Tren de Aragua TdA
Tren de Aragua, originally a prison gang in the Aragua state of Venezuela, has grown into a transnational criminal organization led by Hector Guerrero Flores, a/k/a “Niño Guerrero.” President Trump announced on 20 January 2025 begining the process of designating cartels, including the dangerous Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations and use the Alien Enemies Act to remove them. In July 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department designated Tren de Aragua as a "transnational criminal organization" due to its expansion throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Tren de Aragua [Train to Aragua] is a Venezuelan criminal organization that originated in the Tocorón prison in Aragua state. As Venezuela's political and economic crisis worsened, the gang expanded its operations across Latin America, often following the migratory routes of Venezuelans fleeing the country. It has established criminal cells in countries including Colombia, Peru, and Chile, with activity reported in other nations. The gang has grown into a major transnational criminal group, operating throughout Latin America and extending its influence into the United States. It engages in various criminal activities, including human trafficking, drug trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping.
The name translates to "The Aragua Train," which may have originated from a railway workers' union in the state of Aragua where the gang was formed. Aragua is one of the 23 states of Venezuela, located in the north-central region of the country. The capital of the state is the city of Maracay. The state includes a variety of landscapes, including plains, jungles, and Caribbean beaches like Cata and Choroní. It is home to Venezuela's first national park, Henri Pittier National Park.
Tren de Aragua was believed to have over 5,000 members as of 2024 and growing. Popularity of the Tren de Aragua grew by forming alliances with smaller gangs. As the leadership of these smaller group alliances died, Tren de Aragua expanded their territories and the gang portfolio of extortion, kidnapping, human trafficking for sexual exploitation, migrant smuggling, contraband, illegal mining, retail drug trafficking, cybercrime and theft. Commonly, males involved with Tren de Aragua range in ages of 18-25 and wear urban street attire. Urban street attire may include Michael Jordan “23” jerseys, Jordan footwear, and U.S. sports attire, also popular with law-abiding individuals of that demographic.
Tren de Aragua is the first Venezuelan criminal organization that has expanded internationally. Tren de Aragua has a membership presence in Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico, Trinidad and the United States. Tren de Aragua’s criminal footprint continues to grow, encompassing human-trafficking, smuggling, arms trafficking, bribery, drug-trafficking, illegal mining, and money laundering.
Tren de Aragua’s U.S. presence began with the surge of migrants crossing the Mexico-U.S. border from Venezuela. Tren de Aragua first appeared in the U.S. in the suburbs of Chicago around October 2023. Since 2023, Tren de Aragua have been linked to shootings, thefts in retail stores, robberies forced prostitution, extortion, and drug dealing in New York City, Aurora Colorado, and El Paso Texas.
According to U.S. government agencies and independent analyses, virtually no fentanyl originates from or is trafficked through Venezuela in any meaningful quantity. The synthetic opioid is almost entirely produced in Mexico using chemical precursors imported from China, then smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border, often in passenger vehicles at ports of entry. In contrast, Venezuela serves as a transit route for about 200–250 metric tons of cocaine annually (roughly 10–13% of global cocaine production), primarily originating in Colombia and heading to the U.S., Europe, or other destinations—but not for fentanyl or other synthetic opioids.
Venezuelan criminal groups like Tren de Aragua are involved in organized crime, including small-scale drug distribution, human trafficking, extortion, and violence, but reports do not link them to fentanyl production or large-scale trafficking. Isolated cases exist of Venezuelan nationals arrested in the U.S. with fentanyl (e.g., one 2025 incident involving about 5,000 pills), but these do not indicate Venezuela as a source country. Overall, U.S. fentanyl seizures—totaling nearly 22,000 pounds in fiscal year 2024—occur predominantly at the southwest border with Mexico, with no notable ties to Venezuela.
The Tren de Aragua, or the “Aragua Train,” gained notoriety after its founding in 2012 by Hector Guerrero, alias “Niño Guerrero” or Kid Warrior, in the state of Aragua located in the north-central region of Venezuela. This criminal organization has become a national security priority in the countries where they have established their criminal activities. The band has expanded throughout Latin America and the United States. The Aragua Train has more than 2,700 members, and possibly as many as 5,000 members. It supposedly had its origin in the unions of workers who worked on the construction of a railway project that would connect the center-west of the country and that was never completed.
Antonio Maria Delgado reportedin the Miami Herald 22 March 2025 "A small team of Venezuelans and former U.S. officials with deep connections to police and intelligence in the South American country has been providing information to the Trump administration about the number and identities of members of Tren de Aragua and other Venezuelan gangs ... Among those sent to the United States were 300 gang members who had received paramilitary training in Venezuela, said Gary Berntsen, a decorated former CIA station chief who headed the agency’s unit searching for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
“The Venezuelan regime has assumed operational control of these guys [Tren de Aragua] and has trained 300 of them; they have given them paramilitary training, training them to fire weapons, on how to conduct sabotage, how to use crypto,” Berntsen, one of the team members, said. “They have given them all like a four- to six-week course. They put these 300 guys through that course and that they were deploying them into the United States to 20 locations, to 20 separate states”.
"The Tren de Aragua members were deliberately sent into the largest American cities to create problems for U.S. law enforcement agencies, the source told the Herald. But they “are not just criminals sent to cause havoc. They are soldiers sent in an asymmetric warfare operation against the United States,” the source speaking under condition of anonymity said. ... According to the group, some of the gang members were part of an estimated 20,000 inmates who have been released from Venezuelan prisons during Maduro’s tenure and who were told that they had to leave the country if they wanted to remain free."
“This is the equivalent of an oversized combat brigade dispersed through 20 different locations, but with thousands of people that would be able to communicate, move drugs, and do whatever they needed, and be able on hand to put pressure on the U.S. with violence in cities, and build out a massive criminal infrastructure in America,” he said."
“I think that the Tren de Aragua is both a real and exaggerated threat,” Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior analyst for International Crisis Group in Colombia, told the Washington Post. Unlike a typical armed group, she said, the Tren de Aragua is more of an underground criminal organization that carries out specific jobs. It’s “not an overpowering threat,” she said. “At least at the moment.” Some smaller, unrelated gangs in some cities are using the Tren de Aragua name to stoke fear. There’s been a tendency by other criminal organizations to capitalize on existing xenophobia toward Venezuelan migrants and blame their own crimes on the Tren de Aragua “as a way to hide in the shadows,” Dickinson said.
It is the only local group that has managed to gain a foothold abroad. It stopped being a prison gang confined to the state of Aragua to become a transnational threat with a broad criminal portfolio. The organization also has a presence in other states of Venezuela, such as Carabobo, Sucre, Bolívar, Guárico, Trujillo and Miranda. The band also has a strong presence in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile. The rapid international expansion of this criminal organization is based on three fundamental factors: the economic deterioration experienced in Venezuela since 2013, the massive migration of Venezuelans, and failures in prison and security policies. The gang’s modus operandi includes extortion of small migrant businesses, particularly those unwilling to pay their imposed “tax.”
Operating initially from Tocorón prison in Venezuela, the gang made headlines after 11,000 police officers raided the prison in September 2023, uncovering a professional baseball field, swimming pools, children’s play equipment — even a small zoo, with monkeys and flamingos. They also found 200 women and children, living on the grounds. Critics asked how this gang managed to turn the prison into a luxury resort.
And concrete tunnels in and out, just like in the onetime Mexican prison home of the Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Hundreds of criminals escaped through tunnels, making it the biggest escape of prisoners ever in the country, according to a report in InsightCrime.org, a think tank and media organization dedicated to reporting and analyzing organized crime in the Americas.
Many gang members can be identified through their train symbol tattoos on their bodies, but over the last few years a lot of them stopped getting tattoos because they know they are more easily identified if they have a tattoo. The tattoos with which members of this gang apparently identify themselves included an AK-47 rifle, a crown and a skull with gas masks. Other tattoos include the Nike logo of NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan along with his uniform number, 23 — with the number referring to “23 de Enero,” or 23rd of January, a Venezuelan neighborhood that spawned a revolutionary group in the 1980s. Some “Tren de Aragua” members wear tattoos with the initials “HJ,” for “Hijos de Dios,” or Sons of God, which can be part of the gang’s lingo, or the phrase “Hasta la Muerte,” or Until Death, in body ink.
The Tren de Aragua has been installed in large cities in the US, including Miami, bringing with them all the horrors of Latin American criminals to US communities. Transnational criminal organizations based in Venezuela, such as El Tren de Aragua, have expanded their role in the illicit mining, trafficking, and commercialization of gold to increase their criminal profits.
The Aragua Train, the largest criminal organization in Venezuela, has extended its operations to the United States, as shown by several recent incidents that alert the country's authorities. An alleged gang member and Venezuelan immigrant, Yurwin Salazar, 23, faces a murder charge in the death last November of José Luis Sánchez Valera, a retired Venezuelan police officer who lived in South Florida,
Officials of the Human Smuggling and Trafficking Group of the Chicago office of the Department of Homeland Security report that members of the criminal group operate in the Chicago area at least from October 2023. In the documents, officers alert their internal units saying that "the gang has strong human trafficking operations in Latin America." Some members of the Aragua Train settled in the state of Florida and have opened evangelical churches, from where they send financial aid to social organizations in Aragua.
"This is an organized gang, a criminal enterprise that now operates in Chicago," explains Garry McCarthy, police chief in Willow Springs, a suburb of Cook County, in an interview with Telemundo Chicago. "Whether it's drug trafficking, smuggling, human trafficking for sexual exploitation, extortion and all those things that this gang is doing in South America," McCarthy says of the group's criminal activities.
Analysts use conceptualizations of organized crime as both an enterprise and a form of governance, borderland as a spatial category, and borders as institutions. Contrary to the common assumptions about transnational organized crime, criminal organizations not only blur or erode the border but rather enforce it to their own benefit. The Colombian-Venezuelan border is currently considered one of the most dangerous borderlands worldwide as turf wars, among a plethora of non–state armed actors, have promoted violence.
The Bolivarian government of Venezuela decided to close the border in an alleged national security maneuver against Colombian paramilitaries and smuggling gangs in 2015. Border enforcement by the Venezuelan state contributed to further channeling the flows of people and goods through illegal paths controlled by non–state armed groups. These groups, in turn, seized the opportunity to strengthen their power to regulate cross-border activities.
In 2021 a report was received by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that instructed agents to look for violent criminals from Venezuela entering the United States. The report allegedly indicated that the Venezuelan regime, under the control of Nicolás Maduro Moros, was releasing violent criminals from prison early, including inmates convicted of “murder, rape, and extortion.” Over a year later, Venezuelan aliens are now wreaking havoc in cities across the United States.
US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) spoke exclusively 22 February 2024 with Mario Vallejo of Univision Miami about the presence of the Aragua Train in the US: "It's very easy to understand. You enter the border and say, 'I am here asking for asylum,' they release you, and they let you enter the United States. They give you a paper that allows you to work and they give you a paper where they allow you to get on planes in USA and travel wherever you want. Many of the criminals affiliated with the Tren de Aragua end up in big cities. For example, in New York, at this time it is known that there is an organization that has dedicated itself to robbing tourists, people who are walking down the street. Some are from Colombia, others from Venezuela, and others from other parts of the world."" When you are admitting millions of people a year, among those people, there will always be delinquents, criminals. You have to think about this too: If you are Maduro, who would be the people you would like to expel from the country? I think it is very logical to think that he is purposely expelling criminals, gang members, people that they want to remove from their own country, just as Fidel did in the year 80.
“Obviously here it cannot be said that the vast majority of people who come do not come to commit crimes, they come because they are fleeing one thing or another, but among them there are going to be gang members. So, it is a very dangerous thing. The cities are not prepared for this, no one is. “It is impossible to prepare for 6,000 people a day entering the U.S. No country in the world can prepare for something like that.”
Tren de Aragua exploits victims – primarily Venezuelan women and children – in trafficking in Peru. According to an investigative report released in 2023, El Tren de Aragua – Venezuela’s most powerful criminal gang – and the National Liberation Army (ELN) operate sex trafficking networks in the border town of Villa del Rosario in the Norte de Santander department. These groups exploit Venezuelan migrants and internally displaced Colombians in sex trafficking and take advantage of economic vulnerabilities and subject them to debt bondage. According to sources, members of El Tren de Aragua gained the trust of their victims by housing them in pagadiarios in Colombia, providing them food, allowing them to incur daily debts, and, when they are unable to pay, exploiting them in sex trafficking. They allegedly marked women and girls behind their ears to prove ownership. El Tren de Aragua reportedly used the local transportation hub in Cúcuta to transfer victims of trafficking to other countries in the region, including Argentina, Ecuador, and Peru. In addition, they had “agents” who facilitated their operations in Bogota, Cali, Medellín, Pereira, and border cities. Several illegal armed groups, including ELN, Segunda Marquetalia, FARC-EP, and Clan del Golfo, are known to operate in areas where vulnerable people may be exploited in human trafficking and other illicit activities. Women, children, and adolescents who demilitarized and separated from illegal armed groups are vulnerable to trafficking.
“The policies of Secretary Mayorkas and the Biden Administration have encouraged criminals from all over the world, including Venezuelan nationals, to invade our country, resulting in robberies, assaults, and deaths of American citizens,” said Congressman Troy E. Nehls (R-TX-22). 29 February 2024. “Our nation’s foreign adversaries know that our country is weak, and they are taking advantage of our wide-open borders. It is past time Secretary Mayorkas and Joe Biden take action to deter violent criminals from crossing our border and deport every single illegal alien they have released into our country, states, and communities, especially the criminals from Venezuela. Make no mistake, the blood of every single American who has died due to crimes committed by illegal aliens is on the hands of Secretary Mayorkas, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden Administration.”
In one of the large operations carried out by the police in 2023 to dismantle the gang in Chile, it became clear that the organization functions as a company. Members of the band bought a modern bus that left from Tarapacá to Coquimbo, in the northern area. Inside the vehicle were 28 irregular migrants and 141 kilos of drugs. The police managed to arrest 11 members of the mega-gang and the prosecution discovered that it had a facade of a company, with a corporate name, that owned buses. From the outside, they appear to operate legitimately, but the buses, for example, smuggled migrants and transported drugs.
The mega-band set off the alarms of Chilean security after the Public Ministry revealed that it was behind the kidnapping and murder of former Venezuelan military officer Ronald Ojeda in Santiago. The prosecutor in charge of the case, Héctor Barros, confirmed the link between the Aragua Train and the crime of the 32-year-old former lieutenant, who died from mechanical positional asphyxiation and without gunshot wounds. In March 2024, the police found his body in a suitcase buried 1.4 meters under cement in a neighborhood in the municipality of Maipú, in the western area of Santiago.
Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, a/k/a “Niño Guerrero” was the leader of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization. Guerrero spent many years incarcerated at the Tocorón Prison in Aragua State of Venezuela. During his time there, Guerrero expanded the influence of Tren de Aragua from extorting prison inmates and bribing prison guards to assuming the overall control of the Tocorón prison as well as the control of gold mines in Bolivar State, drug corridors on the Caribbean coast, as well as control of some of the clandestine border crossings between Venezuela and Colombia.
Guerrero spent many years incarcerated in an Aragua prison where he extorted prison inmates and bribed guards to assume control of the prison. “Nino Guerrero” began his criminal career, when he murdered a Venezuelan police officer. “Nino Guerrero” was first imprisoned in 2010 and escaped in 2012. Recaptured in 2013 and taken back to prison, where “Nino Guerrero” began to consolidate the gang Tren de Aragua. The Venezuelan government took back over the prison in 2023 and “Nino Guerrero” led members of prison north to the United States.
Niño Guerrero is a nickname (alias) for Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores. The US Department of State and other government entities refer to him by his full name along with his alias, acknowledging that he is better known by his nickname. On July 11, 2024, the State Department issued a reward for up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Niño Guerrero.
On July 17, 2025, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores (a.k.a. “Niño Guerrero”) — the head of Tren de Aragua — and five other key Tren de Aragua leaders and affiliates. Niño Guerrero’s wife, Wendy Marbelys Rios Gomez, is linked to criminal activities such as money laundering, terrorism, and terrorist financing and is believed to have enriched herself through profits maintained in connection to criminal activities of Tren de Aragua.
In Spanish, niño (or the phonetic spelling nino) literally means "boy" or "child". As a nickname, it is typically used to denote youthfulness: In some cases, a person might be given the nickname Niño if they are the youngest among a group of people or if they started an activity at a very young age. It can be used affectionately for someone who was seen growing up, even when they are an adult. In some contexts, it can be used to imply that someone is immature, inexperienced, or naive.
The use of Niño as a nickname has a long history, dating back to at least the 13th century in Spain. It has been especially popular among Spanish flamenco singers. The nickname of Tren de Aragua leader Héctor Guerrero Flores — Niño Guerrero — is a notorious example of this practice. The criminal nature of his activities twists the typical, more innocent connotations of the nickname into a more sinister association.
In the USA, Billy the Kid, born Henry McCarty, was a notorious American outlaw and gunfighter of the Old West who became an enduring folk legend. Though mythologized as a prolific killer, he was most likely responsible for about nine deaths before being shot and killed at age 21 by Sheriff Pat Garrett. After his death, Billy the Kid's story was widely reported and romanticized in dime novels and later in more than 50 movies. The legend credits him with 21 killings, a figure far higher than the number historians confirm. Accounts of his life often portrayed him as either a cold-blooded murderer or a Robin Hood-like figure fighting against corrupt authorities.
The name Guerrero is a Spanish word that means "warrior" or "soldier". Its meaning is rooted in military heritage and reflects qualities of strength, bravery, and resilience. The term comes from the Spanish word guerra ("war") and the suffix -ero, which denotes a person who does or is involved in something. Guerrero is a common surname in Spanish-speaking regions. It was historically used as a descriptive nickname for a person who was a soldier or who had a fighting spirit.
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