May 6 (UPI) — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has a permissive approach to Tren de Aragua activities there but does not control them in the United States, a federal report concluded last month.

“The Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States,” the National Intelligence Council said in a memorandum dated April 8.

The report says TDA was formed in 2007 in Venezuela’s Tocoron Prison in Venezuela’s Aragua State and has several people who act as its core leaders.

Recent setbacks have weakened the gang, including being removed from the Tocoron Prison in 2023, but it has several political leaders and military members who support its activities in Venezuela.

Maduro is not among the supportive political leaders, according to the report, but he does tolerate some TDA activities.

The regime also knows that fighting TDA and other armed groups “often results in personnel losses,” which further contributes to cooperating with them at times.

The inability to maintain control throughout the country gives the Maduro regime an interest in cooperating with armed groups in relatively lawless areas.

The report also says Venezuela’s security services are incapable of fully controlling the nation’s territories.

“The Maduro regime generally does not impede illegal armed and criminal groups from operating in Venezuela,” the report says, “but it does combat and seek to contain them when it fears they could destabilize the regime or when corrupt deals sour.”

The report acknowledges increased TDA activity from 2021 to 2024 while President Joe Biden was in office.

“There was a spike in Venezuelan encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in which some TDA members could have been present as they have generally moved with Venezuelan migrant communities and profit from human trafficking and migrant smuggling,” the report says.

The gang’s small size, its focus on low-skill criminal activities and its decentralized structure make it “highly unlikely that TDA coordinates large volumes of human trafficking or migrant smuggling,” according to the report.

President Donald Trump in March declared TDA a “terrorist organization” and accused Maduro of “perpetrating an invasion and predatory incursion into the United States,” the Miami Herald reported.

He said TDA operates in conjunction with Cartel de los Soles, which Trump called a “Maduro regime-sponsored narco-terrorist enterprise.”