Suspected Venezuelan gang member arrest may give Trump fodder in Wisconsin

The recent arrest of a suspected Venezuelan gang member in Wisconsin may give former President Donald Trump, who has long stoked fears of migrant crime, fodder at his upcoming rally in the state on Saturday.

Trump, the GOP presidential nominee in November’s election, is set to hold a rally Saturday afternoon in Mosinee, Wisconsin, which is about a three-and-a-half-hour drive northeast of Prairie du Chien where Alejandro Jose Coronel Zarate, a 26-year-old Venezuelan, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Thursday, following allegations of physical and sexual violence.

The Prairie du Chien Police Department wrote in a Facebook post on Friday that Zarate had allegedly been “physically and sexually violent” toward a woman in an altercation that also left a girl injured. Zarate was arrested and taken to the Crawford County Jail. ICE was notified and placed a detainer on Zarate.

Zarate is suspected of being affiliated with the transnational gang, Tren de Aragua, who are known for criminal activities including murder, kidnapping, extortion, as well as drug, weapons, and human trafficking.

He was booked into jail for domestic disorderly conduct, two counts of domestic battery, strangulation/suffocation, physical abuse to a child, disorderly conduct and two counts of second-degree sexual assault. Zarate also had warrants through Dane County, Wisconsin, for strangulation/suffocation, false imprisonment, battery and disorderly conduct.

Trump—who has amplified anti-migrant rhetoric since his first run for president during the 2016 election cycle when he called Mexican migrants “rapists” who are bringing in drugs and crime—may use Zarate’s arrest to back up his continued claims that migrants are dangerous criminals that the U.S. needs to keep out as his campaign has done before.

Meanwhile, the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute, said in a May 2024 article: “Numerous studies show that immigration is not linked to higher levels of crime, but rather the opposite…When looking specifically at the relationship between undocumented immigrants and crime, researchers come to similar conclusions.”

Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign via email for comment on Saturday afternoon.

On July 24—three days after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now the Democratic presidential nominee—Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez blamed Harris for the massive influx of illegal immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border seen in recent years.

“Border Czar Harris owns the bloodbath at the southern border, including the rape, murder, and brutal assault of women like Rachel Morin and Laken Riley. Try as they might, Kamala and her allies can’t change reality: she is responsible for the flood of migrant crime and deadly fentanyl into our country, and Americans will hold her accountable when they vote for President Trump in November,” Alvarez said in a statement.

Laken Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student who was killed in Athens, Georgia, while on a run last February. The suspect in her murder, José Antonio Ibarra, is a Venezuelan illegal immigrant. Meanwhile, Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old mother of five from Maryland, was allegedly raped and murdered by 23-year-old undocumented migrant Victor Martinez Hernandez while out for a run in August of 2023.

In 2021, Biden tasked Harris with leading the administration’s diplomacy with Central American countries—El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—to address the “root causes” of migration. However, she never was in charge of border security. While illegal immigration has gone up significantly under Biden, it also increased in Trump’s last months in office after hitting a low from the COVID-19 pandemic.