To invoke wartime deportation powers, President Trump announced that a gang had invaded the United States and was committing crimes at the direction of Venezuela’s government. But U.S. intelligence analysts disagree, according to findings circulated last month that stand starkly at odds with Mr. Trump’s claims, The New York Times reports. The disclosure calls into question the credibility of Mr. Trump’s basis for invoking a rarely used wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to transfer a group of Venezuelans to a high-security prison in El Salvador last weekend, with no due process. The White House still defends the move and his conclusion, that Tren de Aragua was a proxy for the Venezuelan government and was committing crimes in the United States at its direction because Maduro sought to destabilize the country.
The intelligence community assessment concluded that the gang, Tren de Aragua, was not directed by Venezuela’s government or committing crimes in the United States on its orders, according to the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. It concluded that the gang was not acting at the direction of the Maduro administration and that the two are instead hostile to each other, citing incidents in which Venezuelan security forces exchanged gunfire with gang members. Analysts put that conclusion at a “moderate” confidence level, the officials said, because of a limited volume of available reporting about the gang. Most of the intelligence community, including the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, agreed with that assessment. Only one agency, the F.B.I., partly dissented, maintaining that the gang has a connection to the administration of Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, based on information the other agencies did not find credible.
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