The National Intelligence Council submitted a memo to the Director of National Intelligence stating that U.S. spy agencies have found no evidence to suggest that Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro controls or even cooperates with the Tren de Aragua gang.
When Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to target Venezuelans in the United States (and send them to a terrorist concentration camp in El Salvador), he claimed that Tren de Aragua was working to harm Americans “at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.”
The Alien Enemies Act may only be used against citizens of a country that is at war with the United States. Claiming that Tren de Aragua works on behalf of the Venezuelan government was part of a strategy to invoke the wartime law.
The memo is declassified through a Freedom Of Information Act request on May 5, 2025.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard responded to the memo’s public release by accusing reporters of lying about what the memo says.
