Four members of a violent Venezuelan gang were arrested after attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border into Texas on New Year’s Eve.
On Friday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the Texas Department of Public Safety arrested four members of Torren de Aragua who attempted to illegally cross the border on December 31st.
In Valverde County, DPS officers encountered a group of 22 migrants from Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. Eleven of them were arrested for trespassing.
The 11 included a group of nine men from Venezuela who claimed to be going to San Antonio, Irving and Corsicana. They were questioned by DPS agents, and authorities became suspicious of four of the men based on their interviews. Deputies obtained consent to search the four men’s cell phones and were able to confirm their connections to Torren de Aragua through social media apps.
The confirmed members are 39-year-old Segundo Ocando-Mejia, 27-year-old Pedro Luis Salazar-Cuervo, 18-year-old Antonio Joe Urrutia-Rojas, and 18-year-old Levi Jesús Urrutia-Blanco. Identified. Authorities believe the tattoo on Ocando Mejia’s shoulder indicates he may be in a leadership position in a gang.
At a press conference in Houston last September, Governor Abbott signed a proclamation declaring the Torren de Aragua gang a foreign terrorist organization, signaling a statewide crackdown on the gang’s presence in Texas. did. Since then, multiple members of the gang have been arrested, including a major raid at a San Antonio apartment complex in October.
Authorities also investigated whether two men accused of killing 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungarei in Houston last year belonged to a gang.
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