At least four large apartment complexes in San Antonio, Tex., are now controlled by the violent Venezuelan prison gang known as Tren de Aragua (TdA), the media is reporting.
Dubbed the "epitome of evil," TdA is said to run drugs, smuggle children and commit other crimes as its members flood across the wide-open U.S. border with Mexico.
Over the past year as election season has progressed, TdA is said to have "unleashed a wave of crime across the country from Miami to Texas to Denver and New York," according to British media.
Previous instances of TdA hotel takeovers in Aurora, Colo., were dubbed as being a mere "handful" by ABC News' Martha Raddatz, who tried to downplay the problem. Others, however, say that TdA is ripping apart the nation the closer we get to Election Day.
This past week, a "small army" of police officers raided one of the apartment complexes in San Antonio that TdA targeted. They arrested 19 people, four of them gang members from TdA who had been living there for five or six months before police apprehended them.
The TdA gang members at Palatia Apartments reportedly squatted in the empty units and either rented them out to other migrants or used them as a home base to deal illicit substances and pimp out women and children as prostitutes.
(Related: Did you catch our other report about how TdA has been terrorizing and taking over hotels in El Paso?)
Illegal alien takeover of collapsing America
It turns out that the situation at Palatia is just the tip of the iceberg as multiple other apartment complexes in Texas have also been taken over by TdA. Law enforcement helicopters and drones stormed these facilities to root out the offenders during the early morning hours.
"Every department was here," a female resident at Palatia said about what happened there.
"They were wearing helmets and body armor. My husband came outside in his boxers and had a rifle held to him. They said, 'Who are you?' He said, 'I live here.' They asked, 'Where are you from?' He said, 'Pennsylvania,' and that was the end of that."
Police searched more than 300 units at Palatia before finding their targets. One of the four TdA gang members who was apprehended is a confirmed "enforcer" for the gang of which there are currently a total of 15 now in the United States illegally.
"They had women and children and were prostituting the women and the children," one resident reportedly said about these illegal gang members, who "brazenly showed off gang tattoos or wore red clothing," according to media reports.
"There was a lot of them and watching all the women and children being put into a paddy wagon, I was like, 'Aah!'"
After apartment property staffers discovered that these TdA gang members were engaged in illegal activity in the squatted units, the gang members threatened them into silence.
"Prostitution is a big money-maker, and the thing with prostitution is that it brings guys in that they can then sell dope to," said former Colorado ICE director John Fabbricatore.
"These guys come in, they meet these Johns and shake them down. See if they want to buy drugs. They've started with moving these girls through, and if you go in these apartments, you'll see these young girls. It's bad."
The official story is that TdA has a propensity to hide its members among law-abiding, asylum-seeking people not just to blend in with them but also to exploit them. The gang made a name for itself by helping desperate citizens to flee communist dictator Nicolás Maduro, only to exploit them along the way.
More related news about the illegal migrant problem can be found at InvasionUSA.news.
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