CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Debates over President Donald Trump’s hardline migration policies are focused on the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, to some a ruthless transnational criminal organization and to others the pretext for an overhyped anti-migrant narrative.

Trump labeled the Tren de Aragua an invading force on Saturday when he invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a little-used authority from 1798 that allows the president to deport any noncitizen during wartime. Hours later, the Trump administration transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations. Flights were in the air when the ruling came down.

The Alien Enemies Act requires a president to declare the United States at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners to whom immigration or criminal laws otherwise protect. It had been used only three times — the last time to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.

The Trump administration has not identified the more than 200 immigrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States.

Gang gains notoriety in the US

From the heartland to major cities like New York and Chicago, the gang has been blamed for sex trafficking, drug smuggling and police shootings, as well as the exploitation of the nearly 1 million Venezuelan migrants have crossed into the U.S. in recent years. Trump told Congress this month that a Venezuelan migrant found guilty of murdering 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the University of Georgia campus was a member of the gang.

The size of the gang is unclear as is the extent to which its actions are coordinated across state lines and national borders.

The Venezuelan gang entered U.S. political discourse after footage from a security camera surfaced on social media last summer showing heavily armed men entering an apartment in the Denver suburb of Aurora shortly before a fatal shooting outside. In response, Trump vowed to “ liberate Aurora ” from Venezuelans he falsely said were “taking over the whole town.”

The city initially downplayed concerns. But most of the apartment complex was closed under an emergency order last month after officials said they suspected Tren de Aragua members in the kidnapping and assault of two residents.

Most of the men seen in the video have been arrested, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement accusing them of gang membership.

The Tren originated in an infamous prison

The Tren, which means “train” in Spanish, traces its origin more than a decade ago to an infamously lawless prison with hardened criminals in the central state of Aragua. It has expanded in recent years as more than 8 million Venezuelans fled economic turmoil under President Nicolás Maduro’s rule and migrated to other parts of Latin America or the U.S.

Countries such as Peru and Colombia — all with large populations of Venezuelan migrants — have accused the group of being behind a spree of violence in a region that has long had some of the highest murder rates in the world. Some of its crimes have spread panic in poor neighborhoods, where the gang extorts local businesses and illegally charges residents for “protection.”

The gang operates as a loose network in the U.S. Tattoos, which are commonly used by Central American gangs, aren’t required for those affiliated with the Tren, said Ronna Risquez, a Venezuelan journalist who wrote a 2023 book about the gang’s origins.

Trump targets the Tren

On his first day in office, Trump he took steps to designate the gang a “foreign terrorist organization” alongside several Mexican drug cartels. The Biden administration had sanctioned the gang and offered $12 million in rewards for the arrest of three of its leaders.

Trump’s executive order Saturday accused the gang of working closely with top Maduro officials — most notably the former vice president and one-time governor of Aragua state, Tareck El Aissami, — to infiltrate migration flows, flood the U.S. with cocaine and plot against the country.

“The result is a hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a substantial danger to the United States,” Trump’s executive order alleged.

Wes Tabor, who headed the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Venezuela when the gang first came onto law enforcement radar, said Trump’s decision to give the DEA and other federal agencies authority to carry out immigrant arrests is a “force multiplier” that will curtail the Tren’s activities in the U.S.

Tabor said authorities need to build a robust database like it did when combating El Salvador’s MS-13 containing biometric data, arrest information and intelligence from foreign law enforcement partners.

“We have to use a hammer on an ant because if we don’t it will get out of control,” said Tabor. “We need to smash it now.”

Venezuelan officials protest

In Venezuela, officials originally expressed bafflement at the U.S. interest in the Tren, claiming it had dismantled the gang after retaking control of the prison where the group was born.

As Trump’s immigration crackdown has intensified, they’ve conditioned their cooperation with U.S. deportation flights on progress in other areas in the long-strained bilateral relationship.

Last month, authorities gave a hero’s welcome to some 190 Venezuelan migrants deported by Trump, accusing the U.S. of spreading an “ill-intentioned” and “false” narrative about the Tren in the U.S. They said most Venezuelan immigrants are decent, hard-working people and that U.S. officials were looking to stigmatize the South American nation.

Over the weekend they protested the use of Trump’s invocation of the wartime rules, likening it to the “darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.”