In the early hours of April 1, state and federal police raided a party at an Airbnb in a wealthy Austin suburb, arresting nearly 50 people including nine children. The participating agencies—the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), and the Hays County Sheriff’s Office—claimed they’d busted a gathering of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua but offered no substantiating evidence.
ICE arrested 35 of the individuals on charges of attempted illegal entry, but federal court records suggest none of the charges were prosecuted—as arrestees were simply funneled into civil detention and in many cases deported. The only state criminal charges to result from the raid, according to prosecutors at the Hays County District Attorney’s Office, were two felony drug possession cases against Venezuelan men who were stopped while driving near the Airbnb earlier in the evening.
Now, the Hays DA has dropped both drug charges, citing a lack of cooperation from federal law enforcement.
