Detroit-area police on alert for transnational criminal activity are calling attention to South American gangs — in particular, gang members from Chile — that are moving across the country and targeting high-end homes and businesses in what has come to be known in law enforcement parlance as “crime tourism.” 

“They’re hitting clearly all over the country,” Oakland County’s sheriff, Michael Bouchard, who helped form a task force combating the gang crime, tells the Sun in an interview. “We know they’re hitting Ohio, Indiana, New York, Florida, California, they were hammering Arizona recently. So it’s a very transient gang that moves around the country, they hammer an area for a bit and then they move on,” he says, adding that there are believed to be 100 Chilean groups operating in the country. 

Oakland County has especially been a target of the gangs, and at one point the area was losing an estimated $1 million a week from the burglaries, he adds. 

The gangs employ specific tactics to target high-end homes, typically along wooded areas or golf courses, a public information officer for the Bloomfield Township Police Department, Nick Soley, tells the Sun. 

“We believe the crews case the house from the wood line until the residents leave the home,” he says, adding that the criminals typically enter the house close to the master bedroom, in search of expensive jewelry, designer purses, and cash. “They have been known to and seen on video surveillance using wi-fi jammers to disable the alarms in the home.”

In general, Asian American business owners are especially a target, he says,  “due to the belief that there will be large amounts of currency inside the residence from the business.”

The South American gangs are re-emerging in Michigan after appearing to have taken a break from the area, which police theorize could have been because of the harsh Michigan winters. “We knew that they would eventually make their way back here due to us being a target-rich area,” Mr. Soley says. 

In Oakland County, the seven people arrested so far are from Chile, but other parts of the county are seeing a lot of gang activity from Columbians and Venezuelans as well, Mr. Bouchard says. 

The gangs typically enter the country one of two ways, he notes — either by crossing the southern border illegally or by abusing the federal Visa Waiver Program. 

The VWP allows citizens of some countries to travel to America for “tourism or business for 90 days” without obtaining a visa. 

“The only country in South America that has the VWP is Chile,” Mr. Bouchard says, adding that he and others have been asking the federal government to remove Chile from the VWP. All seven people arrested in Oakland County have violated the waiver program, he adds, as Chileans arrive, get fake identification cards, and then “move about the country committing crimes.” 

“If they get caught, oftentimes in some states with no bail, they throw away that ID and they move to a different community and start all over again,” he says. While local-level law enforcement is working to arrest and charge the gang members, some aspects are in the hands of the Biden administration. 

“We’ve made it very clear that the challenge is such that we can’t stop it alone. It’s coming across the southern border and it’s coming through the VWP, and that’s a federal capability we don’t have,” he says, adding that internationally, the gangs’ training grounds should be targeted. 

“They’re coming here extremely well trained, almost special-ops type of training,” he says. 

Police recommend that residents stay on alert for suspicious activity in their neighborhoods and not be afraid to call 911.

The Department of Homeland Security tells the Sun it is “deeply concerned” with “some South American individuals” who are traveling to America to commit crimes. “DHS and our federal partners have actively engaged with all levels of the government of Chile to address this issue and have communicated the urgency of the situation,” a representative says. “Chilean officials have responded by improving operational cooperation with DHS offices in efforts to detect, deter, and prevent travel to the United States by known criminal actors.”