- Venezuelan authorities announced they had freed at least 100 prisoners since Friday
- Other prison cases are being reviewed so country can decide who is set free next, authorities said
A second wave of Venezuela’s worst criminals could soon be rushing over the US border after being released from prison in their home country.
DailyMail.com was first to report on the first wave of Venezuelan gangsters to cross the border and filter into American cities – including henchmen for dictator Nicolas Maduro and members of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang.
Now, more gang bangers and thugs who had been locked away are being released, according to a government official.
‘Since Friday, we have been carrying out in the state of Miranda, an operation looking into preventative centers and prisons,’ Supreme Court of Justice Magistrate Edgar Gavidia said, adding that 100 prisoners had already been turned loose.
‘We’re looking case-by-case at anyone, giving justice to those who at one time made a mistake in their lives to expedite justice.’
Speaking to DailyMail.com on Wednesday, Miami immigration attorney Rolando Vazquez warned: ‘These are killers.’
He compared them to Jose Ibarra, the Venezuelan man accused of murdering Georgia student Laken Riley.
‘These are career criminals… [Maduro] is just sending more.’
Notorious prison Yare and its sister facility Yare II, as well as a third prison called ‘El Rodeo’ are slowly letting prisoners go.
‘They’re thugs. These are prisons where there’s thugs, killers,’ Vazquez explained, adding: ‘These are not the prisons where they house the political opposition.’
Venezuela is positioning the release as a criminal justice reform initiative.
‘Yare I is an “open prison” where prison bosses, known as “pranes,” rule,’ according to InSightCrime.org.
On the outskirts of the capital city of Caracas, El Rodeo has also been plagued with violence and corruption.
Two El Rodeo wardens and a solider were charged in 2011 for corruption, after a riot at the facility left 22 dead after rival gangs unleashed chaos leading to a month-long stand off with authorities, the BBC reported.
Vazquez, a successful asylum attorney with deep ties to the Venezuelan community and outspoken critic of the communist tyrant, was first to sound the alarm about the releases.
‘Americans need to know, they’re coming to the border,’ the lawyer added.
Already, bad actors from South America have been tied to high-profile crimes in the States, including the brutal beating of two cops in Times Square in January.
The suspects in the NYPD beatings, Kelvin Servita Arocha and Wilson Juarez, have been identified as Tren de Aragua members.
In Miami, Tren de Aragua has already had it’s first US kill, after member Yurwin Salazar was charged in the slaying of a retired Venezuelan police officer who lived in Florida.
Former cop José Luis Sánchez Valera, 43, was lured by several women to a Miami hotel in late November. He was abducted in the parking lot and later killed.
Yurwin Salazar, 23, a Venezuelan immigrant who has been identified as a gangster, has been charged with the murder.
‘We’ll be dealing with this for the rest of mine and your life,’ retired Border Patrol agent and current Sheriff of Terrell County, Texas Thaddeus Cleveland said of the migrant crime wave.
Criminals who reach the US-Mexico international boundary sometimes sneak into the country by paying Mexican smugglers to avoid detection.
Others pass themselves off as refugees seeking asylum, even though they may have been among those terrorizing their countrymen back home and causing them to flee.
Every migrant who presents themselves at the border or who is captured trying to sneak into the country undergoes a biometric, including fingerprint, background check, a Border Patrol agent speaking on condition of anonymity told DailyMail.com.
The problem is, only those who have previously been fingerprinted or have outstanding criminal warrants would be flagged in the system.
Anyone without prior arrests or using a fake name would not.
Many Latin American countries don’t have biometric criminal systems or don’t share criminal records with the US, like Maduro’s government, which does not maintain diplomatic relations with America.
‘We know people like that are coming in, but without a fingerprint being flagged or other criminal flag, we just have to take their word for it if they mix in with the refugees,’ the agent explained.
But the Biden Administration does have the power to do more right now, Cleveland stated.
‘We could put a stop to this; two options: the President can bring back the Migrant Protection Protocols. He should have done that three years or he should have never taken away that process,’ the sheriff said.
The Migrant Protection Protocols, put in place by the Trump Administration, would require US immigration officials to return to certain migrants to Mexico while their U.S. removal proceedings are pending.
However, President Biden and Mexico have made the case the program is unlawful, since Mexico is not obligated to take migrants other than its own citizens.
‘If you’re going to let migrants in, we can at least keep them incarcerated. Let’s put them in a detention center. When this President (Biden) came in, he sliced (Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s) budget, and with that comes reduced bed space where we can keep migrants, the former immigration agent recounted.
‘Either we keep them in Mexico or we keep them in a detention facility here in the United States.’
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