EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A suspect held in the stoning death of a Mexican immigration agent last week south of Juarez has been identified as a member of the Tren de Aragua gang.
A Mexican judge on Monday ordered two Venezuelan men identified only as David J.V. and Carlos Arichuna S.M. held for trial for inflicting injuries leading to the death of a public servant. The two allegedly pelted Luis Alberto Olivas Garcia with rocks after the National Migration Institute agent caught up to them for circumventing a federal highway checkpoint leading to Juarez.
Court testimony this week alleged the Venezuelans pushed Olivas down a hill, and that David J.V. grabbed a rock and struck him in the head until dead as he lay down. On Tuesday, a Mexican police official said at least one of the alleged murderers likely is a Tren de Aragua member.
Two men from Venezuela were arrested in connection with the beating death of an immigration agent in Samalayuca, Chihuahua. (Chihuahua State Police.)
“One of them has the tattoos that we have identified as probably linked to Tren de Aragua. We have shared this information with other agencies and are waiting for the next binational meeting to have it checked in (American) databases,” Chihuahua Public Safety Director Gilberto Loya said in a tape-recorded interview shared by his office with Border Report.
Loya for the past two months has been alerting the public to the presence of the violent Venezuelan prison gang in a northern Mexico state that borders Texas and New Mexico. Members of Tren de Aragua who crossed into the United States through El Paso under the premise of seeking asylum were later arrested after committing high profile crimes, such as the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
The El Paso Police Department and the U.S. Border Patrol last September collaborated on an investigation that led to the arrest of three Tren de Aragua members at El Paso’s Gateway Hotel. Several crimes were alleged to have been committed at the hotel, including the sexual exploitation of a migrant woman.
In August, federal officials in El Paso transferred to Colorado an alleged Tren de Aragua member linked to a brutal jewelry heist in Denver last June.
Loya earlier this week said transnational criminal organizations are increasingly coaching migrants to disobey Mexican authorities as they travel to the U.S. border.
He also said Tren de Aragua infiltrated a migrant camp in Chihuahua City earlier this year – a fact Mexican authorities learned after one gang member was arrested in the United States.
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