An alleged gang member, who entered the U.S. illegally, was arrested Thursday in Cobb County in connection with a fatal shooting out of Chicago, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
Ricardo Gonzales, a “high-ranking member of the Venezuelan street gang Tren De Aragua,” was booked into the Cobb jail and is awaiting extradition to Illinois, a USMS spokesperson said.
“He chose to illegally enter the country, he chose to commit heinous acts of violence, and he chose to try to hide in GA …… all bad choices," Jim Joyner, commander for the Southern Regional Task Force of the USMS, wrote in a news release Friday.
Officials said Gonzales had a warrant from the Chicago Police Department for kidnapping and is “wanted on probable cause” for charges of first-degree murder and first-degree attempted murder.
On Jan. 28, Gonzales is accused of kidnapping three women and taking them to an alley in Chicago, where they were shot in the head. Two victims were pronounced dead, but one was able to escape and call for help.
During Gonzales’ arrest at an undisclosed Cobb residence, the USMS said five others were taken into custody and transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities. Officials did not say if they were also tied to Tren De Aragua.
The Trump Administration has been targeting Tren De Aragua in their latest wave of deportations.
The U.S. deported hundreds of immigrants after President Donald Trump recently invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the first time since World War II, using the broad authority of the centuries-old wartime law to target suspected members of the Venezuelan gang, according to the Associated Press. The administration agreed to pay El Salvador $6 million to imprison 300 alleged members there for a year.
Federal Judge James Boasberg issued an order temporarily blocking the deportations, but lawyers said two planes with immigrants were already in the air, the AP reported. Boasberg then verbally ordered the planes to be turned around, but the flights continued.
Boasberg vowed Friday to “get to the bottom” of whether the government defied his order to turn the planes around, according to the AP.
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