Venezuelan officials ‘facilitate TDA members’ migration’ to the US to ‘destabilize governments and undermine public safety’: IC report

"While Venezuela's permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States," the report reads.

"The IC [Intelligence Council] bases this judgment on Venezuelan law enforcement actions demonstrating the regime treats TDA as a threat; an uneasy mix of cooperation and confrontation rather than top-down directives characterizing the regime's ties to other armed groups; and the decentralized makeup of TDA that would make such a relationship logistically challenging.

"Furthermore, most of the IC judges that intelligence indicating that regime leaders are directing or enabling TDA migration to the United States is not credible and would need [redacted] reporting [redacted] corroborated [redacted] While FBI analysts agree with the above assessment, they assess some Venezuelan government officials facilitate TDA members' migration from Venezuela to the United States and use members as proxies in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and the United States to advance what they see as the Maduro regime's goal of destabilizing governments and undermining public safety in these countries, based on DHS and FBI reporting as of February 2024."

An earlier report from the FBI said that Venezuelan officials are "likely using" members of Tren de Aragua to destabilize the United States as well as other nations. The new IC report states that "While Venezuela's permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States. The IC bases this judgment on Venezuelan law enforcement actions demonstrating the regime treats TDA as a threat; an uneasy mix of cooperation and confrontation rather than top-down directives characterizing the regime's ties to other armed groups; and the decentralized makeup of TDA that would make such a relationship logistically challenging."

"The IC is closely tracking key indicators of any shift in the relationships between the Maduro regime and TDA, including [redacted] weapons transfers, [redacted]. If the regime's relationship with the group became more cooperative, the IC would expect to see most regime operations against TDA increase and some indication that the regime was providing TDA state resources," the current report reads.

The report states that "Maduro regime leadership probably sometimes tolerates TDA's presence in Venezuela and some government officials may cooperate with TDA for financial gain. [Redacted] instances of regime officials' cooperation with various armed and criminal groups, such as Colombia's National Liberation Army or Los Colectivos, have been ad-hoc and reportedly driven by the regime's desire for help controlling territory or deterring a perceived threat of invasion, or for individual financial gain."

A recent case in Chile "may shed light on regime ties to TDA," the report states. In that case, Chile alleges, in a case before the International Criminal Court, that the Maduro regime was involved in the killing of a "junior Venezuelan military officer who escaped imprisonment in Venezuela after he participated in a coup plotting against the regime" in 2024.

Reporting for The New York Post, Miranda Divine quotes a source with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who said that the current intelligence from the bureau is "robust and accurate given their focus on domestic security and crimes, versus limited intelligence assessments from other intelligence elements who by law focus solely on foreign intelligence collection, and who until President Trump took office, had very limited resources focused on TdA."

The IC assessment states that "from 2021 to 2024 there was a spike in Venezuelan encounters at the US-Mexico border, in which some TDA members could have been present as they have generally moved with Venezuelan migrant communities and profit from human trafficking and migrant smuggling."

National Intelligence Council release on Venezuela, Tren de Aragua by The Post Millennial on Scribd