The Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan transnational crime syndicate now terrorizing several U.S. cities, established a firm criminal presence after socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro emptied Venezuela’s prisons in late 2023.
In recent years, the Tren de Aragua spread its presence across several Latin American countries such as Colombia, Chile, and Peru before reaching the United States, with several of its members passing through the U.S. southern border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began tracking Tren de Aragua encounters at the border as early as March 2023.
The gang, which originally began in 2012 as a local trade union in the eponymous state of Aragua, evolved into a full-fledged crime syndicate over the past decade under the auspices of the Maduro regime, with which it is believed to maintain deep ties. Tren de Aragua’s extensive list of crimes are believed to range from theft, homicide, extortion, contraband, and kidnapping to drug, human, and arms trafficking.
The gang achieved its dramatic expansion notably in part due to the Venezuelan socialists’ prison policies, which granted the country’s main gangs full internal control of the inmate facilities, ruling them under a pseudo-fiefdom system locally known as the Pranato (“Pranate”).
The Maduro regime’s lenient prison policies, together with the Pranate system — which features its own extensive lexicon based on the language of the pran, or “thug” — effectively allowed gang leaders to orchestrate criminal activities from within prisons. The gangs rampantly engaging in extortion, kidnappings, and robberies, among other crimes, with apparent impunity, while the Venezuelan National Guard safeguards the gang-controlled prisons from outside attack.
Under the Tren de Aragua’s Pranate of the Tocorón prison, located in Aragua, the gang’s founder and leader Héctor “The Child” Guerrero oversaw the group’s criminal activities and its international expansion across Latin America, which reportedly began in 2018.
Guerrero, as the prison’s pran, also oversaw Tocorón’s internal transformation, turning it into the main headquarters of the gang with “amenities” including its own zoo, baseball field, bars, a casino, a nightclub, a bank, a pool, playgrounds, and its own cryptocurrency farm.
The gang’s international expansion is believed to have started in places such as the Colombian town of La Parada, where the gang engaged in the extortion, smuggling, and sexual trafficking of Venezuelan migrants fleeing from socialism in what is now considered to be the worst migrant crisis in the Western Hemisphere.
In September, the Maduro regime “raided” Tocorón and “dismantled” the gang after years of apparent indifference towards Tren de Aragua and its extensive criminal activities. The “raid” concluded with Tocorón emptied of its inmates as part of a broader “security” initiative known as the Cacique Guaicaipuro Liberation Operation that resulted in other prisons, such as the Tocuyito prison — at the time Venezuela’s most populated prison — also emptied of its inmates.
Experts believe that the Maduro regime negotiated with Guerrero before the “raid,” allowing him and his top brass to safely escape through a series of tunnels that connected the inmate center with the nearby Lake Valencia. Gang members had frequently used the tunnels to freely come and go from the prison at their leisure. Guerrero’s whereabouts remain unknown at press time.
Authorities from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in Chicago, Illinois, reportedly confirmed the presence of Tren de Aragua’s gang members in the city since at least October 2023 — weeks after the “raid” of Tocorón.
In the months following the “raid,” other U.S. cities began reporting criminal acts linked to the gang. U.S. authorities have confirmed the active presence of Tren de Aragua in other cities such as Miami, New York, Dallas, and Atlanta. According to internal documentation from the Department of Homeland Security, Tren de Aragua has given the “green light” to its members to attack U.S. law enforcement officers.
The city of Aurora, Colorado, which neighbors sanctuary city Denver, also reported the presence of the gang in its territory, taking over entire apartment complexes. The Aurora police department announced last week the creation of a joint task force with both Colorado’s state patrol and the state’s Bureau of Investigation to address the growing threat of Tren de Aragua in the state.
In May, law enforcement authorities in Louisiana dismantled a sex trafficking network linked to Tren de Aragua that arranged for its victims to be smuggled into the United States after teaching them how to request asylum at the southern border. The sex trafficking gang then forced the victims into prostitution to pay for the “debt” accrued from smuggling them into the United States.
The Maduro regime’s official “stance” on the Tren de Aragua appears to vary depending on what suits them at a specific moment. Several of the rogue socialist regime’s members, such as Foreign Minister Yvan Gil and Attorney General Tarek William Saab repeatedly insisted throughout the year that Tren de Aragua “does not exist” and is part of an alleged international smear campaign to hurt the rogue regime’s image.
Last week, Gil claimed that Tren de Aragua — which according to him does not exist — is allegedly working with the Venezuelan opposition to stage a coup against dictator Nicolás Maduro following his fraudulent presidential “reelection” in July.
Reports published in April indicated that the Maduro regime employed the gang to hunt down Venezuelan dissidents in foreign countries. Venezuelan dissident Ronald Ojeda was abducted from his residence in Santiago, Chile, in late February by individuals linked to the Tren de Aragua. Ojeda’s body was found buried inside a suitcase under a concrete structure ten days after his abduction.
In April, Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich denounced Tren de Aragua as a state-sponsored terrorist group, asserting that its criminal actions as “not autonomous” from that of the socialist Maduro regime.
“The Tren de Aragua does not strike in just any way. The Tren de Aragua strikes with a procedure, with a matrix of operation, with a logic that always does exactly the same thing,” Bullrich explained at the time. “It settles in a certain place. It comes with a group in general of Venezuelan nationality.”
“Consequently, it is important to analyze whether it is an organization that is autonomous from the state or not autonomous from the state. I tend to think that it is not autonomous from the state,” she continued.
The Tocorón and Tocuyito prisons emptied by the Venezuelan socialists last year will soon serve as the Maduro regime’s new “re-education centers” for anti-socialists. The refurbishing is part of the Maduro regime’s ongoing brutal crackdown following the July 28 sham presidential election, which Maduro fraudulently insists he “won.”
The arrival of dissidents to the two prisons reportedly started this week — including groups of minors that the Maduro regime has detained through the ongoing dissident crackdown.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.