Law Enforcement Spent Months Amplifying Unverified Claims of Tren de Aragua Plotting to Kill Police Officers, Documents Show

Law enforcement agencies across the United States circulated and amplified for months a claim about notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua ordering members to kill police officers, a notion that was later quietly discredited by the FBI, newly released government records show.

The original claim, traced back to a July 2024 bulletin issued by the Albuquerque Police Department (APD), warned that members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) had received a "green light" to attack law enforcement officers. The one-page "Officer Safety" alert cited "credible human sources" connected to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Colorado, but provided no supporting evidence.

Within days, the rumor had moved beyond New Mexico, picked up by Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and police associations across the country.

Emails and internal memos obtained by the nonprofit Property of the People and published by The Guardian show the warning spread through a web of law enforcement "fusion centers" and interagency networks, reaching as far as New York, Washington, Oregon, and California.

By December 2024, an FBI briefing to regional and federal agencies concluded the claim was inaccurate. "Despite reporting in August 2024 indicating TdA issued a 'green light' on violence against U.S. law enforcement, it appears the order is primarily defensive in nature, rather than a directive to actively target officers," the FBI wrote. The agency did not issue a public correction.

The rumor nonetheless gained traction among politicians and media outlets. Texas Governor Greg Abbott cited the "green light" warning in a proclamation declaring TdA a terrorist organization and blaming the Biden administration's "open-border policies." Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Greg Lopez referenced the same claim in statements attacking DHS, while conservative outlets repeated the unverified intelligence as fact.

It's not the first case of flawed intelligence becoming entangled with politics and misinformation this year. An August 2025 investigation by InSight Crime found that Joseph Humire, now Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs, previously led a Washington-based think tank that published fabricated reports about TdA activity in the U.S.

The Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS) ran an online tracker that falsely claimed to map TdA-related crimes, citing nonexistent local news stories and naming people not found in police records. According to InSight Crime, SFS's tracker inflated the gang's footprint using unverified social media posts and partisan websites. The group's current director, Leonardo Coutinho, admitted to publishing erroneous information but left most of it online.

These distortions fed into a broader intelligence rift within the U.S. government. A May 2025 New York Times report revealed that the FBI had circulated a memo assessing with "medium confidence" that Venezuelan officials had facilitated TdA migration to the U.S. — a conclusion rejected by the National Intelligence Council, backed by the CIA and NSA, which found "no evidence" of Venezuelan state coordination with the gang.

Analysts say the newest reveal illustrates how weak intelligence, once politicized, can reinforce anti-immigrant narratives. "It's a self-reinforcing ecosystem of law enforcement alerts, media coverage, and political spin," said Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People to The Guardian. "Rumors become reports, reports become policy, and the truth rarely catches up."