Chicago gangbangers furious at newly arrived Venezuelan migrants as Tren de Aragua enters

After serving 20 years in state prison for murder, former gang member Tyrone Muhammad never expected to return to the city’s rough South Side and find Venezuelan migrants and the Tren de Aragua criminal gang.

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

“There is no way we can let gang members and criminals come into our country through the borders and the broken walls and infiltrate our community that is already impoverished and broken,” Muhammad told The Post last week on the O Block, a stretch of South King Drive considered the most dangerous in the city.

“When the black gangs here get fed up with the illegality and criminal activities of these immigrants or non-citizens, the city of Chicago will go up in flames and there will be nothing the National Guard or the government can do about it when the bloodshed takes place in the streets. It will be blacks against immigrants.”

The latest figures show that Chicago has spent nearly half a billion dollars over the past two years on the more than 42,000 migrants who have arrived since 2022.

Many have received money for rent, food stamps, and even cars. In addition, some landlords have turned away local African Americans, hoping to get more government money to house immigrants.

Some belong to the former Venezuelan prison gang that has grown into a brutal multinational crime syndicate called Tren de Aragua, which Chicago sources told The Post are heavily armed, brutal and spread across areas of the South Side traditionally controlled by hundreds of established gangs, from the Gangster Disciples and Black P Stones to the Vice Lords, Latin Kings and Satan Disciples.

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Several residents of the gritty, impoverished South Side interviewed by The Post over the course of a week, including young, hardcore gang members who call the older gangsters “the millennials,” said they are angry and frustrated at being overlooked by city officials who they say favor immigrants.

“The real problem is that America has let gangs into our country,” said David, a young member of the Gangster Disciples, as he stood on a corner where drugs are sold, just off Martin Luther King Blvd.

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

“There’s a lot going on with (the migrant gangs) that no one even hears about,” said Zacc Massie, 27, a street leader who was first jailed in 2015 and only recently released.

“They’re moving in our territory and robbing people, but they’re not getting arrested like we are. I even spoke to one of them through the translator app. He told me everything he did; how they helped him get a car, an apartment, an (EBT) card, all that stuff. They gave them thousands, we get maybe $400 a month. And they don’t even have a social security number!”

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 were “showing the flag,” meaning they were brandishing their weapons. He also showed a reporter a gang WhatsApp thread with texts from gang members threatening turf wars with Venezuelans.

“What bothers me is that Venezuelans are united,” Rogers said. “The black gangs are too divided and they’re taking each other out.”

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