By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-12-15 17:18:45 | Updated at 2024-12-15 20:06:48
2 hours ago
A police chief in a small North Dakota city says he and his officers were abandoned by the feds and left to fend for themselves when suspected Tren de Aragua members showed up in town.
North Dakota is the latest state to report that the brutal Venezuelan migrant gang is operating there after alleged member Henry Theis, 25, was busted last month for hacking and ripping off ATMs in West Fargo to the tune of $100,000, according to authorities.
And he’s not the only suspected TdA member to now have been identified in the city of 40,000.
West Fargo Police Chief Pete Nielsen told The Post his department is doing its best to address the threat of such foreign gang activity — but its resources are limited, a situation that has been made only more “difficult” and “frustrating” without federal help.
“If you don’t have federal help on these crimes crossing all these different state lines, it’s difficult for local police to enforce some of this,” he said.
“We haven’t had a lot of federal partners knocking on our door here to assist with this crime,” Nielsen said of the latest suspected TdA bust.
The top cop said his officers are meanwhile “monitoring” the “activity” of multiple other suspected Tren de Aragua members in the area.
“Being the police chief of this community, I think I would be looking to make sure that anybody that’s committing any crime in the community is accountable for that action. As local authorities, we want to make sure we have the ability to remove these people that are committing crimes from the community,” Nielsen said.
Theis crossed the border illegally into El Paso, Texas, last year and was released into the US by border agents with a future court date, Homeland Security sources told The Post.
Then in August 2024, Theis was arrested in Lewisville, Texas, for a DWI but was later let go for an unknown reason.
He was busted again Nov. 1 for the ATM crime — after he was allegedly caught with $24,000 in bank cash and facemasks and black latex gloves in his car.
“I think it’s concerning to any police chief of any community throughout the United States when these individuals are here illegally, number one,” Nielsen said. “Number two, they’re getting arrested for a crime. And then we release [them back] into the country they’re not even supposed to be in.”
ICE recently lodged a detainer with the Cass County jail to take Theis into its custody.
The suspect’s bust in North Dakota — one of the most remote and least populated states — confirmed TdA’s infiltration in now 17 states.
Nielsen said he hopes the situation changes once President-elect Donald Trump comes into office in January. The police chief said that if he is asked to help with mass deportations, which Trump has promised, he will do all he can to assist.
“I think if there was an order from Tom Homan to assist the federal government in, you know, making arrests of people that are here within the communities illegally, we would entertain that order, and we would assist the federal government on any thing that they needed us to do,” he said, referring to Trump’s border czar.
