(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Remember when fact-checkers attacked President-elect Donald Trump’s claims that countries are sending criminals to wreak havoc in the U.S.? New comments from current and former Venezuelan officials confirm that this is exactly what dictator Nicolás Maduro is doing.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Machado, former Venezuelan military official José Gustavo Arocha and security consultant Alberto Ray warned that Maduro is likely to weaponize local gangsters to destabilize the U.S. if he remains in power following the disputed local election of 2024.
“If Maduro remains in power, he will likely use the Tren de Aragua as a tool for coercion and asymmetric tactics to achieve his objectives,” Arocha said in an interview with Fox News.
Arocha fled Venezuela over the persecution by the Maduro regime and is now a fellow at the Center for a Secure Free Society in the U.S.
He added, “Migration, weaponized with elements of the Tren de Aragua, will serve as leverage to seek the easing of economic sanctions and to gain legitimacy from the United States.”
Tren de Aragua (TdA) is a multi-national gang linked to several high-profile criminal cases in the U.S., including the death of Laken Riley, a beloved nursing student in Georgia, and the hijacking of multiple apartment buildings in Colorado.
Machado said that the situation in Venezuela has dire implications for U.S. safety. She is currently leading protests against Maduro as he refuses to relinquish power following the disputed 2024 elections.
Ray, a risk strategist who helps with Machado’s security, echoed Machado’s concerns in an interview with Fox: “What is going to happen if Maduro stays in power is that more illegal and weaponized migration is going to keep going out of Venezuela and that increases the probability of Tren de Aragua and other gangs to migrate and be around the region, including the U.S.”
These comments echo past assertions from Trump about foreign countries releasing criminals into the U.S. The president-elect has pointed to reports that crime in Venezuela dropped as the regime released criminals into the U.S.
Several fact-checkers, including those at The New York Times and FactCheck.Org, claimed there was no evidence to back these comments.
“There is no evidence that the Venezuelan government is systemically or selectively releasing prisoners and expelling them from the country,” The Times wrote in July 2024.
“The experts we spoke to said the claim lacks evidence, and is otherwise dubious,” noted FactCheck.Org.
In a separate piece, FactCheck.Org added, “Experts in and out of Venezuela told us there is no evidence to back up Trump’s claim.” It continued, “Again, Trump has provided no evidence to back up his claim that the Venezuelan government is emptying its prisons and sending inmates to the U.S.”
PolitiFact labeled Trump’s comments “pants on fire” and “false.”
These revelations come just days after the fact-checking industry was rocked when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg halted his partnership with them to censor content on his social media platforms. Zuckerberg affirmed fact-checkers often targeted political speech, which turned out to be factual.
NOW – Zuckerberg describes his experience with third-party "fact-checkers" as "something out of 1984."pic.twitter.com/7zpEIygN5K
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 10, 2025
