Tren de Aragua members charged with murder and kidnapping, Blanche says

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Trump administration is still having to deal with the “madness” of former President Joe Biden’s “open border” policies, as the Justice Department announces new kidnapping and murder charges against eight members of the foreign terrorist group Tren de Aragua (TDA).

According to Blanche, all eight of the charged TDA members “crossed our southern border illegally” and “every one of them entered under the Biden administration between December 2021 and April 2024.”

Blanche said that in one of the cases, four men murdered a father in the Dallas area area and kidnapped his 13-year-old daughter and 12-year-old nephew. Five alleged TDA members were charged in connection with the incident, according to Blanche. In the Chicago area, three more alleged TDA members were charged in connection with a case in which a man was abducted, brutally beaten and ultimately shot several times.

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“None of these men should have been in this country. The father in Texas should be alive today. His daughter and nephew should have never been kidnapped. The young victim in Chicago should be alive,” lamented Blanche. “These violent crimes and murders happened because under the Biden administration, open border policies left our borders wide open and hundreds of suspected and now convicted TDA terrorists poured through those borders into our country.”

During a Wednesday press conference announcing the charges, Ryan Raybould, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said that the TDA members kidnapped the Dallas area man and the two children “in the middle of the night” on Aug. 24, 2024. Raybould said the man and children had their hands zip-tied while the gang members demanded money.

He said that “once the TDA members realized the man could not pay them any money, they pulled over by a bridge in Dallas and told the man to jump off.”

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When he refused to jump and attempted to flee, a TDA member “gunned him down execution style” in front of the two children, said Raybould.

The five TDA members charged in connection with the Dallas-area crimes are Hector Garcia Zuniga, also known as “Murray,” Carlos Luis Zambrano Bolivar, Jhonny Jesus Serrano, Yonatan Toro Gonzalez and Ehiker Mendoza. Raybould identified Garcia Zuniga as a high-ranking TDA member who, he said, is also facing racketeering charges, including murder, kidnapping and jackpotting spanning state lines and international borders.

Local outlet NBC DFW, reporting on the case in 2024, identified the victim as 33-year-old Nilzult Arneaud Petit. The outlet said Petit and the two children were forcibly removed from an apartment complex at 12:30 a.m. The children were later found unharmed, walking along a highway service road.

All five of these individuals are foreign nationals who Raybould said have been illegally present in the U.S. “at one time or another.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Boutrous, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said that the Chicago victim was abducted from a park, had his hands tied behind his back, left in an apartment for hours and ultimately was shot multiple times in the head and in the body.

Local outlet CWB Chicago identified the victim as 18-year-old Cristian Jose Rojas Barrios.

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Boutrous said that the “victim’s lifeless body was left face down in the bathroom, partially in the bathtub, in an abandoned unit” at an apartment building. He said Kleiver Monasterio Briceno, Jose Pacheco Torres and “a third individual” are being charged in connection with the crimes.

“I want you to think about those facts for a moment. A man kidnapped from a park in Chicago in broad daylight, beaten, held against his will, taken to an abandoned building and shot multiple times and left in a bathtub. All in the name of Tren de Aragua,” Boutros said.

Boutros added: “And to show just how brutal and merciless this gang is — someone then went and called the victim’s mother and told her where she could find her lifeless son’s body.”

Tren de Aragua, Spanish for “Train from Aragua,” is a violent transnational criminal group that arose in Venezuela during the rule of socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, who was removed from power in a U.S. operation ordered by President Donald Trump. As one of his first moves back in the Oval Office, Trump issued an executive order directing the State Department to designate TDA a “foreign terrorist organization.”

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According to Blanche, since Trump’s return to office, nearly 350 TDA members and associates have been charged or convicted of violent crimes, including murders, sex trafficking and kidnappings. He said that 350 TDA members have also been charged with weapons charges, drug trafficking and “widespread financial crimes,” including robbery and ATM “jackpotting.”

During the press conference, FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency has arrested 29,000 “violent gang members” since Trump was sworn in. He also said the FBI and its partners have “disrupted and dismantled” 2,700 gangs around the country, which he said is a 365% increase from the same period under the Biden administration.

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“We have seen, specifically as it relates to Tren de Aragua, a 519% increase in arrests,” said Patel.

Fox News Digital reached out to representatives for Biden for comment.