DOJ charges eight alleged Tren de Aragua members in separate Texas and Chicago cases

The Department of Justice on Friday announced criminal filings against eight alleged members of the Venezuelan transnational criminal group Tren de Aragua in two separate violent cases, federal officials said.

General Blanch, the Attorney General, said five defendants were charged in a Northern District of Texas indictment tied to a 2024 episode outside Dallas in which four men murdered a father and kidnapped a 13-year-old girl and a 12-year-old nephew. "We unsealed an indictment charging five alleged members of TDA," he said, adding that three of those suspects are already in U.S. custody and one is held in Colombia.

Ryan Raybould, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, described the August 24, 2024 incident in which victims were bound and a man was shot execution-style after refusing to jump from a bridge. Raybould said the indictment names five defendants, including a purported high-ranking member identified as Hector Garcia Zuniga, "Murray." "Those defendants charged in our indictment are all foreign nationals who have illegally been present at one time or another in this country," Raybould said.

In Chicago, Andrew S. Boutros, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said a criminal complaint filed this week charges three individuals with kidnapping that resulted in death after a man was abducted from a park, held in an apartment, taken to an abandoned building, beaten, shot multiple times and left in a bathtub. "A man kidnapped from a park in Chicago in broad daylight, beaten, held against his will ... and shot multiple times," Boutros said.

Officials repeatedly described the cases as the product of multiagency work led by Task Force Vulcan, Homeland Security Task Forces and FBI field offices in Dallas and Chicago. FBI Director Kash Patel credited the administration's designation of Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization for giving law enforcement tools to pursue the group, and he cited increased enforcement activity since that designation.

Speakers at the briefing said the eight defendants entered the United States between December 2021 and April 2024, and framed those entries as illegal — a detail the speakers used to link the cases to broader immigration and enforcement policy, saying the defendants "crossed our southern border illegally." Those characterizations and the causes officials ascribed to them are assertions made by DOJ officials during the briefing.

A reporter asked whether terrorism charges could be added; officials said additional charges, including terrorism-related counts, are sometimes added later as investigations progress. When asked about ransom notes in a separate case, FBI Director Patel declined to comment, saying state authorities are leading that matter.

The Texas indictment and the Chicago criminal complaint remain pending in federal court. Prosecutors said more arrests and enforcement actions are ongoing as investigations continue.

The DOJ displayed photos tied to the Chicago complaint; officials noted one alleged participant pictured was wearing an ankle monitor and out on bail, a point speakers used to highlight bail and sanctuary-policy concerns. The departments did not provide sentencing or detention outcomes for the charged defendants at the briefing.

The cases will proceed through the federal courts in the Northern District of Texas and the Northern District of Illinois; prosecutors said additional charges or superseding indictments are possible as investigations continue.