[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] … - and it might seal the deal for Trump.
At first glance, the shabby Gateway Hotel, which advertises that it lets rooms by the hour, doesn't seem a place on which the fate of the world might turn.
Yet this now infamous establishment in the downtown heart of the Texas city of El Paso has earned itself an eleventh-hour role in the US presidential election – as part of a border security scandal that may help return Donald Trump to the White House.
Recent events at the crime-plagued hostelry, its windows now plastered with 'Closed' and 'No Trespassing' signs, have exposed yet again the disastrous failings of the Biden-Harris immigration policy – and allowed Trump to show Americans heading to the polls why he takes such a hard line on migrants.
The rundown hotel was allegedly the base for a brutal sex-trafficking ring run by an international Venezuelan crime gang, whose base is only a half-hour walk away across the Mexican border in Ciudad Juarez – one of the world's most dangerous cities.
Notorious for burying its victims alive or dismembering them, the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang – which means Aragua Train, Aragua being a state in Venezuela and the train a reference to the gang's reported links to a rail union – has a reputation for ruthlessness that's terrifying even by the depraved standards of Latin American criminals.
And, thanks to a Democrat government that rashly relaxed Trump's border controls, they've been able to spread their tentacles across the United States.
The gang, whose myriad activities across Latin America include drug and people trafficking, contract killings and illegally mining gold, was founded in around 2000 inside a Venezuelan prison – a prison that it was able to control to such an extent that it installed a bar, restaurant, disco and zoo.
But before the advent of the Biden administration – which has allowed more than 700,000 Venezuelans to settle in the US after many more fled poverty and the oppressive rule of socialist president Nicolas Maduro – the gang had never been able to establish a toehold in the States.
One of the favourite money-spinners of an operation that's been dubbed 'the epitome of evil' is to offer to smuggle migrant women into the country – often via El Paso – and then force them into prostitution as payment. The gangsters invariably twist the terms of the arrangement so the debt can never be paid off.
The Democrats' decision to give special treatment to Venezuelans due to the privations they were suffering under Maduro has created a nightmare scenario for American law enforcers.
As Washington has imposed sanctions on Maduro's regime, which range from blocking oil and gas sales to banning access to the US financial system, Venezuela is now one of a handful of countries that refuses to tell US officials if migrants have a criminal history.
While the vast majority of the arrivals are law-abiding, the thugs that hide among them are now being referred to by some police forces as 'ghost criminals', since there is little to identify them except their gang tattoos. (Tren de Aragua tattoos typically include five-point crowns, stars, clocks, trains and roses.)
In the final days of the election campaign, Trump is focusing on immigration and, particularly, the threat from criminals slipping over the border.
Last week, he told a rally that the US was now 'like a garbage can for the rest of the world'. He specifically flagged up the Tren de Aragua gang, claiming that the Colorado town of Aurora (over 600 miles to the north of El Paso) was being taken over by the Venezuelans, turning it into a 'war zone'.
His claims came after a video showing heavily armed gang members patrolling an apartment building in Aurora went viral.
However, even Aurora's Republican governor accused him of exaggerating the problem – something of a Trump habit – prompting Democrats and much of the US media to dismiss it as another lie – like his claim that Haitian migrants had been eating people's pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Yet it should be plain to even the most starry-eyed Harris supporter that, even if it isn't about to destroy America, Tren de Aragua is a growing menace.
The Department of Homeland Security has identified more than 600 migrants in the US who may have connections to TdA and has established it is operating in 15 states, and possibly eight others. Since 2021, there have been more than 100 arrests of suspected gang members.
Last month, Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think-tank, warned: 'I think the Tren de Aragua in the US could help elect Donald Trump.'
Other experts have agreed, noting how voters, who identify immigration as a key concern, need no reminding of how Biden and his border tsar, Kamala Harris, presided over a dramatic increase in the number of migrants illegally crossing the southern border – an average of 2 million per year from 2021 to 2023.
The Democrats' critics already have – in 36-year-old Estefania Primera, the alleged leader of the gang that operated out of the Gateway Hotel – their poster child for the evils of TdA and the failings of Washington.
Primera, whose street name is La Barbie, is a heavily-tattooed and pierced illegal migrant who, until she was locked up last month on charges of people smuggling and prostitution, liked to post on social media photos showing off her body decorations.
It is claimed that Primera trafficked women across the Mexican border to work as prostitutes and even used her five young children as drug mules to move narcotics.
El Paso police say that until a judge temporarily closed it, pending a hearing in December, they'd received a jaw-dropping 693 calls in two years about criminal activities at the anarchic Gateway Hotel, including assaults and suspected prostitution.
According to court papers, a migrant woman living there alleges that, to force her to work as a prostitute, La Barbie drugged her with the potentially lethal synthetic opioid fentanyl and brought men into the hotel to rape her repeatedly while she passed in and out of unconsciousness. When she woke and tried to flee, Primera, she says, dragged her back inside.
The conservative New York Post recently hailed Primera as 'the face of Biden-Harris immigration policies', detailing how she illegally crossed the border in August 2023. She was apprehended but, under the Biden government's controversial 'catch-and-release' policy, was allowed to stay in the US with the sole proviso that she wore an ankle monitor (which she immediately ditched).
Though she is now behind bars, La Barbie will remain a problem for the US since Venezuela refuses to take back almost all its citizens – a fact that has long appalled critics of the Biden-Harris policy of allowing hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans into America.
It is certainly quiet around the Gateway Hotel without La Barbie. Despite being just across the bridge from the drug-violence plagued Ciudad Juarez, and being a major crossing point for illegal migrants, El Paso has enjoyed a reputation for being one of America's safest cities.
Resident Joshua Harris, an athletics trainer, was sceptical that the gangsters of Tren de Aragua posed much of a threat to El Paso. 'This is Texas – you've got to assume everyone has a gun, and there's also a s***load of military and veterans here,' he told me.
Some of his fellow Texans aren't nearly so bullish. Last month, the state's Republican governor, Greg Abbott, designated Tren de Aragua a 'terrorist organisation' and called El Paso 'ground zero' for the gang in the US.
'Tren de Aragua has spread terror and carnage in every country they've been in, and Texas will not allow them to gain a foothold in our state,' Mr Abbott said in a statement.
The gang relies on staying ahead of police. Its members often live in migrant shelters, where other residents provide both their victims and their new recruits.
For the past year, the majority of migrant arrivals to cities like New York, Chicago and Denver have been Venezuelans, prompting concern from local mayors that they were being swamped by incomers they knew nothing about.
'They're reckless, and as ruthless a crew as we've seen,' said Jason Savino, one of New York's most senior detectives.
In the New York borough of Queens, where the gang is accused of operating a street-front prostitution racket known as the 'Market of Sweethearts', two NYPD officers were shot by a 19-year-old suspected TdA member, though the officers survived.
Like La Barbie, the alleged gunman had been caught crossing into Texas illegally, only to be released into the US to await an asylum hearing (which can take years to come up).
In Denver, in June, a leaked federal memo revealed that officials had received intelligence that members of TdA had been given the 'green light' by their bosses to attack and open fire on local police.
Meanwhile, it is a recurring theme that TdA members arrested for crimes in the US didn't slip into the country undetected but were intercepted by the Border Patrol and then allowed to stay.
The TdA has provided Trump not only with a cudgel with which to bludgeon the Democrats but with the perfect opportunity to boast that a second Trump term will be tougher than the first.
'They're a savage gang, one of the worst in the world, and they're getting bigger all the time because of our stupidity,' he has said.
At rallies across the country, he's been talking of his 'Operation Aurora' (named after the town he said was a TdA 'war zone'), a federal plan to 'immediately' invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act if he is re-elected.
The law – controversially used to intern Japanese-Americans in World War II – gives the president the power to arrest and deport any non-American man older than 14 if they come from a country at war with the US.
Trump said he'd use it to deport all undocumented gang members. He said he'll also demand the death penalty for any migrant who 'kills an American citizen'.
Many Americans will be voting with their wallets on November 5. For others, this new bogeyman from the border may just seal the deal for Trump.
🚨Ballot drop boxes with completed votes have just been set on fire in Vancouver, WA and Portland, OR. Expect more wild stuff this week. Stay vigilant. pic.twitter.com/qTXHPXZc2h
#3
The other day I saw something about certain Blue states and communities getting ready to send in highly armed police and such in to defend polling places from the anticipated rampaging MAGA hordes. November 5th will no doubt prove highly disappointing to them.
#4
Pretty sure this is Antifa/Blue on Blue action. Biden/Harris have not delivered their promised land and they're not happy. And they don't protect them when they pull stupid stunts in places like Texas and Georgia.
#10
Oh good! Outgoing Portland District Attorney Mike Schmidt and the FBI are investigating. Something should turn up...in 2026. Only have the car's pic and license plate to go on. It's an enigma
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/29/2024 12:06 Comments ||
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#11
The action is intended to cause riots. In reality, anyone who thinks their ballot might have been incinerated can show up on Election Day and vote provisionally.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
10/29/2024 12:10 Comments ||
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#12
Those drop boxes look like an easy target. Maybe that's by design.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/29/2024 12:12 Comments ||
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#13
I was reading they have fire suppression systems inside the drop boxes.
The drop box that caught on fire, the suppression system failed. A few others were targeted but the systems worked, if I follow the story correctly.
Our Votes vs their Ballots. All the cheat boxes should burn. We need to stop tolerating the commies and their tricks.
#14
The drop box that caught on fire, the suppression system failed.
Apparently the fire suppression system that failed had just been replaced, mossomo. The ones that worked are original equipment. No link, just something I read this morning.
[Breitbart] Food banks in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are reporting an “increase in demand” from people waiting in lines for food.
Several officials from food banks and organizations that work to bring an end to hunger explained to NBC News that they have seen an increase in the number of people who are in need of food. Officials at the food banks noted that the need has become “significantly higher” than it was during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Joe Arthur, the Executive Director of the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, explained to the outlet that his organization has “seen a more than” 50 percent “increase in demand since 2021.
“It’s a hunger crisis,” Arthur explained to the outlet. “The need that we’re seeing in our localities is actually as high as it was at the peak of the pandemic, yet there are less resources for those families today.”
The outlet noted that food banks “from rural Michigan to midsize towns in Pennsylvania and affluent suburbs in Wisconsin” were reporting the increase in demand from people “over the past several years”:
From rural Michigan to midsize towns in Pennsylvania and affluent suburbs in Wisconsin, food banks are reporting record levels of need that have been steadily increasing over the past several years. Despite rising wages and low unemployment rates, many households continue to struggle with escalating costs that have depleted their savings and increased credit card debt, leaving little money left over at the end of the month to put food on the table, food bank directors said.
“We have never seen this level in the 43 years we have been serving this community,” Ken Estelle, who serves as the president of Feeding America West Michigan. “It is significantly higher than during Covid and has pressed us beyond our capacity.”
[ZeroHedge] The Wall Street Journal reports Biden Snubs the Courts Again on Student Loan Forgiveness.
’That didn’t stop me," President Biden declared after the Supreme Court blocked his $430 billion student loan write-off in 2023. It sure didn’t. After striking out in court with three debt forgiveness schemes, the Administration on Friday unveiled another. Take that, judges.
The Education Department says its proposed rule would authorize forgiveness for some eight million borrowers experiencing "hardship." Under the rule, the department can discharge debt if it calculates a borrower has an 80% likelihood of defaulting on payments within the subsequent two years based on 17 factors such as income, debt balances and assets.
The rule would effectively let the department forgive debt of any borrower any time it wants. The administration says high child-care costs could qualify as a hardship. How about high auto loan or credit-card payments? Did someone say moral hazard?
In April the department released a plan that cancels accrued interest for 25 million borrowers and forgives debt of those who entered repayment over 20 years ago or who "enrolled in low-financial-value programs"—meaning, forprofit colleges. The plan also promised to waive debt for borrowers with a "hardship."
A federal court last month blocked that plan, but the department says its new rule "would operate separately and distinctly." Courts are playing whack-a-mole with the Administration’s debt write-offs that end-run Congress, which never authorized such broad-based debt forgiveness.
Such lawlessness is one reason so many Americans discount the left’s assertions that Donald Trump ...The man who was so stupid he beat fourteen professional politicians, a former tech CEO, and a brain surgeon for the Republican nomination in 2016, then beat The Smartest Woman in the World in the general election... endangers democracy. Mr. Biden acts like he’s king, and Democrats ...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy,white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects... and media voices cheering him on have no standing to object if Mr. Trump follows the Biden precedent.
That'd be the guy who negotiated the Abraham Accords.
[JustTheNews] Just eleven days before the election, senior congressional Democrats called on the Justice Department to investigate Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), citing standards they waived aside in the Biden impeachment investigation.
The letter sent to the Department of Justice on Friday came from House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden.
“The scale of these undisclosed foreign payments to Mr. Kushner coupled with the national security implications of his apparent ongoing efforts to sell political influence to the highest foreign bidder are unprecedented and demand action from DOJ,” Raskin and Wyden wrote.
"UNPRECEDENTED"?
If the allegations sound familiar, that’s because they are almost exactly what House Republicans accused Hunter Biden of doing.
#2
Liz Cheney's integrity. Ho ho Ha ha Hee hee. It is to laugh.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
10/29/2024 15:56 Comments ||
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#3
the GOPe, RINOs and the last vestiges of JFKs Donks can get together and form a proper Liberal Party in the face of the neo-commies capturing the core of the Donk Party operations and institutions. That way they can feel at home at the country clubs.
[ZeroHedge] Reid Hoffman, billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and independent director on Microsoft's board, appears to have donated a substantial amount of money to the "Progress Action Fund" — a PAC led by a far-left activist and former Obama administration alumnus. PAF pushed out one of the cringiest pro-pornographic political ads to drum up support from chronic masturbators for Kamala Harris.
Creepy commercial and discussion around it can be seen at the link, should you really want to waste your time, dear Reader. No doubt the advertising team thought they were making edgy humour. They were wrong.
#7
LinkedIn was always a leftist org. Started out as a gatekeeper for SF Bay Area tech companies (nearly all) that required applicants to use LinkedIn beginning in '08/'09. It was effective. I was essentially blackballed for a year and a half.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
10/29/2024 10:08 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[ZeroHedge] The Wall Street Journal reports Biden Snubs the Courts Again on Student Loan Forgiveness.
...every time you hear the phrase 
[RCI - Julie Kelly]
