It Could Happen Here - What is Tren de Aragua and Why is Trump Obsessed With Them?

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

Robert and James discuss the Trump administration's war on Tren de Aragua. Sources: Crossing Borders: The Evolution and Impact of Tren de Aragua | Small Wars Journal by Arizona State University https://share.google/xnyZpnUILdcDrZep1 Debunking 3 Myths About Tren de Aragua https://share.google/TGwfFwu9ApWrOuU7N  Tattoos of deported Venezuelans don't necessarily signal gang affiliation, experts say https://share.google/PD8reoZTA8yDc7mA5  Tattoos of deported Venezuelans don't necessarily signal gang affiliation, experts say https://share.google/PD8reoZTA8yDc7mA5 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It could happen here, a podcast where I just got vaccinated. And boy, howdy, the shit this year hits like a fucking train. It does. I got vaccinated. It's a rough one this year. Oh, man. Yeah. Fucking RFK Jr. was right.

broadcasting through the vaccine injury today. Yeah, that's right. I've received my vaccine injury. I'm complaining to the board. Oh, man, I'm going to nap after this. But first, how about we talk about fucking Trin de Aragoa, the fucking narco criminal group that President Trump is currently justifying blowing up boats in the middle of international waters as a result of.

Yeah, it's great. It's a good thing that we are now. killing civilians in countries where we're not at war with. It's great. Yeah. This has been something Stephen Miller had been talking about since the first Trump administration, you know, and had talked with, like, back when the military was willing to push back against Trump more, people would be like, what the fuck are you talking about? We can't launch strikes at just like random boats. Yeah. And Steve Miller be like, why not? And now they're doing it. Yeah. And this group, this criminal cartel out of Venezuela, has been the current justification,

as we'll talk about most of what has said about this trend de Aragua by the administration about, you know, their role in smuggling drugs in the United States is either just completely invented or massively exaggerated. Yeah. It is a really interesting group. They have a fascinating, like, history. The literal meaning is train of Aragua. Yeah, Aragua.

Aragua, sorry. And it started out with like labor unions that were working on a railway project. Yeah. It was going to be connecting Central and Western Venezuela together. And as has happened in history, what started as like labor union organizing wound up kind of morphing into direct criminal activity. Yeah. The guy who's generally credited as the founder, although that's kind of flattening things a little bit, is Hector Guerrero Flores, known as Niño Guerrero. And he got put in for 17 years for murder and drug trafficking at this prison called Tokoron.

Am I saying that right, James? How do we say? Yeah, Tokoron. Is there an accent? Yeah, there's a little accent over the second, oh. Is it go up or down? Up. Tokaron.

Tokaron. Thank you, James. Yeah, and so this, one of the things that's fun about this is that this prison where they start loading these guys up become so heavily organized. And it eventually turns from being like a prison in the traditional sense to more being like a tiny independent city that the gang is based out of and acted as their fortress. They established like nightclubs in it and, you know, luxury facilities. and, like, leaders of the gang more or less came and went as they pleased, went back to their families. And it was not really what you'd think of as a prison in the traditional sense for a lot of

these guys for a while. A payment system was created in order to, like, basically, you would, inmates would pay for protection or for access to the nicer aspects of the prison called the cause. And if you didn't pay, you know, they had various ways of physically abusing you. There's a good article in Small Wars Journal that talks about the origins and the impact of this group. And it quotes someone from inside the person is saying, the first time you don't pay, they shoot your wrist the second time, your ankle, the third time, and you face the death penalty. So like you're talking like pretty traditional criminal gang stuff, right?

Yeah. So the journey of this group from gang that's major in Venezuela to gang that's kind of operating in larger and larger chunks of South America followed a pretty natural. path where they got involved in more kinds of smuggling and more kinds of trafficking over the years, started setting up operations in other parts of South America. But one of the things that the gang has sort of done is you've got this kind of process by which they have these local affiliates who are not directly associated with the gang in like the strict hierarchical sense in that it's not literally the gang sending an official into another state. It's more like franchising is kind of the way things work, and you have different local groups, some of whom

are not even connected in any way to the original organization claiming a line of dissent in order to basically draft off of that clout, you know? Yeah, yeah, which is kind of what you've seen increasingly. And this has led to a situation where there's enough claims of trend being involved in the United States and other countries that it looks a lot like a larger and more centralized criminal organization than it actually is in reality. Yeah, I think the state understands these things like mini-states, right? Like with a leader and a distinct authority structure and like a direct command chain,

that is not how my understanding is that they operate, right? Because they are not mini-states. They are a different entity to that. Yeah, and what is your, because you've actually spent time reporting and in Venezuela. When did you first become aware of Trent? I mean, I became aware of, like, the fact that there were armed gangs and criminal... I mean, I was robbed at gunpoint when I was in Venezuela, right? So that made me aware that there were people who did crime with weapons.

But I wasn't aware, really, of Trenderawa until, like, maybe the 2020... I mean, I don't report on organized crime, nor do I particularly follow it, right? But I take an interest in Venezuelan affairs, and as much as I've spent time there, and I have, like, an affinity with the people, and I understand the things. are going from bad to worse for them under the government. So I took an interest. I guess it was like, are you familiar with a narco

Sobrinos affair? No. Okay, narco Sobrinos is like narco nephews. I think they're actually step-nephews of Maduro if I recall correctly. It doesn't hugely matter. They're like part of his family and I believe they lived in his compound and they used

like I don't want to make statements that are incorrect. I believe they used a presidential hangar or run way to fly a plane to Haiti, which the USDA alleges, and it is most likely true, that that plane was stuffed full of cocaine. Sure. Many such cases. Yeah, many such cases. They believe they have diplomatic immunity, which they did not, which I believe came as a surprise to them at the moment of their detention. And so at that point, I was like, shit, we can get onto this how the Trump administration has like basically alleged to Venezuela as a narco-dictatorship. Certainly

there is overlap between organized crime and the state, right? It's because the state is so poor and so corrupt that inevitably you will see, like, overlap between organized crime and the state. So I guess, right, whenever the Narco Sobrinos affair was, I thought, was like, okay, I need to sort of be aware of this. And of course, in my, like, coverage of immigration, you hear of people, mostly their talk is just not that their life has been made hard by organized crime, if I'm honest, so much as their life has been made hard by the government completely failing to provide services and the complete collapse of the Venezuelan economy. I'm not going to ask about it explicitly, but if someone mentions it, I sort of take note of it as one of the reasons why people are leaving.

Would you bring up as a really good point, which is that 2014 is kind of when the most recent Venezuelan economic crisis really kicked off. And 2014 to 2018 was a major period of growth per trend. And then 2018 to 2020 is when they really started pushing up into and involving themselves increasingly in Colombia and the United States as a result of like the increased flow of Venezuelans out of Venezuela and into other countries and eventually up to the U.S. to some extent. And it's been since 2022 that the gang has really been pruned back, you know, both as a result of the Venezuelan government taking control of the prison again and like basically invading it with the military. in order to deny them access to what had been, like, their primary centralized, like, hub of control. And also due to the fact that, like, after expansion into Colombia and Chile, both criminal organizations and the governments of those countries increasingly pushed back against the organization, right? Yeah. One of the reasons why they're being targeted, but also one of the things that's, like, fundamentally bullshit about the administration's description of what's happening is that we're very much talking about a cartel that's on its back feet and been on its back feet. the last several years as the result of significant reversals in their business and in their

political situation. Yeah, I mean, Colombia, right, has been, you know, the Colombian Civil War is one of the longest running conflicts in the world, but things have changed there substantially, right? In the last five or seven years, you know, you have people from, from the FARC disarming, you have the fracture of what was previously their territory and some of who were previously their militants into other groups, right? And so that has allowed the state there to continue its conflict against what remains of that and also to clamp down on other groups, right? And evidently, like, the flow of drugs to the United States relies on the complicity or inability to stop it of many states. And yeah, we've seen, like, a concerted

effort. And also, like, the, uh, the attempts of the United States to stop smuggling, right? So, I guess if people aren't familiar, we should just explain the, you. US DHS, of which the United States Coast Guard is part, I think a lot of people are unaware that Coast Guard is part of DHS, claims a universal jurisdiction or jurisdiction, at least in areas where drugs are being smuggled to the United States, right? So the U.S. Coast Guard had a role to play in this in the, I guess, interdiction is the word they would use of drugs coming to the United States. I probably haven't got data on this in the last year or so, but it certainly was the case that most drugs entering the U.S. entered through ports

of entry, as opposed to between ports of entry, right, like through the desert, through the mountains. And so, like, these boats, I guess, are not, just to be clear, they're not necessarily going to the United States. In most cases, they're not going to United States, and most cases are going to Mexico, and then moving to the United States through other methods. But, like, as the government, both south of the United States and in the United States who adapted, it's become harder and harder for those people, right? And so it's a lot of the United States. become harder and harder for these criminal organizations to make money of these drugs. And that's led to, I mean, a situation that one of the things that they've been accused of being

by the Trump administration and internationally is essentially an agent of the Medeuro regime, right? And this is something that certainly the Venezuelan government denies, this is not a thing where I can, you know, entirely give you, this is exactly what's happening. But it seems accurate to say that as an organization, as their actual like control and power have been eroded, They have been utilized increasingly as a way to, for example, deal with, like, dissidents who are hostile to the Maduro regime, right, as a, as a deniable asset. In particular, there's been cases that are reasonably well documented of dissidents against the Venezuelan regime in Chile and Trin de Aragua being used as, like, assassins to take out dissidents in foreign countries in a deniable manner, right? Yeah. And, I mean, it looks to me like this has kind of increased as their actual ability to directly control.

things and directly contest the regime as a power center has been eroded. Yeah, it's kind of a classic, like, I wouldn't say they're like ideologically aligned, right, but sometimes their interests align. Yeah. To be clear, like, Trendaaragua are one of the sort of armed, organized crime institutions in Venezuela, but by far the only one, right? You have, yeah. Trendeliano, for example, you have these other groups who have also been active in

anti-government protests, especially since the, I'm going to use that quote-unquote election here in July of last year, right, where electoral fraud is widely alleged. And I documented that in my daddy end series, if people want to listen to that. But it's not like these two are a lot in lockstep. But yeah, like, we can understand that sometimes that their interests might align in those areas that may be beneficial for the regime to, like you say, to use them as a denial asset. Right. Which does not, like, one of the things that's kind of most frustrating is hearing them described as central to the smuggling of fentanyl into the United States, which, like, even in kind of the most elaborate version of this group being utilized by the Venezuelan government

is fanciful, right? Yeah. Like, because Venezuela just doesn't have that much to do with the smuggling of fentanyl into the United States. Yeah. Like, Venezuela and Venezuelan criminal organizations just aren't that involved in that process. That's not where it's coming from, right? Yeah. And we'll talk some more about fentanyl. But first, you know what's kind of like fentanyl? Advertising.

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I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin. So, like, it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different.

On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. Well, 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back, and we're talking about fentanyl. We're talking about these claims, because that's the justification for why we need to airstrike these boats, the most recent of which we know was boarded by another government and had drugs on board it removed before it was struck. Oh, wow. Yeah. And we simply have no idea, no weight of. I have no way to verify what the administration is claiming about these boats.

We're just seeing boats get blown up. Yeah, and everybody who was on that boat is no dead. So there's not many, many people to contradict that story. Should we explain, like, the usual Coast Guard process for interdiction? Yeah, I think that's probably a good idea. So generally, right, what the U.S. Coast Guard is going to do is they will have these large vessels from which they will launch smaller vessels and helicopters to intercept craft, right? Like the most kind of, I guess, like famous, charismatic, whether they're like Colombian, like they call them narco subs.

There's their semi-submarines, actually, that they're not like fully submerged, but they, but much of the vessel is submerged. What the coast guard would normally do, to my understanding, is to send a vessel to intercept them, right, be a helicopter or a boat, or probably both in most cases, I would imagine. Tell them to stop, right? If they don't stop, the Coast Guard will have like a sniper. who will shoot out the engine of the craft. They will then board, they will entertain the people, they will obviously confiscate any drugs that they find, and then they will take those people back to their vessel

where they're detained, and then they'll be tried in the US, right? And then they would normally, they can't kind of scoop up all these ships that they've intercepted or semi-subs or whatever, so they will normally destroy those and scuttle them, so they sink to the bottom of the ocean. I don't know how many cases they've done this in, but that would be the normal procedure for Coast Guard, I guess, pre-20205. It's got to be fun being a fish near one of those vessels.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The fish are getting lit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what they do with all the cocaine. And sometimes they bring all the cocaine back for a photo op. You see that sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it looks good.

Yeah, yeah, it's nicely packaged. It's cocaine or fentanyl on the side or whatever. That is my understanding of what was done previously. the strikes in the last month have been extremely different, right? Yeah, and we're looking at, I think, 14 people killed so far that we've had confirmed, although those numbers are certainly higher than the, when you're hearing them, right? Because we've just had another strike in the last day or so that I don't think we have exact numbers on how many people were involved.

Yeah, they used, from what I understand, drones from Special Operations Command to do these strikes, right, which in itself is quite unusual. And then the strikes themselves consisted of, did they say what, I guess it looks like a hellfire missile, but I don't know if they've said that. It looked like hellfires to me on the videos I've seen. Yeah. It's not exactly like high-deaf video, but you see them striking. Like it looks kind of like a, like a, it's a speedboat, right?

Like, it's a surface vessel. It's not a, not a semi-sub or a submarine. It's unclear, like, what has happened before. At least I haven't seen any reporting on what happened before. like whether they got an order to stop. I think in one case they had turned around, right, having noticed the drone and begun returning towards the coast, towards Venezuela, I guess.

And they were still struck. And it appears it in at least one case, the drone struck them again, like it hit them once and then returned for a second run to hit, I guess, the survivors. Yeah. And, you know, there's a couple of facts that go alongside what we actually know

and versus what the administration's claiming. About 80% of people involved in the smuggling of illegal drugs into the United States are U.S. citizens and then of the remaining 20-ish percent, a chunk of those are resident legal aliens and a chunk are a mix of undocumented people, non-citizens or people whose status is unknown

or extradited aliens, right? Like this is based on the United States Sentencing Commission's data from 2024. And about 85% of drugs that are brought into the United States are smuggled in it ports of entry. And this makes complete sense if you think about it, in part because it's pretty easy to track when you've just got like a boat trying to smuggle stuff into the country. Yeah. Illicitly.

And the people who are on that boat, if they aren't citizens, have no right to enter the country inherently, as opposed to citizens who do have a right to enter. Yeah. And ports of entry where there's a shitload of, you want to hide in plain sight with this stuff, right? Like, it just makes sense. Like, would you rather, if you're smuggling a huge amount of illegal shit, would you rather be on your own with a van or a vehicle full of very illegal drugs? Or would you rather be, like, hiding amongst the billions of tons of shit that gets taken

to this country every single year, right? Yeah. Which is why just the reality of the data is so completely different than the administration makes it out to be. And obviously, foreign criminal organizations are heavily involved in the, the smuggling of illegal drugs, particularly fentanyl in the United States, but we're talking primarily about the Sinaloa cartel and then different criminal organizations involved in the smuggling of fentanyl out of China, right, which is where a lot of fentanyl comes from, as opposed

to, again, Venezuela. The government here is going for low-hanging fruit. I think is the conclusion I'm driven to just every time I read about this, is that like there doesn't seem to be a better reason for focusing on this organization, which really is just not that involved in crime in the United States, nearly to the extent that groups like the Sinaloa cartel are. Yeah, I mean, it offers a chance to demonize Venezuelan people, right? And a Venezuelan people made up a large number of the people who came to the United States to seek asylum under Biden. Because, like, if we do believe that these, like, the word in Spanish would be like a megabandas, like megagangs, are a serious threat to the well-being of people in the United

States, imagine how much more of a threat they are to the well-being of people in Venezuela, right? and that combined with a government which objectively sucks and which also uses extrajudicial violence including in its battle against these gangs leads people to want to leave and when they come here the United States, especially the Trump regime has been engaged in this demonization of migrants right

this offers a very convenient narrative for that to say that these people are bringing crime here The vast majority of them are doing the exact opposite. They are coming here because the state in Venezuela has extorted them and slash or non-state actors in Venezuela have extorted them. The vast bulk of the complaints I hear from migrants from Venezuela about the state. They have no interest other than working hard and receiving like a decent living wage for that. Yeah.

Every Venezuelan person I spoke to almost by non. when I ask what their American dream is, tell you that their American dream is to have a job that pays them enough to feed their family. Right. Like, we have next to no evidence of organized crime coming into the United States through the asylumists. And there are, sure, there will be, like,

I would imagine a fraction of a single percent of cases. Sure. And in which that is the case. But it's being used against all these Venezuelan people, right? As we've seen, and I guess I should just clarify that, like, one thing about these mega, Bandas, they're not like Maras, right? So, like, MS-13 being a Mar-Ara, right?

Like a gang in which members are identified by certain tattoos. Oh, my God, yes. This is tattoos and emojis. Yes, yeah. Yeah, again, like, like, I understand that that is a thing that happens in some cases, but that is not a thing that is common to these gangs. No, it's certainly not common to Trundi Aragoa, right? is like the use of tattoos.

There's not even widespread agreement among experts as to whether or not there's any sort of centralized U.S.-based hierarchy for the group, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. The tattooing is just as it is in the United States and lots of other places around the world

are very common practice in Venezuela that people do for as many reasons as there are people, right, to include because they love their mom, because they love their kids, because they're like a football team, because they are religious, et cetera, et cetera. That is why people get tattoos. It is not to indicate membership in any organization.

No. And this is something that's verified again. Like one of the beating experts on trend is Rana Risquez, who wrote a book, The Trend de Aragoa, the gang that revolutionized organized crime in Latin America. She specifically told Noticias Telemundo during an interview, Venezuelan gangs are not identified by tattoos to be a member of one of these Venezuelan organizations. You don't need a tattoo. You can have no tattoos and still be part of it.

You can also have a tattoo that matches. other members of the organization. So, like, again, there's groups and different sort of, because this is a very bottom-up sort of organization, which is often the case with criminal groups, where, like, they will, you know, there will be money being passed in one direction or another, but there's not tight control being exercised in a top-down manner. Yeah. You can find groups that have tattoos in common, but it's not a centralized thing that the

organization does. Yeah. And, like, the Venezuelan state, to be clear, is extremely violent. They have, like, a special armed police, which deals with, and organized crime that kills hundreds of people. It would be unwise to be going about in the street Twitter, like, I am a member of a certain gang, tattoo, right? And so unless you plan to live in some area where you feel completely safe from the state,

that would be a very unwise thing to do. Yeah. And we'll talk some more about things that are unwise, but first, it would be wise for you to buy these products. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time, as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians. I would be the first immigrant mayor in generations, but 40% of New Yorkers were born outside of this country.

Artists and activists, I mean, do you ever feel demoralized? I might personally lose hope. This individual might lose the faith. But there's an institution that doesn't lose faith. and that's what I believe in. To bring you depth and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. There's not a single day that Paola and I don't call or text each other, sharing news and thoughts about what's happening in the country.

This new podcast will be a way to make that ongoing intergenerational conversation public. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged.

Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream? A familiar place can look completely alien? Get back everyone. He's going to next. And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him. Burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town as a warning.

From IHeart Podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town. A new fiction podcast sets in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Devil Walks in Abistown. Hey, this is Matt Jones. I'm Drew Franklin. And this is NFL Cover Zero. We're just here to try to give you an NFL perspective a little bit different.

Did you see the Colts Pretzel? That was my other big takeaway from that game. What was that? Oh, my. We think NFL coverage should be informative and entertaining. And twice a week, that is exactly what you're going to get. Listen to NFL Cover Zero with Matt Jones and Drew Franklin on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Toyota, the official automotive partner of the NFL.

Visit Toyota.com slash NFL now to learn more. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. Hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin. So, like, it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club?

I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. On 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club?

A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. And I want to quote from a recent piece in The Guardian on the U.S. law enforcement claiming that emojis signal membership in this organization. Yeah, man. This is by Sam Levin and Manvi Singh from September a couple of days ago.

Yeah. The first reference to emojis in the records comes from. from a July 24 situational awareness alert from the NYPD, which was distributed to law enforcement across the country and warned of Trind de Aragua threats in New York City. NYPD Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau has observed members of TDA and New York City using social media messaging platforms such as Instagram and TikTok

to depict allegiance to the gang, the alert said. TDA members often utilize emojis such as trains, ninjas, slot machines, double swords, shields, ogre, face mask, and crowns. Members also use South American slang in Arabic language terms to mask their identities on social media. They've cited the NYPD tattoos featuring Michael Jordan.

Fucking ninja emojis? You're telling me that that's a TDA symbol. That's not just something people use. Yeah, man, this is, like, obviously there is a large Arab or population of Arab descent in Venezuela. That's where these slangs come from. Like, people use emojis, particularly in this context, because their education has not been the best, right?

Like, the access to literacy is less than it would be in other contexts. So, like, sometimes they use emoji. Sometimes they just use them because it's funny. But, like, the notion of, like, and yeah, people will use slang. People will spell shit the way they say it. Sometimes when I'm talking to Venezuelan people, you know, if I'm talking to a source and they, sometimes I have to read it aloud to help me understand what they're saying. Yes, that is very common to people in Venezuela.

There's nothing to do with being a member of a gang whatsoever. Yeah. And, I mean, there's a lot of that in terms of, like, the fact that the Chicago Bull and Michael Jordan are popular among immigrants, right? Like that that's particularly Venezuelan immigrants. And a lot of it comes from like, well, a lot of Venezuelan immigrants tend to like these things in media, tend to like these musicians and get tattoos that reference these things in popular culture or these things, you know, that different Venezuelan artists have put out.

And that's, I mean, it's certainly not a sign that like, oh, these things signal membership in this criminal organization and more. they're just targeting Venezuelans and these things are more common among Venezuelans, but certainly not exclusive to that group. When you're saying that like a Michael Jordan shirt or tattoo

is a symbol of membership in a criminal organization, well, I guess like a third of my high school were criminals. I mean, they were, but not in this way. Yeah, like, these are very common, like the Jordan logo, I don't know what it's called

at the jumping Jordan logo, not a big sportswear fan myself. But like, yeah, it's very common. and it's because people buy fake designer apparel all the time. Like, you will also see people, tons of people with Louis Vuitton items. They're not real. It does not indicate membership in any gang. It's just kind of an aspirational thing that you can buy almost anywhere in Venezuela

because no one's going down there to enforce copyright laws. Like, it's not a, it doesn't indicate any affiliation. Sometimes it indicates like an interest with the United States, right? Like these are where these things come from. And this is a place where these people would like to go. I also saw a guy across Darien Gap in Nike Alpha Flies, like the super fast marathon running shoes with a giant carbon-plated spring. This is not like indication of anything other than that like this person thought those were cool and they purchased them.

Yeah. Are you familiar with this Cartel de los Soles thing? No. Okay. So like the Cartel de Los Soles, the cartel of the Sun of the Suns, I guess, It's another organization which a U.S. is alleging that Maduro is like head of, right? That like it's a vertically organized organization and that like Maduro is literally the chief of it. And I guess I just want to say like the same shit applies, right?

There are gangs all over Caracas as well, his names we haven't mentioned. What you've got here is state failure, right? Like in Venezuela, the state has failed to provide people with service. and it does not always enjoy a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. You also have massive corruption. So it is absolutely the case that people smuggling drugs through Venezuela will be able to buy off certain officials, right, particularly like military commanders and people who have control over transit and border areas.

It doesn't imply like a vertical structure per se. To be clear, I don't think Maduro should be in charge of Venezuela. I think the Maduro regime is bad for Venezuela and bad for the world. But it's very oversimplified to see it like straight up as like a narco regime, right? There is more to it than that. This is the country that sits on masses of oil. This is a country that has been incredibly corrupt from an incredibly long time now. And you're always going to see these organizations creeping into the government, right?

When the government can't even pay its own people or guarantee them a decent, and dignified quality of life. Like, that doesn't mean that it is okay to just kill. Like, first and foremost, I would imagine that if we go with the government's story, that the boats that they struck were carrying drugs, right? It is unlikely that the people who were carrying those drugs were anything under than poor, desperate young men who wanted a chance at a better life and or were intimidated into doing this, right?

And maybe some of them chose to do this because they thought this was the way they could, you know, get money and progress in a place it doesn't offer them many opportunities. These are not the people who are in any way like making the calls, making the decisions, right? And so killing them isn't going to do very much because there is a massive supply of poor desperate young men in Venezuela. and it's not going to change anything to kill 14, 15 of them, other than it will, obviously, it's a tragedy for those families, right? Those people who lose their children or whatever. And so, like, until we solve the situation that life is untenable for people in Venezuela, yes, there will be crime there, and yes, people from there will want to come to the United States.

Both of those things make sense. That does not mean that people coming to the United States are coming to the United States to do bad things. The vast majority of them are coming to the United States to escape bad things. We've had so much discourse about Venezuelan people and crime.

Even in the, you know, this has begun, I think in Chicago in the Biden administration. I have not seen journalists of whatever political stripe talk to Venezuelan people about this, right?

Like, with very few exceptions, it's very easy to find Venezuelan people, especially, you know, if you work at the border and you do border reporting, but even still, you know, lots of these Venezuelan people went to Denver, some of them went to Chicago, some of them went to the springs in Colorado, many of them went to Texas, they went to all kinds of places when they came to the United States, right? If you speak Spanish, it's not hard to find these people and ask them, what's it like in Venezuela? Why did you come here? And then perhaps

you can, you know, establish a picture of, yeah, it's pretty shit, right? People work hard every day and don't make enough to feed their family. If their kid is sick, if their elderly parents can't work and need support, it's really hard to do that. That is why they want to come to the U.S. That is why often young men want to come to the U.S., right? Because the world as it is gives them the highest level of economic opportunity. And so the family will send them to the U.S.

such that they can earn enough money and they hope one day to bring their families here. Sometimes you also see people bringing their very young children because they realize there's no future for their children. children in Venezuela. So they make the choice to try and come to somewhere which once promised a future for hardworking people and doesn't really anymore. But like it just, it pains me so much to see this discussion of Venezuela without Venezuelan people, most of whom I found to be wonderful. Like, I spent a good amount of time in Venezuela and even longer with Venezuelan people

and I have a great affection for them. Like they've been nothing but kind to me, even now, like a year after I was in the Darien Gap, I get texts all the time from Venezuelan people. The majority of them not asking for help, just asking how I am, asking, do I know what happened to the Bolivian girl? Do I know what happened to Zimbabwean women, like genuinely concerned, even amidst like a really shit situation for them concerned for the well-being of other people? And I just wish, instead of talking about, yeah, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of Venezuelan people who are involved in moving drugs to United States. We could talk about the millions of the people who just want to work hard and have a decent life and who are being denied a chance to do that home and are now being denied a chance to do that here as well. Yeah.

Well, I think that's about it for our episode today. Until next time, folks, I don't know. Best of luck out there. Yeah. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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