Chicago Gangbangers Rage Against Newly Arrived Venezuelan Migrants as Tren de Aragua Moves In

After serving 20 years in state prison for murder, former gangbanger Tyrone Muhammad never expected to return to the city’s tough South Side and find Venezuelan migrants and the criminal Tren de Aragua gang moving in.

But Muhammad, 53, who’s gone straight and runs a street patrol and violence prevention program called Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change says Venezuelan criminal gangs flooding shelters and taking over apartment buildings are the last straw for the struggling African-American community. He says they are furious at seeing government money going to what they call “non-citizens.”

“It is impossible to release gang members and criminals into our country through the borders and broken walls and infiltrate them in our community that’s already impoverished and broken,” Muhammad told The Post last week on the O Block, a stretch along South King Drive that’s considered the most dangerous in the city.

“When the black gangs here get fed up with the illegalities and criminal activities of these migrants or non-citizens, the city of Chicago is going to go up in flames and there will be nothing the National Guard or the government can do about it when the bloodshed hits the streets. It’ll be blacks against migrants.”

The latest figures show Chicago has spent almost half a billion dollars over the last two years on the more than 42,000 migrants who’ve arrived since 2022.

Many have been given money for rent, food stamp cards and even cars — and some landlords have pushed out local African-Americans because they can get more government money for housing migrants.

Some belong to the one-time Venezuelan prison gang turned vicious multinational crime syndicate Tren de Aragua who sources in Chicago told The Post are heavily armed, brazen and spilling into areas of the South Side. Those areas are traditionally controlled by hundreds of entrenched gangs from the Gangster Disciples and Black P Stones to the Vice Lords, Latin Kings and Satan Disciples.

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Numerous residents on the gritty, run-down South Side interviewed by The Post during the course of a week, including young hard-core gang members the elder gangsters call “the millennials,” said they’re angry and frustrated about being overlooked by city officials, who they say favor the migrants.

“The real issue is that America has allowed gangs to enter our country,” said a young Gangster Disciples member, David, standing on a high-volume drug-dealing corner near Martin Luther King Blvd.

“Gangs that they would consider ex-terrorist groups. They let terrorist groups into our country!” he yelled angrily to the Post.

“There’s been a lot going on with (the migrant gangs) that nobody’s even hearing about,” Zacc Massie, 27, a street leader who first went to prison in 2015 and just recently got out.

“They be moving in our own territory and robbing people but they don’t get arrested like we do. I actually talked to one on the translator app. He told me all the things he got going on; how they helped him get a car, an apartment, (EBT) card, all this stuff. They giving them thousands, we get maybe $400 a month. And they don’t even have Social Security numbers!”

Black P Stone member Corey Rogers took The Post on a drive through the area and pointed out several locations where he said Venezuelan gangs have been “showing the flag,” meaning brandishing their guns. He also showed a reporter a gang Whatsapp thread with texts from gang members threatening turf wars with the Venezuelans.

“What bothers me is that the Venezuelans are united,” Rogers said. “The black gangs are too divided and they take each other down.”

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