Texas hotel closed for harboring Tren De Aragua and violent illegal border crossers

By Bethany Blankley | Employee at The Center Square

(Worthy News) – A hotel in El Paso, Texas, has been closed for harboring violent illegal border crossers, including members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren De Aragua.

El Paso County District Attorney Christina Sanchez has filed a lawsuit against the Gateway Hotel, owned by Gigante Enterprises LLC and Howard Yun, a South Korean immigrant, alleging that the hotel violated multiple public nuisance laws and endangered the community.

The lawsuit, filed in El Paso County’s 120th District Court, asked the court to issue an injunction to close the hotel, the complaint said. A judge granted her request Monday, giving residents until Thursday to vacate the premises.

The Gateway Hotel’s recent history is dubious. The previous owner was convicted of smuggling and money laundering in 2011; the city condemned the building in 2014. It sat vacant until Yun obtained a conditional certificate of occupancy in 2018.

The hotel has operated for six years without a valid occupancy permit, in violation of city requirements, the complaint alleges. In the past two years, 693 service calls have been made indicating “habitual criminal activity … contributing to the overall decline this business is causing in downtown El Paso,” the complaint says.

Attached to the complaint was surveillance footage showing “at least one gun being fired, another being threatened, men with knives and another man with an axe attacking people and causing damage to the hotel in front of a security guard.”

The indictment lists the following types of crimes allegedly committed on the premises: drug trafficking, aggravated assault, trespassing, violent acts/fights, two terroristic threats, vandalism, arson, theft, burglary and prostitution.

The El Paso Fire Department reported “habitual criminal activity, trash and fire hazards,” the El Paso Police Department reported “an increase in suspected gang members using the property” and “continuing incidents of criminal activity” that increased “with the introduction of the Tren De Aragua organization into the hotel.”

A statement from an official said hotel management “negligently allows gang activity to enter the area”; “allows illegal activities (drug use, gang activity, illegal dumping)”; and “will continue to threaten public safety if the hotel is allowed to continue “business as usual.”

Sanchez’s Nuisance Abatement Team files civil lawsuits “to abate and/or suppress a general and public nuisance on property,” which can include crimes such as “prostitution, human trafficking, drug trafficking, drug-related crimes, firearm crimes, robberies, massage therapy code violations, alcohol violations, and other aggravated crimes,” her office explains. “The purpose of a nuisance abatement lawsuit is not to accuse someone of a crime, but to prove that the business/property owner allowed the illegal activity to occur on their property and made no reasonable efforts to stop it.”

The ruling in El Paso comes after members of the Tren de Aragua gang broke into apartment complexes and hotels and committed a series of violent crimes across the country. They were released to the U.S. by the Biden-Harris administration after entering the country illegally and through a new CHNV parole program created by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Since fiscal year 2021, a record number of illegal Venezuelan border crossers have been reported, nearly 856,000 – the highest number in U.S. history.

Another 115,000 Venezuelans were granted conditional release through the CHNV program. The vast majority are single adults of military age, according to CBP data.

The CHNV program has been directly linked to perpetrators of violent crimes against Americans. Members of the Tren de Aragua gang are being arrested across the country, The Center Square reports.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is demanding answers from the Biden-Harris administration about how many criminal Venezuelans have been released into the U.S. and why.

“The Biden administration is fully aware that prisoners from other countries are entering the United States through our wide-open border,” Moody said in March, before the Venezuelan gangs recently became national news. She wants to know why “the Biden administration is releasing criminal illegal aliens in U.S. prisons directly into the interior of the country, rather than deporting them back to their countries of origin.”

Also in March, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and U.S. Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, both Republicans from Florida and Cuban-Americans, warned, “Tren de Aragua is an invading criminal army operating out of a prison in Venezuela that has spread its brutality and chaos to American cities and small towns. If left unchecked, they will unleash an unprecedented reign of terror, mirroring the devastation it has already caused in communities throughout Central and South America, particularly Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru. The scale of Tren de Aragua’s operations includes murder, drug and human trafficking, sex crimes, extortion and kidnapping, among other atrocities.”

The U.S. State Department has designated the gang, which began in Tocorón Prison in Aragua, Venezuela, as a transnational criminal organization. The gang is offering up to $12 million in rewards for information leading to the arrests and/or convictions of its leaders, who are believed to be in Colombia and Venezuela.

Reprinted with permission from The Center Square.