Alamance County’s sheriff is sounding the alarm that a notorious Venezuelan prison gang which has made inroads in other parts of the country poses a clear and present danger to his own jurisdiction.
In a recent interview with The Alamance News, sheriff Terry Johnson declared that Alamance County is very much in the path of Tren de Aragua, whose lurid activities have made headlines in other communities across the U.S.
This criminal network, whose name literally means “Train of Aragua,” originated as a prison gang in a region of northern Venezuela that has lent its name to this outfit. The gang has since branched out to other parts of Latin America amid a mass exodus of refugees from the violence and economic turmoil that Venezuela has seen during the 12-year presidency of Nicolás Maduro.
In recent years, Tren de Aragua has extended its reach into the United States, where it has been credited with sensational crimes in places as far flung as New York City and Aurora, Colorado. The gang’s activities have also provoked a response from various federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security. In the meantime, Tren’s presence became a factor in the run-up to last year’s general election, as President-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans attacked the immigration policies and law enforcement credentials of their Democratic opponents.
Although Johnson wasn’t up for reelection in 2024, the long-serving Republican sheriff has nevertheless come to share many of his party’s concerns about the metastasis of Tren de Aragua. Among other things, Johnson suggests that the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden failed to take appropriate action when Venezuelan authorities drove the gang’s founding members out of their country.
“They’re opening up the prisons in these countries to get rid of their criminals,” the sheriff declared in an interview earlier this month. “Now, they’re coming across the border into the United States, and I can tell you that every state is now home to this gang.
“I don’t know it as a fact,” he added, “But I do know that they’re here.”
Over the past couple of years, people linked to Tren de Aragua have been arrested in large population centers like New York and Chicago as well as mid-sized metros like Memphis, Tennessee. The gang has also been implicated in a high-profile murder in Aspen, Colorado, which initially prompted contradictory accounts from local officials after a viral video appeared to show armed gunmen going door to door ahead of the slaying. Since then, Aspen’s municipal leaders have issued a steady stream of news releases that confirm Tren’s connections to several homicide suspects.
The outgoing Presidential administration has also issued multiple statements about its response to Tren de Aragua. This past July, for example, the U.S. State Department announced $12 million in bounties for any information that leads the arrest of the gang’s three top-ranking members. At the same time, the U.S. Treasury declared that it had taken action to freeze the gang’s assets, which it attributed to “human smuggling and other illicit acts” that have targeted “desperate migrants” from Latin America.
Tren de Aragua has also popped up on the radar of the Department of Homeland Security, which has issued several memos about the group’s operations in the United States. Johnson recalled seeing two such communiqués in November that reported Tren’s presence in states that included Georgia and Tennessee.
Meanwhile, an article in the New York Post cited another Homeland Security memo that reportedly enumerated 16 states, including North Carolina, within the group’s ever-expanding sphere of influence.
Given the group’s expansion within the Southeastern U.S., Johnson insists that Tren is invariably chugging through Alamance County. The sheriff noted that the county’s location along two major interstate highways has already made it a crossroad for other international syndicates like the infamous Sinaloa Cartel.
At this point, however, Tren’s presence in Alamance County has not been confirmed by Johnson’s subordinates.
Byron Tucker, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, told The Alamance News that he is personally unaware of any activity in this county involving Tren de Aragua. Tucker went on to receive further confirmation of this conclusion from captain Craig Stephens, who oversees the sheriff’s investigative division.
“I just got a call from captain Stephens,” the sheriff’s spokesman explained in a message last Tuesday. “He is unaware of any…Venezuelan gang activity in our area. Our intelligence group constantly searches for intel on gangs who may present a threat to residents of our county. I will keep you updated.”
This absence of evidence has failed to shake the faith of the sheriff – although he, like his subordinates, admits he can’t point to any concrete signs of Tren’s presence in Alamance County. “I don’t have anything [tangible],” he told The Alamance News last Wednesday. “And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you [for investigative reasons].”
