National security adviser Mike Waltz said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that members of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization are working as a “proxy” of Venezuela.
Partial transcript as follows:
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you closer to home, what has been happening here with Tren de Aragua, TdA, we’re going to call them, which have been designated by the Trump administration as terrorists. Last Saturday, 238 Venezuelan men were handed over to the government of El Salvador. 137 of them were deported using this rarely used, 1789 Alien Enemies Act. This is important because it gives the power to detain and deport without a court hearing first, if they come from countries at war with the U.S. In the hearing on Friday, it was revealed that El Salvador, where they’re being held, rejected two of the people: one on the basis of gender, because it was a woman and they can’t be held at a maximum security prison. The other because the person wasn’t even Venezuelan at all. How does that kind of high consequence mistake happen?
WALTZ: Well, these kind of one-offs we’ll deal with on an individual basis, but Margaret, the underlying issue here is twofold–
BRENNAN: So there was a mistake that you acknowledge, here?
WALTZ: I can’t speak to those individual cases and the details of the individual cases, but what I can speak to is, President Trump has determined that this- this group is acting as a terrorist organization. It is terrorizing our communities through attacks, torture, rape, and the most awful of situations for those communities, number one, and number two, the Alien and Sedition Act fully applies, because we have also determined that this group is acting as a proxy of the Maduro regime. So–
BRENNAN: You have- I’m sorry, just to clarify on that. This is supposed to apply if the U.S. is at war with a country. You are saying you have evidence–
WALTZ: We are saying–
BRENNAN: –that the government of Venezuela is directing these gangs?
WALTZ: –we are saying- we are saying that TdA is acting as a proxy of the Maduro regime. This is how the Alien and Sedition Act applies, and we cannot have district judges interfering with the Commander in Chief’s actions to take care of, in the way he deems necessary, a terrorist organization.
BRENNAN: So the U.S. is at war with Venezuela?
WALTZ: And I gotta tell you, we can- we can debate on Article Two, Article Three. That’s a fair debate. However, in this case, the Commander in Chief, President Trump, is taking decisive action to rid our communities of these gangs that are operating in a paramilitary fash- fashion, and that we know Maduro is deliberately emptying his prisons in a proxy manner to- to influence and attack the United States.
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