Abbott, who has made fighting illegal immigration a major focus of his platform, explained that, unlike the Mexican cartels, the Tren de Aragua gang will enter countries and attempt to set up bases within them “to wreck carnage with their criminal behavior.” The Texas governor added that due to the Biden administration’s lack of leadership in addressing illegal immigration, as well as having no diplomatic relationship with Venezuela, it is very easy for the Tren de Aragua gang to enter the U.S.

“There are bases in New York and other states across the country, and now including even in the state of Texas,” Abbott said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. “My top goal is to make sure that we protect our fellow Texans, and so I declared this organization a foreign terrorist organization, organized our anti-gang units across the entire state of Texas so that law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels prioritize this group, and we identify them, we seek them out, we arrest them, and put them in jail so that TDA will take their activities elsewhere.”

Abbott also previewed what the nation’s border crisis would look like with Vice President Kamala Harris in the Oval Office, arguing she supports eliminating illegal immigration as a crime and making President Joe Biden’s criticized border policy “look good.” Harris has attempted to reshape her reputation on the border since becoming the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential candidate.

Johnson also joined Sunday Morning Futures to detail the lasting impacts of the Biden administration’s handling of illegal immigration, arguing gangs could be “the longest-term threat.” He explained how gangs in Central America utilize extortion against law enforcement to make it harder to root out the gangs.

“Again, these are the types of crimes; they will burrow into communities, they will intimidate law enforcement, they will intimidate the individuals, and they will be very difficult to root out,” Johnson said. “So again, we have major problems because the Biden-Harris open border policy and, again, these crimes are going to be occurring for years to come. We are seeing the tip of the iceberg right now.”

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In July, the Biden administration designated Tren de Aragua as a transnational criminal organization, which was made after requests from Republicans who claimed the group’s members had penetrated the southern border. Since Biden took office in January 2021, nearly 700,000 citizens of Venezuela have been encountered at the southern border.

Among those who have raised concern about the Tren de Aragua is Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), whose district runs along 40% of the border. Gonzales argued the Venezuelan gang makes the Salvadoran gang MS-13 “look like Boy Scouts.”