further details about the identity of the victims or the procedural status of the accused.

The Trump administration links the case to its immigration policy

During the announcement, Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche stated that the eight defendants entered the country irregularly during the administration of former President Joe Biden.

“These violent murders should never have happened because these men should never have been admitted to our country,” Blanche stated.

The official added that the eight Venezuelans “entered illegally during the Biden administration” and subsequently “allegedly committed the heinous crimes described in the indictment.”

The offensive against the Aragua Train continues

The announcement is part of the strategy of President Donald Trump's administration to combat the Aragua Train, an organization that Washington considers one of the main threats of transnational organized crime.

Last year, the government invoked the Alien Enemies Act, 18th-century legislation, to deport two groups of alleged gang members to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador.

The administration then argued that the Aragua Train acted as a “hybrid criminal state” that posed a threat to the United States.

However, relatives and lawyers of several of the deported Venezuelans denied that they had links to the criminal organization. Likewise, an official from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) acknowledged in a sworn statement that many of them had no criminal record in the United States.

Those Venezuelan citizens were later released and sent back to Venezuela as part of a prisoner exchange.

Meanwhile, the judicial process over the use of the Alien Enemies Act continues. Last week, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals agreed to review arguments related to the decision of a federal judge who attempted to hold the Trump administration in contempt for allegedly failing to comply with a temporary order blocking those deportations.