In a recent news, we learned that the murderous Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) is now in 16 states in the U.S., committing crimes openly and brazenly.  These gang members’ many horrific acts include robbery and murder, gang rape, assaults, shakedowns, burying people alive, and even beheadings and public executions.  They are reputed to be more violent than the notorious Salvadoran gang MS-13.

TdA first gained notoriety on August 18, when a video showed gang members wandering through an Aurora, Colorado apartment building, brandishing guns, knocking on doors, even breaking off locks and entering apartments unbidden.  In this instance, it appears they were shaking down residents for their rent money with threats of violence and the lethal weapons to make good on them.

It turns out this apartment building in Aurora was one of three that TdA had taken over.  While residents and people in neighboring communities voiced fear for their safety and the safety of their families, apologists pooh-poohed and minimized the incidents.  Many in the mainstream media soft-pedaled the gang’s presence, claiming they’re not “terrorists” but just petty criminals.  The mayor of Aurora and a City Council member downplayed the threat in their official newsletter.  The position several in the left media took was that the furor over TdA was overblown.  They weren’t taking over cities; they were just terrorizing them.  So that made it all right.

I remember having a discussion on Facebook with a friend who had a similar rationalization: “It was just one apartment building.  It wasn’t the whole town.”  No big deal.  This is a bright, conservative man.  I was dumbfounded.  I wanted to echo Chris Pratt in the movie Jurassic World, after Vincent D’Onofrio’s character goes on an insane rant: “Do you hear yourself when you talk?” 

Shortly after the criminal exploits of Tren de Aragua came to light, it was learned that they were a more pervasive presence than originally known, and experts postulated that it would take ten years to root them out and fully remove them from the country.  Now they’re in 16 states, most recently in Washington, D.C., Virginia, Wyoming, Montana, and in every major city in Tennessee.  With this expansion, we can only imagine how much more difficult it will be now to rid our country of this human plague.

Although President-Elect Trump has vowed to deport every criminal illegal alien in the country, TdA presents a unique danger to our immigration and law enforcement agencies:

“What sets this group apart is the level of violence. They’re aggressive, they’re hungry and they don’t know any boundaries because they’ve been allowed to spread their wings without any confrontation from law enforcement until now.”  (Wes Tabor, retired DEA agent)

These are violent sociopaths, even psychopathic killers, with no social or moral constraints.  Tren de Aragua was born in a Venezuelan prison, a hellhole of violence and brutality.  Violence is their currency and trade.  If we thought law enforcement faced challenges during the Minneapolis riots, or pursuing criminals in Chicago, those dangers pale in comparison to the soldiers of Tren de Aragua.

How did these despicable monsters gain such a presence all over America?  We have DHS director Alejandro Mayorkas to thank for that, aided and abetted by Vice President Kamala Harris, President Biden’s inept border czar.  Their willful dereliction of duty in securing our porous southern border is directly responsible for enabling this human pestilence to invade our country, putting millions of Americans at risk. And they are still slipping into the country in numbers we can’t imagine.  Instead of ten years to remove all of them from the country, perhaps we now must think in terms of twenty years...or more.  It’s chilling to imagine all the acts of terror, murder, assault, rape, and robbery they will perpetrate in the coming decades, not to mention all the men and women of our law enforcement agencies who will face death and torture from these psychotic animals.

All Americans should be outraged at Alejandro Mayorkas.  We have watched numerous televised congressional investigations in which Mayorkas lied outright to the committee and the American people time after time, claiming that the border was secure, despite the millions of aliens who continued to pour into the country illegally, hundreds caught on camera by Fox News reporters and other news outlets.  When not lying outright, Mayorkas dodged every question that would have revealed his dereliction of duty.  But nothing unnerved him.  He was cool as ice (pardon the pun).  His smug smirk and baleful eyes revealed an arrogant, cold, calculating mind that was able to stonewall and rebuff every question.  It was hard for American viewers to stomach.

Republicans in Congress couldn’t stomach it, either.  After a first failed attempt, the House of Representatives impeached Mayorkas on its second try, alleging “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law.”  As to be expected, the Democrat-controlled Senate let Mayorkas off on a “point of order,” claiming that the articles of impeachment failed to comply with the U.S. Constitution: they didn’t allege that Mayorkas’s conduct rose to the level of a “high crime or misdemeanor.”

But it’s not just his bald-faced lying directly to our faces, nor his escape from impeachment, that should most infuriate Americans.  Above all, we should be outraged that Mayorkas’s willful dereliction of duty.  His purposeful contravention of U.S. immigration laws is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of United States citizens during his tenure at DHS.  The Federation for American Immigration Reform documents that just this year, from January to August, there were over 60 deaths, shootings, or assaults of Americans by illegal aliens, with more than 60 just through August.  At that rate, there could be close to 100 by the end of December.

And we can add the illegal alien who has now been convicted of brutally murdering Augusta University nursing student Laken Riley.

The blood of every one of those victims has stained Alejandro Mayorkas’ hands indelibly.  And to paraphrase Shakespeare, “not all great Neptune’s ocean will wash this blood clean.”  If Mayorkas had not allowed those criminal aliens to cross into America illegally, the probability is that the people murdered by these monsters — including Laken Riley — would still be alive.  The rest would’ve been spared the shootings and assaults.  And the most heartbreaking aspect of his crime is that there will be more brutal deaths to come, even after President-Elect Trump boots him from the Cabinet.

Politicians are often concerned with the legacy they will leave after their term in office.  Alejandro Mayorkas’ legacy is death.

Eric Dawe is an award-winning writer, chess enthusiast, and Shakespeare buff and the author of two historical novels based on Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid: Aeneas, Last King of Troy, and Aeneas, Landfall of Legend.

Image via Picryl.