The Venezuelan migrant gang Tren de Aragua's "infiltrating" Chicago has a former gangbanger turned street patroller warning about the city going "up in flames."
"When the black gangs here get fed up with the illegalities and criminal activities of these migrants or noncitizens, the city of Chicago is going to go up in flames and there will be nothing the National Guard or the government can do about it when the bloodshed hits the streets: It'll be blacks against migrants," Tyrone Muhammad, 53, told the New York Post in an exclusive.
Muhammad served 20 years in state prison but has righted himself and is using his street cred for Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change to protect the Black community on the Chicago streets.
He is warning about Venezuelan criminal gangs flooding shelters and taking over apartment buildings, lamenting seeing government funding "noncitizens" over the struggling members of his community, according to the Post.
"It is impossible to release gang members and criminals into our country through the borders and broken walls and infiltrate them in our community that's already impoverished and broken," Muhammad told the Post this week on the infamous O Block stretch of South King Drive among the most dangerous neighborhoods in the crime-hit city.
There have reportedly been 42,000 migrants flooded to the sanctuary city since 2022, costing nearly half $500 million.
The money has been handed out for rent, food stamp cards, and even cars, all while some landlords have booted local African-Americans to get in on the government funding for migrants, according to the Post.
Muhammad issued stern warnings about the funding and the crime, noting Tren de Aragua cartel is a multinational crime cartel that is stocked from Venezuelan prisons — as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has long warned.
The Post confirmed their presence from gang signs flashing outside the Standard Club migrant shelter downtown.
The shelter workers denied crime there or the presence of the Venezuelan gangs, but there have been 720 police incidents in the past 12 months, according to the report.
Among the crimes were sex trafficking, child porn, drugs, carjackings, weapons, and excessive spousal violence at the four downtown shelters in Chicago, one of Muhammad associates, Terry Newsome, told the Post.
"The real issue is that America has allowed gangs to enter our country," a young Gangster Disciples member told the Post.
"Gangs that they would consider ex-terrorist groups. They let terrorist groups into our country!"
Another street leader Zacc Massie, 27, noted the migrants are not only lawless, but they are also not held to the same policing standards as other members of the community.
"There's been a lot going on with (the migrant gangs) that nobody's even hearing about," Massie, who was recently released from prison since his 2015 incarceration.
"They be moving in our own territory and robbing people but they don't get arrested like we do.
"I actually talked to one on the translator app. He told me all the things he got going on; how they helped him get a car, an apartment, (EBT) card, all this stuff. They giving them thousands, we get maybe $400 a month. And they don't even have Social Security numbers."
The migration and uptick of violence was dragged by those that had seen improvement in the area, including Charles Harris, 55.
"It's still violent down here but it's calmed down a lot," Harris told the post. "Back in the day we'd get shot if we went over there. It's calmed down a lot.
"The last thing we need are the Venezuelans."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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