Former FBI Special Agent Sounds Alarm About Transnational Crime Organization in Montana: ‘MS-13 2.0 on Steroids’
"They’ve received paramilitary training"
A former FBI Special Agent is trying to make Montanans aware of a new transnational criminal organization that has entered the state: Tren de Aragua (TDA).
Daniel Brunner told The Montana Chronicles that TDA is “very dangerous,” but the thing that makes the criminal organization “even more dangerous” is that “not enough people are talking about them and paying attention to them.”
He called the criminal organization “MS-13 2.0 on steroids.” Brunner said that TDA has taken the model of what MS-13 does and moved it to the next level.
“They've looked at what MS-13 did and the mistakes they've made. And they're avoiding making those same mistakes,” he said.
TDA started as a Venezuelan gang but moved into a transnational criminal organization, he said.
Brunner added that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has embraced the criminal organization.
“He's pushed them out of Venezuela. He's pushing the majority to countries which he would like to destabilize as much as possible. He is opposed to the United States, capitalism [and] freedom,” the law enforcement expert said.
Brunner added that many members of TDA are former Venezuelan military members “who went into the criminal element.”
“They’ve received paramilitary training,” he said.
Brunner said that he has known since the spring of 2024 that TDA has been in Montana. In November, The New York Post reported that TDA was active in 16 states. TDA members have been arrested in 22 states, according to The Center Square.
Brunner said he believed that TDA had been in Montana longer than when he first heard about the criminal organization being in the Treasure State.
Brunner lives in Bozeman and is the president of Brunner Sierra Group, which is a “concierge forensic accounting and security firm,” according to its website. Before starting this company, he spent 20 years in the FBI, where he was an expert in “key Latin and South American geopolitical matters.”
Andrew Arthur, who is a resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, said part of the reason it was important to keep TDA out of America was because it acts more like a cartel than a gang.
Arthur told The Chronicles that TDA’s business plan is human smuggling and human trafficking.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if Tren de Aragua doesn’t attempt to start setting up smuggling routes over the northern border from Montana into Canada,” he said.
Brunner added that he suspects TDA is running human trafficking in Montana.
In addition to human trafficking and human smuggling, Brunner said TDA makes money as an organization by selling drugs, firearms and weapons, as well as narcotics and prostitution.
For places TDA could be in Montana, Brunner said Bozeman and Big Sky are the “hotbeds.”
“Bozeman is definitely ground zero for these individuals,” he said.
He added that TDA may be in Billings and the Kalispell/White Fish area.
Brunner said that TDA did not choose Montana for its strategic reasons, but rather, the criminal organization looks for communities where there is a “Hispanic element.”
Hispanic migrants have moved to the Bozeman and Big Sky areas due to construction jobs, the former FBI Special Agent said. The three predominant Hispanic communities in the Bozeman and Big Sky areas are Hondurans, Mexicans and Venezuelans, according to Brunner. TDA goes where there’s a Venezuelan community, he added.
“They're going to be part of these communities where they can blend in. Not only can they blend in, but they can also extort and take advantage of those members of that community,” Brunner said.
Brunner also said he suspects that TDA was “taking advantage of Indian reservations.”
“There's a huge profit margin to be done on the reservation,” he said.
The former FBI Special Agent said that many TDA members, just like MS-13 members, have “legitimate jobs” during the daytime.
TDA uses tactics similar to those of the South American Theft Group (SATG), according to Brunner.
ICE says that SATG consists “of males and females primarily from numerous South American countries who routinely conduct retail and residential theft/burglaries.”
Nationwide, TDA members like to use jobs such as Doordash and Uber to do “advanced research,” Brunner said.
“These theft groups don't want to break into a home which they know nothing about. They don't want to spend time there; they want to go in quickly. One of the things they do is advanced research [and] advanced intelligence. And one of the ways is they take on jobs as DoorDash or Uber, where they're at the home of the individual,” he added.
“When they're delivering the food, they're doing great. They're like, here you go, thank you very much. Meanwhile, they're getting a chance to look into your home. They're trying to see if there [are] cameras, if there [are] alarms, if there [are] dogs, and see if you're elderly, if it's a family,” he continued. “So they're doing their advanced intelligence work and bringing that back and their preparations.”
Not every Hispanic Doordash driver or Uber driver people see in Montana is going to be a TDA member.
Brunner, who is Hispanic, said the “vast majority” of Hispanic migrants who came across the border the last four years “are good people looking to get a better opportunity for themselves and their families back in their own country.”
Arthur, who has testified in front of Congress multiple times, said TDA works with other transnational criminal organizations.
Arthur said Denver’s sanctuary policies affect states like Montana “extremely adversely.”
He said that the only people who benefit from “sanctuary policies” are criminals.
“When you have those sanctuary policies that protect criminals from federal immigration enforcement, it gives them the space that they need to operate,” he said.
“It’s not like these groups are going to see the Denver city limit sign or the Colorado state border and say, ‘We can’t go past that.’ No, they’re going to use that as a base for operation.”
In Aurora, Colorado, which is nearly 40 minutes from Denver, 16 suspected TDA members were arrested for “alleged kidnapping and burglary,” according to CBS News.
Since 2022, Denver has seen 42,911 “migrants” that have come to the city.
Arthur said that TDA could be expanding into states like Montana because there is less law enforcement and it’s close to a sanctuary.
He added that Montana has a “fairly vulnerable population.”
“One of the things we see in the Western Hemisphere is that you do have these organized criminal organizations that go into these areas that don’t see a lot of crime- where crime is more of a nuisance than a serious concern. That enables them to take advantage of limited law enforcement.”
Brunner, who runs the Brunner Sierra Group Substack, said that TDA members will keep coming to Montana “as long as there’s money to be made.”
“The people here in Montana have regularly had the attitude of we don't need to lock our front door; we're safe here,” he said. “It's a different world now here in Montana and people do really need to worry about that.”
“I believe physically people aren't aware. People have heard that the cartels are here. They've heard, but again, that's just the, ‘Oh, I heard about it.’ I don't think that there [are] enough people that are like, okay, we need to be concerned about this type,” the former FBI Special Agent said.
In addition to TDA, Brunner said he believed the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel are in Montana. Furthermore, he said that the El Salvadorian gang 18th Street gang is “operating in Billings.” Also, Brunner said that he heard reports of MS-13 members working construction jobs in Bozeman.
Arthur said that Montana has no problem with “partnering with federal authorities to clean these people out.”
In 2021, Gov. Greg Gianforte banned sanctuary cities in Montana.
Rachel Dumke, a spokesperson for Senator Steve Daines (R-MT), told The Chronicles, “Senator Daines believes the open border and soft-on-crime policies of the Biden-Harris administration were an unmitigated disaster. He looks forward to working with President Trump to close the border and get crime under control in order to make our country safer.”
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Zachery Schmidt is the founder of The Montana Chronicles. If you have any tips, please send them to montanachronicles@proton.me.