Photo by Mani Albrecht U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Public Affairs Visual Communications Division

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Hopkins

Tren de Aragua gang members armed with weapons attacked crossings along the Texas-Mexico border, according to an internal memo obtained by the New York Post.

Earlier in December, 20 members of the notorious Venezuelan prison gang attempted to force their way into the country at a border checkpoint near El Paso, Texas, while armed with blades, broken liquor bottles and tire irons, according to a leaked Texas Department of Public Safety memo obtained by the Post. Another attempt to bust into the U.S. is expected on New Year’s Day.

Tren de Aragua has grown more determined to plant members into the country before President-elect Donald Trump assumes office and embarks on an ambitious crackdown of the U.S.-Mexico border and deport criminal illegal migrants en masse, according to Victor Avila, a retired agent for Homeland Security Investigations.

“You’re seeing that violence at the border because they know that it’s going to change in 27 days,” Avila said to the Post. “It’s going to change. It’s going to be different, and they’re going to be sought after.”

A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The reported attack at the El Paso, Texas, border crossing marks the latest iteration of violence caused by Tren de Aragua, a gruesome migrant gang that originated in a Venezuelan prison in 2013 and has since grown into a robust international crime syndicate. The gang is now believed to be operating in several states and major cities across the country.

The gang is suspected of having completely taken over several apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado, over the past year, despite repeated warnings by the apartment’s owners that their criminal activity was wreaking havoc in the area. Local police suspect that the gang was behind a brutal home invasion in December that involved the abduction and torture of a couple while being held captive in one of the infamous apartment buildings.

The San Antonio Police Department also confirmed that the Tren de Aragua gang members had taken over vacant apartments in the city in October. Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott designated the group as a terrorist organization in September.

“Tren de Aragua gangsters are like cockroaches,” Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said during the terrorist designation announcement. “They multiply quickly; small intrusions into communities become infestations if not aggressively pursued.”

The Department of Homeland Security reportedly identified more than 600 individuals living in the U.S. that have potential ties to the Venezuelan gang.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Owen Klinsky

From MSNBC host Rachel Maddow to businessman and television personality Mark Cuban, a slew of media leaders divulged what they got wrong this past year in a Semafor article published Monday.

Media missteps included NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein underestimating the impact of inflation on politics, Fox News anchor Dana Perino incorrectly predicting Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce would get engaged and CNBC financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin not putting “DOGE and the pairing of Elon [Musk] and Vivek [Ramaswamy]” on his 2024 Bingo card, according to the piece. Despite the variety of answers, one topic — Joe Biden’s lack of mental acuity —  seemed to sit at the top of the list for many respondents.

“Like many others, I was completely, utterly, totally, embarrassingly wrong about [President Joe] Biden’s lack of mental competence,” progressive British-American broadcaster Mehdi Hasan told Semafor.

Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential election in July following a disastrous June debate performance in which he appeared to lose his train of thought several times and stated he “beat Medicare.” Prior to the decision to exit the race, the White House made various efforts to mask the effects of his age, with the president wearing sneakers rather than dress shoes and taking shorter steps up Air Force One.

The White House actively denied claims Biden’s mental health was declining, with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre characterizing a video of the President wandering away from world leaders at the G7 Summit as a “cheap fake” and claiming it was orchestrated by Republicans. Much of the corporate media supported the White House’s effort, with panelists on MSNBC’s Morning Joe describing a June article from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that detailed the president’s declining mental health as “outrageous,” and CNN’s Bakari Sellers suggesting in July, well after the debate, that there was no reason to believe Biden could not serve for another four years.

Other examples of the media downplaying concerns over Biden’s mental acuity include The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg rushing to the president’s defense after co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said Biden could have a “senior moment” on stage prior to the debate and MSNBC analyst Mike Barnicle describing members of the Democratic Party as cruel in July for trying to oust the president from the 2024 race.

More recently, former CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza apologized in a YouTube video posted in December for waiting too long to investigate concerns that Biden’s mental acuity was deteriorating, admitting that as a journalist he should have “pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden’s mental and physical well-being.”

American talk show host Brian Lehrer made a similar apology in his response to Semafor: “Many callers to my show said Joe Biden was in no shape to run for re-election. I mostly dismissed it as ageism. Then I watched the debate.”