Tren de Aragua

Tren de Aragua (Spanish pronunciation: [tɾen de aˈɾaɣwa]; English: Aragua Train) is a transnational criminal organization from Venezuela. Tren de Aragua is led by Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias "Niño Guerrero [es]"; he was incarcerated in Tocorón prison [es], which then functioned as the organization's de facto headquarters. The gang has since expanded throughout Latin America and the United States due to the Venezuelan refugee crisis, with the growth of the gang following the migration of Venezuelans to host nations. Combating the gang has become a priority for many nations where Tren de Aragua has operated. Though Tocorón prison was taken by Venezuelan security forces in 2023, the leadership escaped. The gang's activities remain ongoing.
On 20 January 2025, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order initiating the process to designate various drug cartels and transnational gangs, including Tren de Aragua, as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, which was officially enacted on 20 February 2025, making such groups officially terrorist organizations. The next month, Trump ordered the deportation of alleged members of the gang citing the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. That order was temporarily halted pending further legal challenges.
Members of Tren de Aragua are primarily Venezuelans. Although some members have tattoos, the organization does not have specific tattoos that signify membership in the manner of the maras, such as MS13 or 18th Street. Rather, Tren de Aragua resembles other criminal organizations in South America, such as the Medellin Cartel or Cali Cartel, which do not use tattoos to signify membership, thus preventing easy identification.
The evidence gathered in the context of the migratory measures implemented by the Donald Trump administration is based on a form designed to determine the alleged membership in the organization known as the Tren de Aragua. The document submitted as evidence establishes that the individual questioned must be Venezuelan, be 14 years of age or older, and not possess U.S. citizenship or residency, and based on these requirements a table is used which contains 20 criteria distributed in six subgroups (Judicial Sentences and Official Documents, Self-admission, Criminal Conduct and Information, Documents and Communications, Symbolism, and Association), in which between two and ten points are assigned according to the fulfillment of each condition, with the accumulation of eight points implying designation as a member of the Tren de Aragua.
Among the criteria, the assignment of 10 points is notable in cases of conviction for violations of U.S. law related to activities connected with the organization or for the explicit admission of membership, while other criteria assign 4 or 3 points depending on the existence of information from U.S. intelligence sources or foreign partners, testimonies from victims, community members, or informants, and 6 or 3 points are awarded upon the verification of communications or financial transfers to known members of the organization; likewise, sections intended to evaluate identifying elements such as tattoos, clothing, group photographs, or other symbols are included, with 4 points assigned to tattoos indicating membership or loyalty and 2 points to social media posts containing symbols or associated references.
Additionally, the evidence presented by the ACLU includes guides developed by the Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol for the identification of alleged members of the Tren de Aragua, in which elements such as tattoos representing trains, crowns, stars, an AK-47 type weapon, watches, the Jordan symbol, or the phrase “Real until death” are highlighted, although discrepancies exist between both guides in the interpretation of certain criteria, for example with regard to the use of sportswear associated with teams such as the Chicago Bulls, indicating a difference in the evaluation of the element as indicative of membership.
The United States Department of Justice currently uses a point system to identify potential Tren de Aragua members. This point system uses the following categories:
Those that score less than eight points can still be deported at the discretion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Tren de Aragua is also the first Venezuelan criminal organization to expand abroad; it has a presence in Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States. It holds a particularly dominant role in human-trafficking and human smuggling in Latin America. The organization engages in a variety of criminal activities, such as arms trafficking, bribery, drug-trafficking, illegal mining, kidnappings-for-ransom, and money laundering. The gang has alliances with Primeiro Comando da Capital in Brazil.
Tren de Aragua's branch in Chile is known as "the Pirates of Aragua". Amidst the Tarapacá migrant crisis in northern Chile, Tren de Aragua engaged in trafficking of women across from the Bolivian border to Santiago. By October 2021 there were reports that Chilean authorities were conducting four different investigations related to the criminal organization. On 24 March 2022 Investigations Police of Chile (PDI) declared to have dismantled the Chilean branch of Tren de Aragua. One of the Tren de Aragua members captured in March 2022 had Interpol arrest warrants for murders in Venezuela and Peru. Six other migrant traffickers of Tren de Aragua were also captured in March 2022 by Chilean police. The leader of Chile's Tren de Aragua branch, Rafael Gámez, was arrested in the US state of Texas in December 2024 on charges of human trafficking. Chile initiated proceedings to extradite Gámez.
On 11 April 2024, Chilean authorities implicated Tren de Aragua in the murder of Ronald Ojeda, a Venezuelan political dissident and opponent to Nicolás Maduro who had been living in exile in Chile. Ojeda was kidnapped on 21 February and his body was discovered 10 days later inside a bag which had been cemented over. Chilean authorities accused Venezuela's interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, of ordering Tren de Aragua to carry out the killing and paying the assassins.
Due to Tren de Aragua's heavy presence in Lima, there were increased sentiments of xenophobia against Venezuelans. Following clashes between Peruvians and Venezuelan migrants at the Gamarra Market in Lima, the "Los Gallegos" chapter of the Tren de Aragua released a video stating "There will be no peace for Peruvians who support xenophobia. We will begin to kill all Peruvian motortaxi drivers." In 2023 alone, at least 183 suspected members were arrested.
Tren de Aragua began emerging throughout the United States during the early 2020s, which saw a surge of migrants crossing the Mexico-U.S. border, particularly from Venezuela. Telemundo, citing multiple criminal cases against suspected members of the gang, wrote in March 2024 that the group evidently "also has an increasingly widespread presence in the United States". In January 2024, the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed reports that the gang was operating in the United States. On 11 July 2024, the US Treasury Department and the White House announced sanctions against the gang and designated it a "transnational criminal organization". The State Department is also offering a $12 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the organization's leaders. In 2024, U.S. officials at the U.S.-Mexico border implemented enhanced interviews of single Venezuelan male migrants in order to screen for Tren de Aragua members. Tren de Aragua members have been linked to crimes throughout the United States, including murders.
Tren de Aragua first appeared in Chicago and its suburbs in October 2023. Chief Garry McCarthy of Willow Springs estimated that hundreds of gang members were present in the city. The Chicago Sun-Times reported in November 2023 that "A Sun-Times analysis found shoplifting and domestic violence arrests, but little proof of the gang's presence among migrants."
In New York City, the gang has been linked since 2022 to shootings, thefts in retail stores, street robberies, forced prostitution, extortion, and drug dealing. Police say that members live or have lived in the city's migrant shelters, and are believed to recruit there.
In Aurora, Colorado, surveillance footage of gunmen entering apartments went viral in 2024, leading the city's mayor, Mike Coffman, to state that the gang had "infiltrated" various apartment buildings in the area. These claims were challenged by the Aurora Police Department, which stated that, "[b]ased on [our] initial investigative work, we believe reports of [Tren de Aragua] influence in Aurora are isolated." Four men out of the six seen in the video were arrested, and five buildings at the apartment complex were ordered to be shut down, as they were described as a "criminal nuisance." Contentions that Aurora was overrun by the gang were highlighted by a number of news outlets. President Donald Trump, as part of his presidential campaign's focus on illegal immigration, maintained that parts of the city were controlled by the gang. To combat the purported gang activity, hundreds of ICE agents participated in raids during the months of January and February 2025. One alleged gang member was arrested. President Donald Trump reiterated previously debunked claims about an alleged takeover by a Venezuelan criminal gang at an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado. These claims, widely circulated on social media by pro-Trump communities and amplified by conservative commentators, were refuted by local authorities, who denied that the gang known as Tren de Aragua had taken control of the location. Nevertheless, the rumors continued to spread, fueled by posts that manipulated information through the reuse of old videos, data misrepresentation, and the combination of decontextualized material, according to the News Literacy Project. The misinformation was labeled as false by Meta, but it continued to spread across various platforms, where unverified posts surpassed 26 million views. Experts noted that this strategy aligns with common patterns of accounts that disseminate fake news to promote political agendas. Other unfounded narratives, such as the accusation that Haitian immigrants were harming pets, were also repeated by Trump.
FBI agents in El Paso, Texas reported that 41 suspected members of the Tren de Aragua were arrested in 2023.
In 2024, a state investigator told KUTV that a number of crimes in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area were linked to Tren de Aragua, including a September 2024 shooting in Herriman. Most of the reported crimes included theft, illegal drug distribution, and sextortion.
The gang was prominently featured in Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. An opinion piece in Americas Quarterly said that Tren de Aragua's reach in the United States was exaggerated, with the gang only having permanent cells outside of Venezuela in Peru and Chile, and even having limited success in setting up operations in Venezuela's neighboring country of Colombia.
On 20 January 2025, Trump signed an executive order initiating the process to designate various drug cartels and transnational gangs, including Tren de Aragua, as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, On 28 January ICE arrested 25 members. On 29 January 2025, eight alleged Tren de Aragua gang members were arrested at an apartment complex in Queens, New York, because they were indicted on charges of gun trafficking, where police seized 34 firearms, two others were wanted outstanding.
In March 2025, 200 detainees alleged by the Trump administration to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang were deported from US to El Salvador despite a court order blocking the deportation. The United States Court of Appeals reviewed the government's appeal against the temporary injunction issued by federal judge James Boasberg on the enforcement of the Alien Enemies Act, invoked by President Donald Trump on the 15th of that month with the aim of accelerating the deportation of Venezuelan migrants, allegedly members of the criminal group Tren de Aragua (TdA), to El Salvador. Judge Karen Henderson, one of the three magistrates handling the case, stated that the treatment of these migrants was worse than that given to expelled Nazis during World War II, citing the lack of legal safeguards and the speed with which they were put on planes to the Central American country. This stance was challenged by Deputy Attorney General Drew Ensign, who defended the administration’s actions as a necessary national security measure, although Henderson countered that the use of the statute in this context was unprecedented. During the hearing, attorney Lee Gelert, representing the plaintiffs, accused the government of using a shortcut to carry out summary deportations, arguing that the majority of the deported Venezuelans were not part of the TdA, an organization that, according to him, lacks a hierarchical structure and has not carried out an invasion of the country.
In March 2025, the government of United States President Donald Trump ordered the detention and deportation of more than 200 Venezuelan citizens, accusing them of being members of the Venezuelan criminal group Tren de Aragua, despite not providing evidence of such affiliation. To carry out these deportations, the U.S. administration invoked the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798, a statute that grants the president the authority to detain and expel citizens from countries with which the United States is at war. The legislation, enacted during John Adams’ presidency in the context of tensions with France, had been applied on three previous occasions, during the War of 1812 against the United Kingdom; in World War I, when more than 6,000 German citizens were interned in concentration camps; and in World War II, when more than 30,000 persons of Japanese, German, and Italian descent were detained on U.S. soil.
Trump justified the law’s application by alleging that Tren de Aragua was planning a “predatory invasion or raid” in the United States, although a federal judge, James Boasberg, ruled that the statute could not be used in this context, as it requires the threat to originate from a foreign government or nation. Despite this judicial ruling, the White House continued with the deportations.
Legal experts and civil rights organizations criticized the measure, noting that the application of the Foreign Enemies Act allows the government to carry out expulsions without providing procedural guarantees, such as the right to a defense or to appeal in immigration courts. Moreover, the regulation does not require concrete evidence to qualify a person as a threat, which has led to allegations of abuse of power. The Venezuelan government, through Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, asserted that none of the deported individuals had any links to Tren de Aragua and that only 17 of the first 190 deportees had criminal records. Trump’s executive order is part of his promise to carry out the largest wave of deportations in the country’s history, which has resulted in an increase in raids and the detention of immigrants. According to data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), at least 32,000 people have been arrested since January 2025, of whom approximately 9,000 were migrants with legal status, without criminal records, or awaiting immigration rulings—figures that ICE described as “collateral damage.” The decision has been strongly criticized by human rights organizations, such as the Center for American Progress, which denounced the use of a law last invoked during World War II to justify the detention of thousands of people without trial, describing it as a “dangerous abuse of power.”
Human rights organizations have raised concerns about the misuse of visual or cultural stereotypes as justification for deportations, often carried out before scheduled court hearings or pending legal decisions. This practice has been criticized for undermining the principles of international law and fundamental rights to legal defense and asylum. One of the most notable purported cases is that of Jerce Reyes Barrios, a 36-year-old Venezuelan footballer who was deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration due to his alleged association with the group Tren de Aragua. Reyes Barrios had legally entered the United States in 2024 and applied for asylum after allegedly fleeing torture in Venezuela. He was scheduled to appear in court in April but was removed from the country without prior notice. Although a federal judge ordered a halt to deportation flights, the government claimed that the flights were already beyond its jurisdiction at the time.
Over 200 Venezuelans have been transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. These deportations have been denounced by Nicolás Maduro’s government, which called the transfers a "kidnapping" and denied any links between the deportees and the gang.
In September 2023, 11,000 members of the Venezuelan security forces took the Aragua Penitentiary Center, which served as the gang's headquarters.
On January 22, 2025, during the inauguration of the military and police exercises "Bolivarian Shield 2025," the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, described the Tren de Aragua as a "construct" aimed at destabilizing the country and facilitating interventionist scenarios. Maduro stated that, although gangs like the Tren de Aragua and the Tren del Llano existed in the past, they were dismantled and defeated in Venezuela.
During the 512th edition of his television program Con el Mazo Dando, broadcast on March 19, 2025, Venezuela’s Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace and vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, accused leaders of the Venezuelan opposition and former Colombian presidents of maintaining ties with the criminal group Tren de Aragua, using it for political destabilization purposes. Cabello claimed that figures such as Álvaro Uribe, Iván Duque, Juan Manuel Santos, and Andrés Pastrana, along with Venezuelan opposition leaders like Juan Guaidó, Leopoldo López, María Corina Machado, Edmundo González, Carlos Vecchio, Julio Borges, Miguel Pizarro, and David Smolansky, were involved in the creation and protection of criminal networks aimed at destabilizing the country. The accusations also included financing through Colombian narco-paramilitarism, human and drug trafficking, assassinations, and attacks against state institutions. Cabello alleged that the alias El Wilexis, attributed to Wuileisys Acevedo [es], killed by Venezuelan forces during the Bolivarian Shield 2025 exercises, was the leader of the “Comanditos”, alleged shock groups activated by the opposition after President Nicolás Maduro’s re-election in the July 28 presidential elections. Among the group's alleged plans were an attack on the National Assembly during the presidential inauguration and assaults on international guests. The minister also blamed Colombian authorities for failing to act on information shared by the Venezuelan government regarding meetings of criminal leaders on Colombian territory.
Regarding the United States, after President Donald Trump declared Tren de Aragua a terrorist organization, Cabello expressed agreement but alleged that the group’s true “partners” are located on U.S. soil and operate publicly with the knowledge of authorities, particularly the FBI. Although he asserted that the criminal organization is deeply embedded in international networks protected by the opposition, on March 21, 2025, the same minister stated that none of the more than one hundred Venezuelans deported by the United States to a prison in El Salvador are members of Tren de Aragua, contradicting Washington’s official justification for the mass deportation. Additionally, Venezuela’s Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, confirmed the organization’s dismantling within the country, with the arrest of 48 individuals, reiterating that some of its members are in Colombia and the U.S. with the support of exiled opposition members. Saab requested the extradition of these individuals so they could be tried in Venezuela and face prison sentences of up to 30 years.