Free Republic

The US government has seized a Boeing 747 cargo plane, previously owned by an airline linked to Iran’s IRGC, which was grounded in Argentina in June 2022 on suspicion of illegal activities. The Justice Department said Monday that the US-built plane had been brought to Florida and would be disposed of. "The Justice Department is committed to ensuring that the full force of U.S. laws deny hostile state actors the means to engage in malign activities that threaten our national security," Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the head of the department's national security division, said in a statement. Argentina grounded...

Have you heard of the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal gang? Maybe not, but this is “the little engine that could” that may bring your quiet American neighborhood some dangerous young men with little to contribute and even less to lose. Joseph Humire, an expert on Latin American security, calls the Tren “the fastest-growing transnational criminal organization in the world.” Last year, the Tren de Aragua didn’t even make the Border Patrol’s “Nationwide Apprehensions by Gang Affiliation,” an alphabetical list of 50 Central and South American gangs invading the United States—from the Angelino Heights Sureno 13 to the Zetas....

Venezuela is sending troops to its border with neighboring Guyana as tensions continue to escalate over a territorial dispute, raising the risk of a military conflict between the two South American nations. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal citing satellite images and videos made public by the country's military, Venezuelan forces have stationed troops, tanks, missile-equipped patrol boats, and an armored carrier at its border with Guyana. The dispute comes as Venezuela attempts to annex the region of Essequibo, where the country's socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro has said he plans to “grant operating licenses for the exploration...

Authorities on Friday nabbed a 15-year-old migrant suspected of shooting a tourist and firing at cops in Times Square, law enforcement sources said. The US Marshals Fugitive Recovery Task Force took the Venezuelan teen into custody in Yonkers at around 3:30 p.m., according to the sources. It came just moments after NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell identified Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa as the “armed and dangerous” person of interest in connection with the chaotic incident at the Crossroads of the World Thursday night.

A 15-year-old from Venezuela who arrived in New York City less than six months ago is wanted and considered “armed and dangerous” over a shooting at a Times Square sporting goods store that left a tourist injured, NYPD officials said Friday.Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa is being sought as a person of interest in connection to the chaotic Thursday night incident, Chief of Patrol John Chell told reporters.

This was a hot topic on FR a few weeks ago but had died down, it appears the Biden Administration could be facing another bad situation in South America, if a war breaks out in South America the flood of illegals at the Southern border could escalate to even higher levels

Ayatollah Iran treats the world as a war zone. Here's a list of regional battlegrounds: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Persian Gulf Arab nations, Yemen and Jordan. On Jan. 28, a drone launched by an Iranian proxy militia operating in Iraq struck the U.S.-manned Tower 22 observation outpost in northeastern Jordan. The explosion killed three U.S. Army soldiers and injured at least three dozen more service members. Yemen's Houthis, an Iranian proxy army, wage war on global shipping. Their attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean spike maritime insurance rates. That increases prices for everything,...

Jose Luis Sanchez Valera, a 43-year-old retired Venezuelan police officer, was lured to a hotel by two women, then robbed and murdered on November 28.. The killers tortured Sanchez to hand over his apartment keys, then raided the property: they told his niece, with whom he lived, they were Tren de Aragua.. Tren de Aragua is one of the most feared gangs in Latin America: it was born in Venezuela around 2012, and the Miami murder is the first by the gang in the US ... A former Venezuelan police officer lay dead in his silver Toyota 4Runner in a...

Venezuelan opposition leader and banned frontrunner in the yet-to-be-scheduled presidential election against dictator Nicolás Maduro, María Corina Machado, announced that a mob of socialists attacked her campaign event on Wednesday, beating her supporters “with sticks and stones.” “More than 100 regime colectivos attacked with sticks and stones and injured numerous attendees,” Machado wrote in a message on Twitter. “The police present, through their inaction, abetted the armed colectivos.” The term colectivo is used in Venezuela to mean socialist regime-linked armed thugs who have waged campaigns of terror against known dissidents through street beatings, extrajudicial killings, and other violence since the...

Two migrants were collared for a rash of moped raids where they snatched jewelry from unsuspecting New Yorkers, law enforcement sources said – as the number of scooter-borne robberies explodes citywide. Luis Tovar Pacheco and Alvaro Martinez — Venezuela citizens living in the Bronx — were busted after a domestic violence complaint at Pacheco’s Laconia Avenue, police sources told The Post. The arrests come on the heels of a Monday bust that locked up two other migrant men allegedly involved in a separate thieves’ ring that’s been stealing people’s cellphones right out of their hands, then hacking the devices and...

A group of moped-riding migrants terrorizing New Yorkers – including one Uber Eats driver – used a hacker to breach bank accounts and make purchases at stores like Home Depot, cops revealed as they shared new details on the “sophisticated” high-tech crime ring. The crew — and others like it — include people from several nations, including Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras and Mexico, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters. “There’s not a Venezuelan shelter, there’s not a Mexican shelter,” he said. “They’re all brought in together, along with other groups as well.” But the Venezuelan-led gangs — including the...

The largest growing criminal organization in the world has infiltrated its way into the United States, said an El Paso FBI agent. The Tren de Aragua, or the “Aragua Train,” gained notoriety after its founding in 2012 by Hector Guerrero, alias “Niño Guerrero” or Warrior Kid, in the state of Aragua located in the north-central region of Venezuela. Operating initially from Tocorón prison in Venezuela, the gang made headlines after 11,000 police officers raided the prison back in September, uncovering a zoo, nightclub, swimming pools, and a children’s playground. What they did not find was any sign of Guerrero, the...

Migrants who allegedly stole wallets and cellphones from at least 62 women were pictured leaving a New York City police precinct after they were arrested in a raid on Monday. Police arrested at least seven migrants, all believed to be from Venezuela, in a safe house in the Bronx after executing a search warrant. Two of the migrants, Cleyber Andrade, 20, and Juan Uzcatgui, 23, were walked out of the 1st precinct in Manhattan on Monday night. Andrade was charged with 25 grand larcenies and Uzcatugi was charged with 20 grand larcenies, according to WABC. Roxanna Sahos, 24, was charged...

Twenty-five years ago, far-left socialist Hugo Chavez assumed Venezuela's presidency, lawfully elected and sworn in on Feb. 2, 1999, after an up-and-down career as a restive army office involved in a coup d'etat. He ran and won as an outsider at a time when the establishment had discredited itself, got into trouble when oil prices fell, and signed on to an International Monetary Fund austerity program, such as were being employed at the time in measures that left capitals burning. Once in. it didn't take long for Chavez to turn his once-prosperous country into a socialist hellhole. Today, the country...

VIDEOLet's hand it to White House spokesman John Kirby. He condemned the use of lawfare in Venezuela to keep the leading opposition presidential candidate off the ballot without once even cracking a hint of a smile. Only a complete lack of a sense of irony and self awareness would allow Kirby to do that while also demanding the release of political prisoners... in Venezuela.

Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red Army and Stalin’s archrival said words to the effect, “You may not be interested in war. But war is interested in you.” In 1940, Trotsky found war personally when he was assassinated in his well-guarded compound in Mexico City by one of Stalin’s people. Mexico for years was a playground for KGB and now FSB personnel, with the American Government essentially ceding Mexico to the foreign adventurism of Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea; a veritable Mos Eisley of international rogues. Currently, the ungoverned spaces of Mexico are the domain for Chinese overseers of...

The second to worst worst thing that can happen to a civil society is civil war. The only thing worse than that is what Venezuela is living with right now, a dictatorship in which there is no hope of democratic change or equal justice. In Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela his voice is the only one that matters. It has been that way since he took over as the hand-picked successor to communist blowhard Hugo Chavez in 2013. Since then, opposition figures have tried everything to get a fair chance at defeating Maduro at the ballot box and at every turn they...

Authorities have confirmed the presence of members of the dangerous Venezuelan gang the Tren de Aragua in the Chicago area. This transnational criminal organization, which has managed to spread its terror very quickly throughout South America, is in the United States, according to intelligence reports from local agencies. Since at least October 2023, intelligence divisions of the Cook County Sheriff's Office confirmed through internal emails obtained by Telemundo Chicago that members of the Aragua Train are in Chicago. Garry McCarthy, police chief for suburban Willow Spring and former police superintendent for Chicago, calls the Aragua Train a criminal enterprise and...

A Venezuelan criminal gang that for the past few years has been extending its operations and causing havoc throughout Latin America has made an appearance in South Florida, police say, claiming that at least one of its members was involved in a recent Miami murder. José Luis Sánchez Valera, a 43-year-old retired Venezuelan police officer who lived in Doral, was lured by women into a hotel room in Miami in late November and killed after he was abducted in the parking lot. Yurwin Salazar, 23, a Venezuelan immigrant who lives in South Florida, has been charged with the murder. According...

Cliff Kincaid wrote an article for Renew America, titled. 'The communist plot against Trump.' In it, he goes into the special counsel, Jack Smith’s wife, Katie Chevigny. Chevigny is a Biden donor who put together a sympathetic documentary on Michelle Obama. The real story he says, is not Katie Chevigny, but her parents. Kincaid wrote a 12-page special report on them, "The Communists, Globalists, Terrorists, and Fellow Travelers Trying to Jail President Trump". Chevigny’s parents were well-connected to the communist and terrorist movements that backed Barack Hussein Obama. Kincaid says they’re trying to destroy Trump. Her father was a leftist...