A declassified memo written by American intelligence agencies contradicts the claims of President Donald Trump according to which government controls in Venezuela The gang tren of Araguaan argument he used to expel immigrants A prison from El Salvador.
The service note of the National Intelligence Council indicates that Nicolás Maduro's Venezuelan regime Allows criminal gangs to operate on its territory but that it does not orchestra Tren of Aragua's operations In the United States.
“While the permissive environment of Venezuela allows TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a cooperation policy with ADD and does not lead the movement and ADD operations in the United States,” according to the Memo of April 7.
The National Intelligence Director's office published the note in response to a request from the Freedom of Information Act by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non -profit organization. The foundation provided a copy to NBC News. Entitled “Venezuela: Examining the regime's ties with Tren of Aragua”, the declassified version of the five -page memo included outings and blackened passages.
The New York Times Reported for the first time on the memo on Monday.
Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act After having declared Tren of Aragua an invasion force. The law had not been used in war time.
He and the administration officials said that the Gang Tren of Aragua operated under the direction and management of the Venezuelan regime.
“ADD undertakes hostile actions and carry out an irregular war against the territory of the United States both directly and in the direction, clandestine or other, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela”, ” Trump wrote in his proclamation invoke the act.
The law was used to summarily expeling Venezuelans and other immigrants in a Salvador prison. The prison is Notorious for its brutal and abusive conditions.
The intelligence community declared that it had based its judgment on Tren de Aragua on “the actions of the application of Venezuelan laws demonstrating the regime dealing with ADD as a threat; A worried mixture of cooperation and confrontation, rather than directors of the directives that characterize the regime's ties to other armed groups;
The memo noted that FBI analysts had a slightly different point of view, even if they were largely agree with the evaluation of other intelligence agencies. FBI analysts “assess a few Representatives of the Venezuelan government facilitate the migration of members of the ADD from Venezuela to the United States and use members as indicators of Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and the United States to advance what they consider as the Maduro regime to destabilize governments and undermine public security in these countries, “said Memo.
The Washington Post reported on the existence of the service noteand before that The times reported This intelligence questioned the claims on the cartel and its links with the Venezuelan government.
The Trump administration has strongly criticized the media coverage of the issue as deception and announced of flight surveys linked to post and hours reports. The Ministry of Justice cited the media reported as a momentum Return limits on leaks surveys.
Lauren Harper, from the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said that the service note undergoes the statements of the administration that information in the document could pose a danger to public security.
“The Trump administration said that the flight of this note was so dangerous that it required to open criminal surveys and create new, more stringent rules concerning the media leaks,” said Harper in an email. “We wanted to see if it was true – or if the Ministry of Justice weakened the protections of journalists to help hide a document that the public has an obvious right to see.”
The declassified note “shows not only that the Maduro regime does not direct the Venezuelan gang Tren of Aragua, it shows that the new MJ media rules are an excuse to target journalists,” she said.
But the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said that the information media “twisted” and “manipulated” intelligence assessments on foreign criminal gangs operating in the United States “to undermine the president's agenda to ensure the security of the American people”.
“Illegal immigrant criminals have violated, tortured and murdered Americans, and yet the propaganda media continue to operate as apologists for them,” she said in an email relayed by a spokesperson.
The office of the national intelligence director subsequently published a statement saying that it “fully supports the evaluation that the foreign terrorist organization, Tren of Aragua, acts with the support of the Maduro regime, and therefore subject to the arrest, the detention and the abolition of foreign enemies in the United States.”
During a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee in March, Gabbard told legislators that there were contradictory conclusions on the links between the gang and the regime. “There are various assessments that come from different elements of the intelligence community,” she said.
The classification democrat of the intelligence committee, representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, and the Democratic representative Joaquin Castro of Texas, also a member of the committee, praised the release of the memo and declared that he had written a letter last month in Gabbard asking him to recognize him.
The legislators argued that the declassified evaluation had strengthened the conclusion of a federal judge last week that the use by the administration of the Act on Extraterrestrial enemies concerned the gang of Tren de Aragua “was illegal”.
The members of the Democratic Congress also wrote that “Director Gabbard should explain why his public descriptions of this intelligence did not correspond to the conclusions of the CI.”
They added: “The most fundamental responsibility of the director of national intelligence is to tell the truth in power and, as far as possible, the American people.”
Asked about the declassified note, the republican president of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, said in an email that he “fully supports the tireless efforts of President Trump to protect the Americans against the brutal thugs who seek to invade our homeland and to terrorize the American people.”
Cotton added that he is impatiently awaiting journalists “questioning his Democratic friends to explain why they continue to defend foreigners who seek to harm their voters”.
Mark Warner of Virginia, the deranged democrat of the Senate intelligence committee, said that the note has shown that the Maduro regime was not a sponsor of Tren from Aragua.
“It is extremely worrying to see the assessments of the non-partisan intelligence community denouncing the DNI,” he said in a statement. “It is even more alarming to see that it occurs in the context of an effort to give legs to the unconstitutional attempts of Donald Trump to expel migrants without regular procedure.”
Secretary of state Marco Rubio wrote in an editorial on the Fox News website That he was not relevant so thirty of Aragua acted on the orders of the Maduro regime, arguing that the regime had “favored its growth”.
“May ADD assassinated exclusively, smuggling drugs and illegal immigrant traffic on our borders on the orders of Venezuelan leaders, or the self-employed for self-enrichment, it is next to the point”. “He killed on behalf of a hostile foreign government, that the government has favored its growth and that the government has encouraged him to invade the United States to advance his interests.”
CORRECTION (May 6, 2025, 7 p.m. HE): A previous version of this article has misized the family name of the classification democrat of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He's Mark Warner, not Warren.
