In September 2023, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro deployed 11,000 soldiers to reclaim Tocorón Prison in Aragua state. The mission wasn't to suppress a riot but to regain control from a notorious gang that had transformed the facility into a lavish hideout, complete with a zoo, restaurants, a nightclub, a betting shop, and a swimming pool. However, the gang's leader, Hector Guerrero Flores, managed to escape.
Now, the Tren de Aragua gang is a primary target in former President Donald Trump's initiative to deport foreign criminals from the United States, aligning with his promise to expel illegal immigrants en masse.
Tren de Aragua began as a prison gang that Guerrero Flores evolved into a "transnational criminal organization," according to the U.S. State Department, which has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture. Guerrero Flores, 41, had a long history with Tocorón, having escaped in 2012 by bribing a guard and being recaptured in 2013. Upon his return, he turned the prison into a leisure hub and expanded the gang's reach beyond its walls, taking over gold mines in Bolivar, drug routes along the Caribbean coast, and secret border crossings between Venezuela and Colombia.
The gang's name, "Train of Aragua," may have originated from a railroad workers' union in Aragua, a state on Venezuela's Caribbean coast. According to criminology professor Luis Izquiel, the union controlled part of the railway in Aragua, extorting contractors and selling jobs at construction sites.
Under Guerrero Flores's leadership, Tren de Aragua has extended its operations into Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile, branching out from migrant extortion to sex trafficking, contract killings, and kidnappings. The gang's expansion beyond Venezuela began during the country's humanitarian and economic crisis in 2014, which made local crime less lucrative. It now reportedly operates in eight other countries, including the U.S., often forming alliances with local criminal groups.
In Ecuador, for instance, the gang is thought to collaborate with groups linked to Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, while in Colombia, there are allegations of cooperation with the left-wing National Liberation Army guerrilla group, or ELN. Journalist Ronna Rísquez, who has extensively researched the gang, estimated its membership at 5,000 with annual profits between $10 million and $15 million, though others suggest the gang is about half that size.
A Chilean prosecutor described Tren de Aragua as a "brutal organization" that employs murder and torture to achieve its goals. Although smaller and less wealthy than some other Latin American criminal groups, Tren de Aragua is often likened to the violent MS-13 gang from El Salvador.
Members of Tren de Aragua have been accused of impersonating Chilean police to kidnap Venezuelan opposition military officer Ronald Ojeda, whose body was found in Santiago, Chile, in March 2024. The U.S. Treasury, under President Joe Biden, sanctioned the gang last summer for its involvement in sex trafficking across the U.S. border.
Recently, Trump invoked the 18th Century Alien Enemies Act, accusing Tren de Aragua of "perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion of predatory incursion against the territory of the United States." He claimed the gang was engaged in "irregular warfare" against the U.S. under orders from Venezuelan President Maduro. Shortly after taking office, Trump also designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization, placing it alongside groups like the Islamic State and Boko Haram.
In recent months, alleged members of Tren de Aragua have been arrested in Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois, facing charges from murder to kidnapping. In one case, two suspects accused of assaulting a police officer in Times Square were believed to be gang members, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A gang member is also suspected in the kidnapping and murder of a 48-year-old Florida resident, a Venezuelan national, in early 2024.
Last summer, NBC News reported that the Department of Homeland Security estimated 600 Venezuelan migrants in the U.S. had ties to the gang, with 100 believed to be members. As of 2023, there were 770,000 Venezuelans living in the U.S., accounting for slightly less than 2% of all immigrants in the country, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Most have been granted protected status by the U.S. government. Customs and Border Protection reported encountering 313,500 Venezuelan migrants at the border in 2024.
Trump has often claimed that Venezuela's crime rate has dropped to record lows because the country "emptied out its prisons" by sending migrants to the U.S. Data from the Venezuelan Violence Observatory suggests this might be partly true, as Venezuela's murder rate significantly decreased between 2015 and 2023, with some analysts attributing the improvement in security to waves of migration, including gang members, from the country.