A combined city-state-federal raid on a San Antonio apartment complex said to be under the "control" of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang yielded 20 arrests and detentions on Saturday, including "confirmed" members of the Venezuelan gang, police said.
The pre-dawn raid was a joint operation carried out by more than 150 officers of the San Antonio Police Department, Texas Department of Public Safety, FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, ATF, and the Texas Anti Gang Unit. Officers swept through some 300 vacant units at the Palatia Apartments, a complex on the city's north side, about a mile west of the airport and just east of the Harmony Hills residential subdivision.
“We had information that members of the transnational gang Tren de Aragua were in control of the area and committing various crimes,” San Antonio Police Chief Bill McManus told reporters at a press conference at a nearby parking lot across a street from Casa Sol, a popular Tex-Mex restaurant frequented by families and business diners alike. The alleged rash of crimes included human trafficking, drug law violations and threats made against apartment employees.
"We've confirmed that four Tren de Aragua members are in custody. One TDA member is a confirmed enforcer for that gang," said McManus, using a term that describes someone responsible for ensuring subordinates adhere to the gang's rules and orders. Of the arrestees, 16 were Venezuelans.
A News4SA reporter on the scene described hearing flash-bang grenades being deployed as the raid was launched around 4:45 am, noting...
"There are 900 apartments in this complex. We're told by federal law enforcement sources that most of the apartments are housing migrants. We're also told that janitors and those who work here fear for their safety, and that of other migrants who have nothing to do with the Venezuelan prison gang."
On September 16, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organization and ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to launch a statewide operation to target the gang. "We will not let them use Texas as a base of operations to terrorize our citizens," Abbott told reporters. "They have a target on their back, and we are going after them. Texas is the wrong state for them to try to do business in.”
The characterization of the gang having asserted "control" of the San Antonio complex echoes infamous video imagery that emerged from an Aurora Colorado apartment complex in August. Those videos showed gang members roaming The Edge at Lowry complex with rifles and pistols. Much as the San Antonio criminals were said to have threatened employees of the complex, police say gang members in Aurora threatened to kill property managers at a second complex, Whispering Pines.
🚨BREAKING: Newly released video shows armed gang of Venezuelan illegals take over apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado.
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) August 28, 2024
Aurora, a quiet community with a population of 390,000 has become a base of operations for the brutal Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which already has… pic.twitter.com/mNW8FF5mXa
Seemingly in a nod to the alarming developments in Colorado, police named the San Antonio initiative targeting the gang "Operation Aurora." The undertaking tapped intelligence gathered by undercover police operating inside a Migrant Resource Center located less than 2 miles south of the Palatia Apartments, News4SA reports.
That migrant center has itself been the center of great concern, with upwards of hundreds of thousands of migrants cycling through it in the last year or so. The center is located immediately adjacent to a residential area, and neighbors have described unnerving interactions with migrants roaming their streets, approaching children, attempting to enter occupied vehicles, and using yards as bathrooms, laundries and dressing areas.
“You see them day and night looking for a place to dispose of their waste,” a resident told KENS 5. “The walls are there, so they go. There’s feces and urine, and the stench is terrible. People are taking off their clothes off and hanging them in trees to dry."
Speaking near the Palatia Apartments targeted on Saturday, Chief McManus warned Tren de Aragua that the battle against the gang was only just beginning: “Even though we are finished here at the complex, we are not done. We are on to you, and we are coming for you...This is just the first one we're hitting. We've got other places we're going to hit."
It could be a long and protracted fight. “Tren de Aragua gangsters are like cockroaches,” said Texas DPS Director McCraw in September. “They multiply quickly; small intrusions into communities become infestations if not aggressively pursued. These Venezuelan thugs are highly combative, violent, and certainly adaptable."
The influx of Venezuelan gang members is a growing concern among citizens and officials in cities and states across the country, and could have a decisive influence in next month's general election. A new Marquette Law School poll found that voters in the battleground state of Wisconsin say Trump is the better candidate to address immigration, by a substantial 49-to-37% margin.
