Chicago citizens and gangs alike angered by Venezuelan migrants as Tren de Aragua moves in

Daily News Article   —   Posted on September 24, 2024

(by Dana Kennedy, NY Post) CHICAGO — After serving 20 years in state prison for murder, former gangbanger Tyrone Muhammad never expected to return to the city’s tough South Side and find Venezuelan migrants and the criminal Tren de Aragua gang moving in.

But Muhammad, 53, who’s gone straight and runs a street patrol and violence prevention program called Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change says Venezuelan criminal gangs flooding shelters and taking over apartment buildings are the last straw for the struggling African-American community. He says they are furious at seeing government money going to what they call “non-citizens.”

“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 last week on the O Block, a stretch along South King Drive that’s considered the most dangerous in the city.

“When the black gangs here get fed up with the illegalities and criminal activities of these migrants or non-citizens, 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.”

The latest figures show Chicago has spent almost half a billion dollars over the last two years on the more than 42,000 migrants who’ve arrived since 2022.

Many have been given money for rent, food stamp cards and even cars — and some landlords have pushed out local African-Americans because they can get more government money for housing migrants.

Some belong to the one-time Venezuelan prison gang turned vicious multinational crime syndicate Tren de Aragua who sources in Chicago told The Post are heavily armed, brazen and spilling into areas of the South Side. Those areas are traditionally controlled by hundreds of entrenched gangs from the Gangster Disciples and Black P Stones to the Vice Lords, Latin Kings and Satan Disciples.

TdA members flashing gang signs and wearing their uniforms of choice — Chicago Bulls T-shirts and caps — could be seen outside the Standard Club migrant shelter downtown, where two local Chicago police officers told The Post they were trying to encroach on a local gang’s drug-dealing corner near a 7-11 store.

Standard Club employees told The Post there hadn’t been any crime in the shelter and denied the presence of Venezuelan gang members.

But Terry Newsome, a white Chicago dad-turned-activist found there were 720 police incident reports logged at the Standard Club alone over the past 12 months.

He’s teamed up with Muhammad and others concerned with migrant crime to make dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests to find out what’s really going on.

Terry Newsome (above) teamed up with Tyrone Muhammad and others concerned with migrant crime. (Matthew McDermott)

Newsome showed The Post police reports indicating sex trafficking, child porn, drugs, carjackings, weapons and excessive spousal violence have occurred at four downtown shelters alone.

A TdA gang member was released by a Chicago judge despite a request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain him — just a month before he was charged in a violent jewelry store heist in Denver, not far from Aurora, Colo., where members of the gang have reportedly taken over apartment buildings.

Earlier this month, Chicago cops were called to a building on the South Side where 32 armed Venezuelan migrants were said to be showing their weapons.

Numerous residents on the gritty, run-down South Side interviewed by The Post during the course of a week, including young hard-core gang members the elder gangsters call “the millennials,” said they’re angry and frustrated about being overlooked by city officials, who they say favor the migrants.

“The real issue is that America has allowed gangs to enter our country,” said a young Gangster Disciples member, David, standing on a high-volume drug-dealing corner near Martin Luther King Blvd.

“Gangs that they would consider ex-terrorist groups. They let terrorist groups into our country!” he yelled angrily to the Post.

Zacc Massie, 27, a street leader who first went to prison in 2015 and just recently got out said, “There’s been a lot going on with (the migrant gangs) that nobody’s even hearing about.”

“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!”

Zacc Massie, 27, born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, served several years in prison and is now back on the streets. He says Venezuelan migrants are getting money, clothes, cars and apartments despite not having Social Security numbers. (Matthew McDermott)

Black P Stone member Corey Rogers took The Post on a drive through the area and pointed out several locations where he said Venezuelan gangs have been “showing the flag,” meaning brandishing their guns. He also showed a reporter a gang Whatsapp thread with texts from gang members threatening turf wars with the Venezuelans.

“What bothers me is that the Venezuelans are united,” Rogers said. “The black gangs are too divided and they take each other down.”

Community organizer Corey Rogers, 50, right, showed The Post a Whatsapp thread used by gang members that included threats of turf wars with Venezuelan gangbangers. His friend Charles Harris, 55, left, hopes the migrant gangs don’t lead to more violence. (Matthew McDermott)

Rogers’ friend and boss in what they call the “organization,” Charles Harris, 55, gestured to an area two blocks from where he was standing in the Woodlawn section.

“It’s still violent down here but it’s calmed down a lot,’ Harris said, gesturing to the west. “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.”

Muhammad — who was once the enforcer for Larry Hoover, head of the Gangster Disciples street gang — formed a group called Ex-Cons for Trump because he feels the Democrats have failed inner-city black people for too long.

“It’s not so much Trump himself, it’s that the Democrats are selling us down the river,” he said. “The boujee (upwardly mobile) blacks might like Kamala Harris but she isn’t going to do anything for us.”

The Rev. Corey Brooks, 55, who established his New Beginnings Church and his outreach group Project Hood on the O Block more than 20 years ago, said his conservatism grew out of years of what he called failed Democratic policies and even being ignored for funding by Black Lives Matter when he tried to get donations for his new community center.

“Chicago is a blue city and Illinois is a blue state but people are starting to wake up,” Brooks told The Post last week at his church. “It’s not about the person, it’s about the policies. I’ve seen what’s happening with my own eyes when it comes to the migrant criminal gangs and it’s very concerning.”

Brooks got a firsthand glimpse when he found out about a young Venezuelan migrant who had to flee the apartment he shared with other migrants when they turned out to be a criminal gang a few months ago.

“People will accuse me of fear-mongering because I’m a Republican and a conservative but I know what I saw,” Brooks told The Post.

“The Venezuelan gangs took over his apartment and were doing illegal activities. I know the crimes that were being committed and how in danger his life was.”

The young man, aged 27, spoke to The Post but did not want to give his name or go on camera and said he was terrified for his life.

“If they found out I was talking to anyone, they’d end my family’s life with one bullet,” he said in Spanish. “These are bad people.”

It’s not just the gang members upset about the migrants moving in and using up money that locals say would better serve them.

Octavia Mitchell, 52, formed the Heal Your Heart organization after she lost her son, Izael Jackson, to gun violence here in 2010. Last year she lost her nephew, 21-year-old Avante Holmes, when he was gunned down on the South Side.

Octavia Mitchell, 52, lost her son to gun violence in 2010 and her nephew was gunned down last year. She formed the Heal Your Heart organization for other bereaved parents but says getting any help – or funding – from the city has been impossible. (Matthew McDermott)

412 people have been murdered in Chicago so far in 2024 but she said less, not more, is being done to curb black-on-black violence.

“I can’t even reach nobody at City Hall or anywhere else that cares,” Mitchell said. “They care about the migrants but they don’t care about people like us whose roots are here. We matter, you know?”

The Chicago mayor’s office did not return an email from The Post.