All studies on the Venezuelan migration phenomenon that began in the middle of the last decade agree in characterizing it as a massive, mixed-flow event. The mixed nature of Venezuelan migration means that different types of migration coexist, including humanitarian, political, and economic migration. Economic migration corresponds to sectors that can no longer develop financially in the country and therefore seek new opportunities beyond its borders. Thus, the mega-criminal gangs that have crossed Venezuela’s borders are a particular type of economic migration, as we noted in the study An Ignored Tragedy, which states that “in the case of mega-gangs, an expansion beyond Venezuelan territory is observed, which corresponds to the limitation of business opportunities in the country; it is impossible to carry out an express kidnapping when the cash has disappeared, for example.”
Without a doubt, the Venezuelan mega-gang known as Tren de Aragua has expanded its presence to several countries on the continent, from the United States to Chile. However, this presence has been exaggerated, pretending to represent a massive criminal organization that poses a serious threat to the security of the countries in which it operates, when its threat is equal to or less than that of other criminal organizations. A query using artificial intelligence revealed striking data on the number of members of different criminal organizations on the continent. Mexican cartels are estimated to have between 160,000 and 185,000 members spread across 150 active criminal organizations, with the Sinaloa Cartel being the largest. The Clan del Golfo (Colombia) has between 9,000 and 14,000 members; the Primeiro Comando da Capital (Brazil) has between 30,000 and 50,000 members; the Mara Salvatrucha (USA) is made up of between 50,000 and 100,000 members with a presence in North America and Central America. Meanwhile, the Tren de Aragua has between 3,000 and 7,000 members. There is no doubt that, in quantitative terms, the Tren de Aragua is far below many of its regional peers.
This oversizing of the Tren de Aragua seems to go hand in hand with the xenophobic wave sweeping the continent against the Venezuelan population, magnifying its crimes. At the same time, the presence of other groups goes unnoticed in the narratives of the media and political spokespersons. When xenophobia combines with the desire for effective solutions, it is easy to invoke the specter of terrorism to eradicate the scourge of foreign crime. The terrorist label objectifies people, stripping them of their rights and translating into a blank check for persecution and arbitrariness, based on profiling that criminalizes people grounded on their appearance and potential danger, rather than on objective acts they have committed that are classifiable according to the basic principles of criminal law.
The Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism has warned about the risks of profiling, stating that “[t]he practice of profiling based on stereotypes according to which persons of a certain race, national or ethnic origin, or religion are particularly likely to pose a risk can give rise to practices with respect to border controls, and more generally to counter-terrorism measures, that are incompatible with the principle of non-discrimination.”
For his part, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance conducted a detailed study on the practice of profiling, concluding that “The use of racial and ethnic profiling in law enforcement constitutes a violation of the human rights of the individuals and groups targeted by such practices, due to its fundamentally discriminatory nature.”
If the Tren de Aragua has approximately 7,000 members—according to the least conservative estimates—and only a portion of them are in the US, the suspension of TPS for more than 350,000 Venezuelans and humanitarian parole for another 117,000 is an absolutely disproportionate action that is covered by an alleged, unproven terrorist activity, in addition to the invocation of a 1798 act for the summary and mass expulsion of thousands of people who were objectified and stripped of their rights.
The magnification of the Tren de Aragua’s impact is also fueled by a myth that Maduro emptied Venezuelan prisons to send criminals to the US as part of a plan orchestrated by the Venezuelan government. Several fact-checking studies have refuted this claim.
The over-promotion of the Tren de Aragua is as damaging to the rights of millions of honest Venezuelans forced to migrate as the romanticization of this mega-criminal gang. Recently, President Petro, following a controversy with the U.S. Secretary of State for Homeland Security, stated that the Tren de Aragua is made up of “young people excluded by forced migration because they lived well in Venezuela. Since they lived solely off oil and the oil supply was cut off, those young people ended up here, and there they couldn’t find university or culture.” Such a statement represents an extreme simplification of Venezuelan migration, on the one hand, as if all young people migrated because the oil supply was “cut off,” ignoring the existence of a crisis by design that led to a complex humanitarian emergency. And, on the other hand, a generalization according to which every young person who has migrated from Venezuela would be a member of the Tren de Aragua, when the truth is that, in its own way, this criminal gang enjoyed enormous privileges in Venezuela, developing its activities and strengthening its organization under the protection of high-ranking officials of the Maduro government.
The victimization of criminals is as unacceptable as the criminalization of victims. Therefore, the international community must avoid both simplistic views of organized crime groups and generalizations that seek to impose a synonym between crime and migration, labeling migrants and subjecting them to massive persecution practices reminiscent of the dark ages of 20th-century fascism.