Systematically Ignoring Policy Failure
Tren de Aragua
In which I explore the curious trend of bad policies being implemented without any explanation or accountability, and ideological actors working to hide information and shape narratives and conceal problems, using the case study of Tren de Aragua and its penetration into the United States.
One of the strange aspects of modernity is the existence of ideologies which are heavily subscribed to, influential, and yet rarely verbalized. When was the last time you heard someone make an argument for eliminating cash bail? We’ve seen fairly incontrovertible evidence that releasing poor defendants immediately after arrest leads to dramatic rises in crime. Everyone seems to know it, no one questions it… and yet we continue to release violent defendants immediately after arrest and processing (as you will see shortly). During COVID, a large swathe of the intelligentsia advocated generous unemployment benefits (up to $900 per week for up to one year) and while I remember hearing a particularly surreal New York Times podcast claiming that this was not impacting unemployment or labor shortages I still refuse to believe that anyone could believe that. In economics there’s a reliable truism: taxing activity (imposing costs) leads to less of that activity, subsidizing activity (which is what government handouts to the unemployed are) leads to more of it. The idea that everyone would rather go to work for $400-500 per week rather than stay home for $900 is literally unbelievable. Since it was so unbelievable the argument was rarely made-yet an entire wing of the political spectrum in the U.S. advocated for generous unemployment benefits, at a time when labor shortages and supply chain disruptions and the first murmurings of monetary inflation were extant. I rarely heard anyone argue for an open border-rather, the border was opened, and objections to the opening were ridiculed and stigmatized. More often the discussion was just avoided altogether. You might think such a dramatic reversal of Trump’s successful immigration policy would inspire some speculations or opinions from our sense-making institutions, but you’d have mostly been wrong.
Needless to say, this is not how policy-making should work. You can’t just assume that your favored policies will be helpful, refuse to explain or advocate for them, and categorize all objections and counterfactuals as ‘political’ or ‘divisive’ or ‘mean-spirited’. If the effects of policies are harmful or divisive it is the policies that bear that weight, not the objections.
What’s going on here? I’m merely guessing, but we seem to have reached a point at which the lives of many educated and safe citizens are so comfortable and isolated from the realities of society (laziness, scarcity, crime, violence, evil) that these realities are denied altogether. When they’re acknowledged they’re dishonestly framed or misunderstood, and the resulting policy-making (driven by voters and special interests) is disastrous. More importantly, discussion of these problems is highly discouraged. There literally seems to be a policy of pretending that no one sees the negative implications of recent changes. I suspect that many people suppress their doubts and criticism because they don’t want to help Trump but, of course, this kind of ignorant and disingenuous treatment of the public only makes critics of the regime more attractive. This is the ground truth which Democrats did not understand (and seem to have still not fully absorbed): if you want to defeat Trump you need to implement beneficial and effective policies and be honest and transparent about your reasons and reactions. Have we reached a point where ideology so constrains the Left that they cannot implement such policies? Are they committed to so many unworkable and absurd policy priorities that their only option is to manipulate media coverage and dissemble and name-call? I’ll let you decide.
Tren de Aragua became a household name in September of 2024 when footage of armed men going door to door in an Aurora, CO apartment complex went viral. The gang members were walking around heavily armed and apparently unafraid and were breaking into units and threatening residents in order to extort money from them.
The media immediately worked to downplay the incident (in this memorable exchange, and in a flurry of press quiescent conferences and non-stories), and mayors and governors claimed that there was no public safety crisis. Meanwhile other mayors and governors were sounding the alarm. Curiously, the actors claiming that this was not a problem seemed to be exclusively Democrats. Non-profits had claimed that Tren had no significant presence in the United States… only to (quietly) amend their position months later.
Tren de Aragua is a Venezuelan prison gang which began in that country in 2005 (or thereabouts). They’re known to be especially violent. One operation required 11,000 Venezuelan troops to retake their original base, Tocoron Prison. They’ve engaged in innumerable shootouts with police across Latin America and are responsible for probably hundreds of murders. They seem to specialize in human trafficking and extortion and are particularly willing to use aggressive force as a warning and messages to opponents and prey.
According to John Fabricatore (former filed office head for ICE) the gang has issued a nationwide green light order against U. S. police (giving them permission to shoot and kill them). No other gang has done that. They’re responsible for killings of police in Florida and Georgia, and even the Laken Riley murder (speaking of media unease) was carried out by a member of Tren.
Latin American and independent media were covering Tren for many months before September 2024 (above). Yet our legacy media seemed uninterested in the growing story, despite its obvious newsworthiness for U.S. readers…
The discomfort of the media (and their silence during the first few years of Tren penetration into this country) seems obvious: many of the gang’s members crossed the border during the Biden administration’s opening of our Southern border. This kind of effect is predictable (unavoidable, even) and a case could be made that benefits still outweigh the harms. That case wasn’t made, however. Instead, there was a kind of de facto political agreement (which involved researchers, journalists, and politicians) to simply stay quiet about the problem. This seems like a foolish and risky strategy but when you consider the rigid grip of ideology and the institutional power of these actors-and their political and financial incentives to keep migration high to boost political support and earn money through non-profits and contractors and federal grants-the calculations seem more rational. This was a cynical short-term/long-term reckoning (with the harms and victims of the policies being completely ignored, of course)… but the long-term effects were felt before the presidential election. Like so many other issues, the Left overestimated their institutional control and underestimated the harms of their policies.
Ideology has a way of profusing, and becoming more and more disconnected from reality. Reality is constantly shifting, and there’s simply too much information to be accounted for by any discrete belief system. That’s why science and market price signals and free speech and institutional rigor are so important-these are mechanisms to incorporate and respond to new information in a useful way.
One of the realities that I’ve seen during the past few years is the intersections of bad and ideological policies. This is the intersectionality that should be emphasized in college courses: the intersection of negative effects from poorly designed and utopian policymaking. The effects begin overlapping and contributing to each other. A kind of negative feedback loop-a vicious cycle-is established. COVID policies catastrophically weaken public school attendance and performance among poor black kids in Washington D.C…. and car-jackings begin to climb, mostly committed by this cohort. Social media addiction spreads among teenage girls… and this problem provides a vector for unhealthy and fantastic social contagions like rapid onset gender-dysphoria and peer group trans identification to spread. Please keep in mind: these are all problems which aren’t being reframed or explained by our institutions. They are being suppressed and ignored.
If our media was fulfilling their proper role, I suspect we’d have seen dozens of Tren-related stories and features across the country in 2024. Researchers and commentators from across the political spectrum would be interrogating the trend. Instead, our public safety agencies and our legacy media uneasily sat on the problem. In February of 2024 that strategy blew up when 2 NYPD patrol officers were badly beaten in Times Square. The assailants were members of Tren and they were released without bail. Here we see the overlapping and worsening effects of ideologically driven public policy (in this case, bail reform and the migrant crisis). Most of the suspects involved had already been arrested (and released) in the U. S.
Instead of asking why these policies were in place, or what their reasons might be, or exploring their effects the media gave brief coverage to the story and moved on as quickly as possible. No one was made to answer for the abandonment of the cash bail system. No one was questioned about our immigration policy or its implications for public policy. No one was interrogated about how multiple violent gang members who’d already been arrested had not been deported.
Even today, YouTube creators who try to show the surveillance camera footage of the attacks on the NYPD will have their videos demonetized. I would love to hear prosecutors explain their bail reform philosophy, or the Biden administration account for their real motivations in opening our border, or the media discuss their coordinated and lopsided coverage, or YouTube explain their content policies in this regard.
Instead, I suspect that we’ll continue to muddle along, only acknowledging problems when they become undeniable and watching our powerful institutions try to confuse issues and defame critics and protect their own power.
The sooner the powerful are called to account for their beliefs and decisions the better off we’ll be. This seems completely undeniable to me. Of course, those who disagree won’t say that they do. They’ll continue to operate behind a comfortable veil of secrecy. That’s just how things seem to work these days.
There are no tradeoffs. Every policy is 100% beneficial.
Reminds me of the current fight in NJ regarding offshore wind production. They start construction of off-shore wind. Suddenly, there's an increase in dead whales/dolphins washing up on the shore. People demand (probably cynically) that this must be investigated before building more off-shore wind. The gov't does some BS study concluding that, no, there's absolutely 100% no way the two are related. I would respect these people a lot more if they just said, "We can't prove the two aren't related, but we believe renewable energy production needs to be prioritized over a transient increase in whale deaths."
I have noticed this. It's as if politics is relegated to the status of what colour to paint your living room. People either like your choice or not. And if they don't, they don't present a case for why not. It is all team sports.