The Daily Signal - Venezuelan Illegal Alien Gang Activity Wreaking Havoc in US

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

A Venezuelan émigré gang is wreaking havoc in U.S. communities. In El Paso, Texas, the Tren de Aragua gang took over a hotel. And in Aurora, Colorado, members of the same Venezuelan gang have been terrorizing residents in rundown apartment complexes.  Tren de Aragua is a “Venezuelan prison gang and ... they've been wreaking havoc throughout South America ... since their inception,” according to Chris Chmielenski, president of the Immigration Accountability Project.  That “havoc” has now come to America.  The brothers of Venezuelan illegal alien Jose Ibarra, the lead suspect in the slaying of Georgia college student Laken Riley, are thought to be connected to the Tren de Aragua gang, the New York Post reported.  Aragua is one of Venezuela's 23 states, and Tren de Aragua translates to “Aragua Train.” Members of Tren de Aragua are “getting through some of these cracks that the Biden-Harris administration has exploited because of certain loopholes within our immigration law,” Chmielenski says.  Under Chmielenski’s leadership, the Immigration Accountability Project is working to “hold members of Congress and members of the administration accountable for their actions, votes, and statements that they make on immigration, and to educate the American people on how these immigration issues affect them in their communities,” he says.  Chmielenski joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the recent spike in crime carried out at the hands of illegal aliens, and what a new presidential administration could do to address the crisis.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Snap up Ancestry DNA's lowest price ever in our incredible cyber sale. With 50% off Ancestry DNA kits, it's the perfect time to help a loved one unwrap the past. And with their latest update, they'll discover their family origins like never before. With even more precise regions and new and exclusive features. Their best gift, our lowest price. 50% off Ancestry DNA only until December 2nd. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, September 13th. I'm Virginia Allen.

There are traveling reports right now of crime being carried out specifically by illegal aliens. There is a Venezuelan gang that has been doing activity both in Colorado. We're hearing reports and in Texas. And then we have those stories of what exactly is happening with the Haitian migrants in Ohio. Well, here with us to talk about all of this and much more. more today is the president of the Immigration Accountability Project. Chris Chimelensky, Chris, thank you for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

Let's jump in first by talking about the work that you all are doing over at the Immigration Accountability Project. What is your mission? You all are a new organization. You've hit the ground running. What is your end goal? Right. We're a new organization, but not new to the issue of immigration.

Exactly. So we founded the Immigration Accountability Project right at the end of 2020. beginning of 2024. It was founded by myself and Rosemary Jinks, who's our director of policy. The two of us combined have close to 50 years' worth of experience working on the immigration issue. So we're pretty familiar with immigration policy and what's been happening and not happening in Congress and throughout the past several administrations on the issue. And we just felt that while there are organizations out there that focus on this issue from our perspective, nobody was really doing enough to hold the members accountable for their actions, votes, and

statements. And that's actually the mission of the Immigration Accountability Project. It's to hold members of Congress and members of the administration accountable for their actions, votes, and statements that they make on immigration and to educate the American people on how these immigration issues affect them in their communities. Unfortunately, we see all too often, members of Congress are willing to say one thing, but then they vote a totally different way. You see it right now. Congress is considering trying to pass a CR that would include the SAVE Act, which would require documentary proof for citizenship at the time of voter registration. But you have a number of Republicans that don't want to vote for that CR, and many of them because of the fact that Speaker Mike Johnson is attaching to the SAVE Act to it. So they'll say one thing, but then when it actually comes to them voting on it, some of them are doing some very different things.

And we want to hold those members accountable and educate the public so they can hold their members accountable. Chris, is that a real issue that illegal aliens are voting in U.S. elections? So we know that they're being registered to vote, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Sure. We have the executive order from the Biden-Harris administration that came out in the first few months of the administration back. in 2021, which ordered all federal agencies to provide voter registration information and forms to anybody that they come into contact with. And it doesn't discriminate against whether or not the person's a citizen or a non-citizen.

It just is a blanket statement. And in fact, a number of groups, including the Heritage Foundation, has tried to get the documentation what the plan actually is at the agency level. And so far, nobody has gotten anything out of the administration on this. So we don't know exactly what's being instructed. But what we do know, and probably the best example is of a case in New York City where Representative Nicole Maliatakis from Staten Island, she found the contract between the city of New York and one of the NGOs, the non-governmental organizations there, where they were actually required as a condition of their contract to provide a voter registration form to every single person they were resettling. And we know they were resettling illegal aliens who had crossed the border illegally. So we know that they're getting their hands.

We know that non-citizens, including illegal aliens, are getting their hands on voter registration forms. Unfortunately, the National Voter Registration Act has a form and has produced a form. And the form simply just has a check box. All you have to do is check a box saying that you're a U.S. citizen. There's no documentary proof that you need to provide. So it's pretty easy to get through it. And you imagine somebody who's new to the country. They put all their trust in somebody from the government or from an NGO to help them find their way here.

And they hand them this form. And maybe they don't know English very well. Maybe they do know English. And they're told, yeah, just fill out the form, check the box and sign the line. And boom, they're registered to vote. And so we've seen through state actions, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Virginia. They've done some. They've released how many non-citizens they've cleared from their roles.

So we do know that they're on the rolls. We have some anecdotal data that they are actually voting in elections. There's been some pretty good reporting from down in North Carolina that illegal aliens did vote in the 2016 election or non-citizens voted, at least in the 2016 election. So they're able to register to vote, which creates the issue. If they can register to vote, then it makes it easier for them to vote. finding instances of them voting is a little bit more difficult, but why don't we just clean up the issue and prevent them from registering to vote in the first place? Well, and specifically what the SAVE Act would do would say, okay, for every single person,

no matter where you live, what state you're in, you have to provide some sort of proof, whether an ID card of, yes, I am a U.S. citizen, correct? It's that simple. It is that simple. And a lot of people think, oh, well, a driver's license, especially the new real ID driver's licenses, these prove U.S. citizenship. They don't. Non-citizens can get a driver's license and they can get a real ID driver's license. The only thing a real ID driver's license proves is that the person who's on that license is the actual person. It's strengthened up that part of it to prevent fraudulent driver's licenses from being produced. So it does not prove U.S. citizenship, not only can legal non-citizens who are in the country legally, whether they're green card holders

or temporary visitors in the form of students, foreign students, guest workers, tourists, what have you. Not only can they access driver's licenses, but in 19 states, illegal aliens can get a driver's license as well. So getting a driver's license is not an issue. And for many, getting a social security number isn't an issue either. For anyone that gets work authorization and we know every single person that's been paroled into the United States who has crossed the border illegally or just flown around the border through the various parole programs implemented by the Biden-Harris administration, if they get work

authorization, they're entitled to getting a social security number. So many of these individuals who are in the country illegally but have been paroled here have both a driver's license and a social security number. So then does it really come down to that issue of registration? Because I'm thinking of people at polling places, they're long lines. And I mean, they can't be like running background checks on every person that comes up to the table to vote. Right, right. And we've all experienced, did. Especially what we'll probably see it in this fall's elections talking about how how closely contested. It sounds like this race is going to be. And that's what we've seen over the last, you know, three or four presidential elections. You're waiting in line for a few hours to go up

there and cast a vote. And these election officials, they're trying to move through that line as quickly as possible. They don't have the time to sit there and verify. So the verification needs to be done ahead of time. And then another issue is you have some states that do same day, voter registration, they can register to vote on the same day. So we should ensure that these individuals have documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, which means there's a number of different documents that the SAVE Act includes that you can use. You can use a birth certificate from a U.S. You know, U.S. state. You can use your passport. You can use passport cards. There's a number tribal cards involved, too. And they also include some leeway, too, so election officials can make

their decisions on what they can accept and what they can accept. But it at least adds that extra protection to make sure that a non-citizen can't register to vote by adding this documentary proof requirement. And I think the most important thing to remember is that any vote cast by a non-citizen cancels the vote of a U.S. citizen. So if we're really going to talk about how valuable it is to vote here in the United States, shouldn't we make sure our votes aren't being canceled out by people who shouldn't be voting in the elections. And where does the SAVE Act stand right now? So it's passed the House of Representatives, passed with a bipartisan vote.

So Republicans and Democrats both voted for it to get it across the finish line. Obviously, it hasn't been taken up on the Senate side by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. And that's why you're seeing House Speaker Mike Johnson trying to attach it to the continuing a resolution to extend federal government funding so that we don't have a government shutdown at the end of the month. So it's a must pass bill. they often use must pass vehicles to try to pass some of their priority bills that the other chamber won't take up. So this is their plan to try to get it attached. But like I said, they're struggling to still get some of the votes to get it across the finish line.

Yeah. Well, the issue of border immigration voting, I mean, this is top on everyone's mind because we are less than two months out from an election. And right now we're seeing just an explosion of news stories as it relates to illegal alien crime specifically. We've seen an increase in crime across the U.S. But right now, there's just some really disturbing stories about crime that's being carried out at the hands of illegal aliens, I'm specifically thinking of gang members. There's a Venezuelan gang. And, you know, with one of the core priorities that you all have as an organization of upholding the rule of law. And we're hearing these reports in El Paso, Texas, of a Venezuelan gang really destroying a hotel there, of taking over an abandoned, semi-occupied,

apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado. What exactly is happening here? This is the same Venezuelan gang in both locations. What do we know about this gang? Well, we know that they're a Venezuelan prison gang and that they've been wrecking havoc throughout South America since their inception. So this is a pretty scary gang,

and it's pretty alarming to see some of these images and hear about some of these stories. They're also connected to the Lake and Riley murder down in Georgia and they're also connected to the shooting of a police officer up in New York City. So this knowledge of this gang is nothing new. But essentially, what's happened is they're getting through some of these cracks that the Biden Harris administration has exploited because of certain loopholes within our immigration law that we really need the House of Representatives and Senate to come together to close up.

But we know that people have been crossing the border illegally. Border Patrol has just simply been releasing them into the United States. States with a notice to appear before a judge or a notice to report an immigration customs enforcement office. We know that they're also granting parole through the CBP1 app. They have the CHNV program, which they paused, but they're getting ready to reinstate if they haven't reinstated it already, which allows Venezuelans, along with Cubans, Nicaraguan's and Haitians to receive parole from outside the country in their home countries.

And that simply allows them to fly into the country quasi-legal. again, they're still here illegally, but they've been given parole status, which means they're not in threat of being deported unless they create a commit a violent crime, but they're not at a threat of being deported and they can receive a work permit after so many days. So we know that we have these parole programs in place. We have a border that's just completely overwhelmed when you look at the numbers. Apprehensions may be down, but if you still look at the total number of accounters, it's still very high and above historical. norms. So we're still having a tremendous number of unauthorized individuals being released into the United States. And when you overwhelm the country with this many people so quickly over a short period of time, this is what you're going to see. You're going to see an uptick in gang violence.

You're going to see an uptick from some of these Central American and South American organized gangs. And you're going to see an uptick of crimes in other places, non-gang related, but other crimes that have been taking place as well. So then are you not? surprised by what we're seeing right. No. In fact, we could have predicted it. I mean, we knew that once they said, we're going to start allowing these people in. And especially at the number, you know, more than 7.5 million people have gotten into the country illegally since the start of this administration, a combination of people released into the United States at the border or a recipient of one of these parole programs or the known gotaways, the almost 2 million godaways that

we've had, known gotaways along the border. Plus, there are the, the unknown gotaways that are down there too. We don't know how many that is, especially the gotaways. We don't know anything about these individuals. And when you overwhelm the border, I think what's happening is the cartels will send these large groups of, you know, families and unaccompanied children to spots on the border patrol to force all of the resources to that one spot to handle this surge of two, three hundred people that happen to be crossing at three o'clock in the morning.

and that allows the bad people to get across the border undetected and the got-awaited numbers go up because they can go to the unprotected areas that have been vacated by the Border Patrol members that have had to come and cover the mass number of people coming across. We've been hearing stories of Haitian migrants specifically in Ohio. And this is kind of blown up over the past week of conversations of these geese being taken. And there was, there's audio that the Federalist exclusively reported that there was a gentleman who was on a bicycle who called local law enforcement and said, hey, I just watched these Haitians walk away with some geese. I'm going to go ahead and play this audio so we can hear it. I see a group of Haitian people. There was about four of them. They all had geese in their hand. They got away. I couldn't make up.

the first period of the license plate, but I got the numbers. All right. So what do we know about this situation, Chris? What is going on here? Yeah. Well, when you've got an estimated 20,000 Haitians, I think it is, resettled into a town that initially had a population of 40 or 50,000 before this happened. When you bring in that many people, it's tough for those individuals to assimilate into a

community. They tend to overwhelm the resources. There's not enough housing for them. There's not enough jobs for them. And plus, they're going to bring their own. culture. And let's be honest, there are cultures around the world that do things very differently than here in the United States. It doesn't make them wrong, but that's just the way that things are and they're outside the norms here in the United States. So when U.S. citizens start to see these

things take place, it's, it's pretty alarming. And we have to ask ourselves, is this what, is this the end result? Is this what we want to have? But I think the big question or the bigger question is number one, why are these NGOs placing them in a single place? You know, there's talk about the fact that NGOs may be working with employers to bring in cheaper foreign labor for those employers that are seeking work so they don't have to hire more expensive American workers. There's a number of reasons. We can go back to the non-citizen voting issue, too, where they can possibly be putting them there to try to register them. Obviously, Ohio is a swing state. So it's a pretty important state on the map, even though it does seem to be leaning a little bit more red.

So we don't know why they're bringing all these people here. But I think at the end of the day, when you bring such a large number of people from one culture and bring them to a town with a totally different culture and experience, they're not going to be able to assimilate. It's going to overwhelm the town and you're going to see these sorts of things happen. Because what are they going to do instead of mixing in with the rest of the town and just kind of. kind of blending in becoming the melting pot that everybody talks about. Instead, they're going to just continue to live together. And you're going to see the creation of enclaves, things like that. And unfortunately, this is what happens.

They don't really move away from their culture and integrate into U.S. culture. They just maintain their culture from where they came from. You know, and I think it's fine if they bring elements of their culture. But at the same time, we also have to think of what's acceptable here in the United States. What are we willing to accept? Yeah. And that maybe leads to a larger question of solutions. Like I said, we're close to an election, regardless of whether it's Kamala Harris or Trump, they both obviously are discussing the border because they have to. It's such a big issue. One candidate is discussing it a little bit more than the other. But when you look at what needs to change and if we went back to all of Trump's former policies, is that enough? Or are we at such a completely different place? than we were three and a half years ago that there need to be entirely new border policies, new policy introduced in order to address new problems that we're facing that have arisen

in the past three and a half years. Right. I would say all of the above. Okay. A lot of work. Right. We've certainly had a change of policy. The previous administration dealt with a border surge and the way that they handled it was they

created the Remain of Mexico program. So anybody that was coming to the border across the border didn't have authorization to enter into the United States, they said, okay, we're going to make you wait in Mexico until your court date. And because we know, due to the immigration court logs, that those court dates weren't going to be for five, six, seven years, people stopped coming because they're like, you're not going to be able to get into the United States. They're going to make you wait in Mexico, and you could end up waiting there for five, six, seven years. Is that something you really want to do? And Mexico wasn't really thrilled about having all these individuals waiting in their country for that

period of time either. So it became an effective policy. That program was immediately terminated by the Biden-Harris administration when they went into office. It was one of the hundreds of executive orders that they tore up on immigration when they got into office. So they've invited this, they've invited this wave of illegal immigration down along the border. And this is what the result has been. So I think there's a couple things. One, we need a change of policy. Obviously, the policy of the previous administration did a better job of preventing illegal border crossings and prevented things like what we've seen in Aurora, Colorado and Springfield, Ohio from happening. But we also need to have a change in laws. I think we do need to strengthen the immigration laws right now. Parole is overly abused by the

current administration. I would argue that it's being illegally overabused by the current administration. It's supposed to be used for extreme humanitarian hardships and they're using it to cover pretty much anything you have a broken toenail well that's an extreme humanitarian need so we'll let you into the country and offer you parole so i think we congress needs to tighten up that language and then there's also a requirement that requires that everybody who's in the country illegally and gets apprehended by border patrol be detained well we know that the current administration has implemented a policy of alternatives to detention which means they're giving them ankle bracelets which they simply cut off once they get away they give them iPhones which is simply dump in the garbage can um so

So there are many ways around these alternatives to detention. I think we actually need to hold these individuals. And once they find out that if they cross the border illegally, they're not going to get released into the United States with a promise of a work permit in a couple of months. I think you'll see them stop coming because they're not going to get what they came for. And that's to immediately be released into the U.S. with an opportunity to work. What about deportations? How could, should that be tackled? Yeah, I think deportation is an important part of any country's immigration policy.

If you're going to have credibility, you have to have enforcement. And if somebody is in the country illegally, they should be removed from the country illegally. We do. The population, the last government estimate that we had was around 11 to 12 million. That was almost a decade ago, I think. So we know that that number is much, much higher, especially just because of the numbers that we've seen come through just in the last three plus years. So the ICE force is is only five to 10,000 people. So, and many of them aren't working on enforcement and removal operations. They're doing HSI, which is Homeland

Security investigation. So they're focusing on other things rather than just simply deporting people who are in the country illegally. So they're a bit stretched thin. You can have a force multiplier by trying to partner with willing police, local police departments, which is something that we've actually had in the past. It was the 287G program, and you had a number of counties and state governments and local police agencies that were willing to assist in federal immigration enforcement policy. But I think we also have to take away the magnets. Unfortunately, we have too many states that are offering them health care benefits.

We have states that are giving them driver's licenses, as I mentioned earlier. We have states that are offering them that they're allowing them to vote in their local local and state elections. They're providing them with, you know, it was just vetoed, but California had actually passed legislation that would give illegal aliens $150,000 down payment to purchase a new home. Now, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed it, probably for political reasons, didn't like what it would look like.

But, you know, this is some of the things that states are trying to do. And if the states are going to continue to make it easy for illegal aliens to live and work here in the United States, they're going to stay here and they're not going to go home. But if you make it difficult, I think many of them will go home. Yeah. Chris, tell our listeners how they can follow the work that you guys are up to. And when they visit your website, where are the resources they're going to find? Sure.

Thank you. Well, our website is IAProject.org. And we're also on all of the social media outlets. And the links for that are on our front page as well. I would say our biggest tool that we just released is our member accountability pages. So if you go to our member accountability pages, we have an accounting of every single current member in Congress, how many bills they've sponsored, how many bills they've co-sponsored that deal with immigration and what votes they've taken. So it's a complete record for each member of Congress

on their legislative activity. And then again, like I said, eventually we're going to add their quotes and video clips of them talking about the issue and any press releases that they may have put out as we expand as we expand this resource. But for now, you can clearly go and see what actions that they've taken. And again, website is iAproject.org. They can go and see what all of these members, you can even see, who's taken the most actions in Congress on the immigration issue. What a helpful tool. Thank you. Chris Chimilinski, the president of the Immigration Accountability Project, Chris, thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much. We're going to leave it there for today. Thanks again for joining us here on the Daily

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