Nearly two dozen detainees linked to Venezuela’s notorious Tren de Aragua gang staged a dramatic uprising inside a Texas Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility last month, barricading themselves inside their unit and threatening to take hostages in a desperate standoff with federal authorities.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed that on April 26, the detainees barricaded the doors with cots, flooded the unit by clogging toilets, obscured surveillance cameras, and blocked windows at the Bluebonnet Detention Center in west Texas. The confrontation lasted for several hours, with the alleged gang members refusing to comply with orders from ICE officers.
Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary at DHS, responded forcefully to the incident in a statement Monday.
“Keeping these foreign terrorists in ICE facilities poses a serious threat to ICE officers, staff, and other detainees,” McLaughlin said. “The media repeated these Tren de Aragua gang members’ false sob stories, but the truth is these are members of a foreign terrorist organization that rape, maim, and murder for sport.”
The Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal organization originating in Venezuela, has expanded across Latin America and into the U.S. in recent years. DHS has labeled the terrorist organization threat due to its extreme and violent tactics — including the targeting of law enforcement.
At the same facility, the suspected gang members displayed a large banner reading, “Help, we want to be deported. We are not terrorists. SOS.” Prior to the failed takeover, a different group of detainees were seen sending a public message via drone footage. From the prison yard, inmates arranged themselves to spell out “SOS.” These displays raised questions about conditions inside the detention center and the desperation of some detainees to return home — even to countries mired in chaos or controlled by brutal regimes.
In response to the uprising and escalating security concerns, DHS is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow deportations to resume under the Alien Enemies Act, previously employed by the Trump administration to deport foreign nationals without hearings. The Court had paused that effort following legal challenges from immigrant advocacy groups.
Two of the men featured in the drone footage — Diover Millan, 24, and Jeferson Daniel Escalona Hernandez, 19 — have been flagged by DHS as members of Tren de Aragua. Both men were detained after allegedly crossing the border illegally and later identified through phone images and self-admissions, according to federal authorities.
Escalona Hernandez, who was arrested in January in Texas after evading police, briefly held at Guantanamo Bay, and later transferred to Bluebonnet, now denies gang affiliation. In a phone interview with Reuters, he claimed he was misidentified after agents found images on his phone of him making hand signs common in Venezuela.
“They’re making false accusations about me,” he told Reuters. “I don’t belong to any gang. I fear for my life here. I want to go to Venezuela.”
Millan was reportedly released at the border under the Biden administration’s catch-and-release protocols but was later picked up by ICE and identified as a suspected gang member.
Despite their denials, DHS officials maintain that both men — and the others involved in the uprising — are part of a dangerous criminal network.
With Trump’s DHS fighting the courts to enforce immigration law, the battle over how to deal with transnational gang members in ICE custody is far from over.
Perhaps the greatest irony in this story is the common goal of the Trump administration and the alleged gangbangers, both hoping for a speedy deportation, but being blocked by judges, pro-immigrant activists and Democratic politicians.
READ NEXT: Tren De Aragua Gang Members Stage Uprising At Texas ICE Detention Center, Demand Deportation
Absolutely love this.
They do become cowardly whelps when faced with the mildest scrap of justice. Bada*#, indeed.