Suspected Venezuelan gang members arrested fleeing New York state police

The two men are believed to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

Two members of a violent Venezuelan gang were arrested running from police after allegedly murdering a 59-year-old man in Connecticut, United States.

The two, suspected members of Tren de Aragua, were caught in New York state, accompanied by children aged one and three.

Police in Rensselaer, New York, arrested Gregory Marlyn Galindez-Trias, 24, and Moises Alejandro Condollo-Urbaneja, 22, as they were trying to use a stolen credit card at an Amtrak railway station last Wednesday. They have accused the suspects of shooting a man in the chest and stealing his car.

The police connected the two undocumented migrants to the Stamford, Connecticut killing and to the violent gang Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal organisation from Venezuela that has become a point of heated controversy in the US presidential election.

“Our investigation revealed both parties are in this country illegally from Venezuela,” the Rensselaer Police Department said in a statement.

‘War zone’

Reports of Tren de Aragua activity have emerged in at least 10 US states and are now being used by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s election campaign.

In August, a video surfaced from an apartment complex housing Venezuelan migrants in Aurora, a Denver suburb.

It showed heavily armed men going door to door in the complex, with the New York owners claiming a Venezuelan gang was extorting rent from tenants. Someone was shot and killed around the same time, according to police.

Trump’s campaign called the city a “war zone”, claiming that now, “every state is a border state”. The former president seized on it as an example of one of his biggest election themes: “migrant crime”.

“Do you see what they’re doing in Colorado? They’re taking over,” Trump said at a recent rally in Pennsylvania. “They’re taking over real estate. They become real estate developers from Venezuela. They have equipment that our military doesn’t have.”

Those claims have drawn criticism from residents who say they are exaggerated.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, says Aurora has long fought to shake its reputation as a rough city.

“This is a safer town than it’s been before,” he said. “Things are going really great and I don’t want this bizarre counter-narrative out there.”

Gang sanctioned

But there is no doubt that Tren de Aragua is causing concern across the country. The gang is known for violent crimes including shooting police, smuggling guns, trafficking female migrants for sex and committing violent robberies.

There is even one case of two suspected gang members robbing a man at gunpoint and stealing his diamond-studded watch while he dined with his family at an upscale restaurant in Los Angeles.

In July, the administration of US President Joe Biden sanctioned the gang, placing it on a list of transnational criminal organisations and offering $12m in rewards for the arrest of its leaders.

Two months later, Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared Tren de Aragua a Tier 1 threat, directing state police to target the gang and paving the way for stiffer penalties for members.