This coun­try is fac­ing the start of a Venezue­lan crime wave, ac­cord­ing to one crim­i­nol­o­gist.

That’s how Dar­ius Figueira summed up the mur­ders of two Venezue­lans and po­lice killing of two oth­ers in the past nine days.

On April 5, Venezue­lan asy­lum seek­er Alexan­der Ce­de­no Ro­ro­ba was shot as he left the UN High Com­mis­sion for Refugees (UN­HCR) build­ing on the out­skirts of Port-of-Spain.

A week lat­er, gun­men opened fire on Venezue­lan na­tion­al Jose Ro­driquez while he was dri­ving a white SUV in Glen­coe, which crashed through a wall by High­land Plaza, Glen­coe. He died from his in­juries.

On Fri­day, two Venezue­lans were among four men shot dead dur­ing a con­fronta­tion with po­lice in Ed­in­burgh.

The de­ceased have been iden­ti­fied as Miguel Ve­lasquez and an­oth­er on­ly as “Fred­die.”

Weigh­ing in on the vi­o­lence, Figueira said since Juan Guai­do elect­ed him­self as Venezuela’s in­ter­im leader, Venezue­lans have been com­ing to our shores un­der the con­trol of Venezuela’s or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gangs.

These hard­core Venezue­lans, Figueira said, have been flee­ing the bor­der state near Colom­bia.

“They are pros­ti­tut­ing un­der the di­rec­tions and con­trol of Venezuela’s or­gan­ised crime which is dis­turb­ing the bal­ance of forces on the ground in T&T’s gang­land.”

Figueira said it was no hid­den se­cret that Venezue­lans have been com­ing in with AK-47 and AR-15 au­to­mat­ic ri­fles, drugs, am­mu­ni­tion, pros­ti­tutes and foot­sol­diers, as they con­tin­ue to re­main un­der the radar and form coali­tions with lo­cal gangs in cen­tral, west and east Trinidad.

He said those Venezue­lans have al­ready af­fil­i­at­ed them­selves with lo­cal gang­land op­er­a­tors and they are not afraid to die.

“The fact that Venezue­lans were en­gaged in a shootout with the po­lice this morn­ing speaks vol­umes. The sit­u­a­tion is es­ca­lat­ing. They are repli­cat­ing how they op­er­ate in Venezuela.”

Figueira said said the aim of these Venezue­lans was to con­trol turf and ex­pand their il­lic­it busi­ness­es.

“Peo­ple are mak­ing them out to be vic­tims. Many of them are not. That is an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent breed to what ex­ists in gang­land here.”

Last year, he said the gov­ern­ment in Guyana had to move in ad­di­tion­al troops to its west­ern bor­der with Venezuela to deal with heav­i­ly-armed Venezue­lan gangs cross­ing the bor­der, as they cre­at­ed hav­oc and law­less­ness.

He said T&T could end up like Guyana.

“Clos­ing the gate now is ir­rel­e­vant,” he said, re­fer­ring to Gov­ern­ment’s move to reg­is­ter all il­le­gal and le­gal Venezue­lans liv­ing here.

“The Gov­ern­ment do not want to ac­cept the price we will pay for hav­ing them flock­ing in­to our coun­try. They don’t want to un­der­stand the lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty that ex­ists among them. They now have a foothold here and they are not go­ing to give it away. These crim­i­nals are go­ing to change the na­ture of vi­o­lence in this coun­try. The po­lice would have a hard time on their hands as a Venezue­lan crime wave has been launched,” Figueira said.

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith said he was cau­tious about the amnesty the State has of­fered to Venezue­lan na­tion­als.

Grif­fith said the reg­is­tra­tion process should be care­ful­ly done, as crim­i­nals were among those en­ter­ing the coun­try.