The Department of Justice announced Wednesday eight new arrests of alleged members of Tren de Aragua, raising the total to nearly 350 members and associates of the Venezuelan gang who have been charged or convicted during President Donald Trump's second term.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a news conference that all eight suspects entered the country illegally during former President Joe Biden's administration and have been charged "with vicious kidnappings and murders in separate cases out of Texas and Illinois."

The Trump administration designated the gang a foreign terrorist organization and a specially designated global terrorist entity in February 2025.

"These violent murders should never have occurred in the first place because these men should have never been allowed in our country," Blanche said.

"Instead, eight TdA members from Venezuela came here illegally — all eight, every one of them during the Biden administration — and went on to allegedly commit the heinous crimes described in the charges discussed today."

Blanche was joined at the news conference by FBI Director Kash Patel; Ryan Raybould, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas; and Andrew Boutros, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

Blanche said the DOJ unsealed an indictment Wednesday charging five men with killing a father and kidnapping his daughter and nephew just outside of Dallas in 2024.

He said three suspects are in custody on other charges, and a fourth is being held in Colombia pending extradition. He did not discuss the fifth defendant's custody status.

He said three other men were charged in a federal criminal complaint in connection with a kidnapping and slaying in Chicago.

"All eight of these individuals — the five charges in Texas and the three in Chicago — crossed our southern border illegally. Every one of them entered under the Biden administration between December 2021 and April 2024," Blanche said.

"None of these men should have been in this country. The father in Texas should be alive today," he continued.

"His daughter and nephew should have never been kidnapped. The young victim in Chicago should be alive," Blanche said.

"These violent crimes and murders happened because under the Biden administration's open-border policies left our borders wide open and hundreds of suspected and now convicted TdA terrorists poured through those borders into our country."

Raybould said the five suspects charged in Dallas were Hector Garcia Zuniga, whom he described as a high-ranking Tren de Aragua official; Carlos Luis Zambrano Bolivar; Jhonny Jesus Martinez Serrano; Jhonatan Nahin Toro Gonzalez; and Ehiker Alexander Morales Mendoza.

They face charges including racketeering; murder; kidnapping; and "jackpotting," the use of specialized hardware or malware to force ATMs to dispense cash.

"Let me be clear. We're just continuing to investigate and investigate, and we're going to dig deeper and deeper," Raybould said.

"And I'll end with this to members of TdA: We're coming for you, and we're particularly coming for you if you come to North Texas."

Boutros said a federal criminal complaint filed Tuesday charges Kleiver Monasterio Briceno, Jose Pacheco Torres, and an unidentified third person with kidnapping, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and kidnapping resulting in death.

Boutros said the Chicago defendants are accused of kidnapping a man from a South Side park in May and holding him for hours at an apartment before taking him to an abandoned building, where he allegedly was beaten and shot multiple times.

Police later found the victim's body after his mother received a call directing her to the location.

"We will continue to prioritize these investigations, in particular of TdA, which very deservedly have been designated by President Trump and his administration as a terrorist organization," Boutros said.

"Our shared goal is crystal clear: to disrupt and dismantle TdA and not allow it to gain a foothold in the United States or in Chicagoland.

"Plus, we want to bring to justice those who break the law, especially using violence."