WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that a “swift and lethal kinetic” U.S. strike has killed Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, whom he called “the infamous leader” of the Tren de Aragua gang.

Tren de Aragua has been labeled by the United States as a terrorist organization. Guerrero Flores was charged in a New York federal court with racketeering conspiracy and other crimes, including lending support to terrorists in crimes that stretched more than a decade, authorities announced in December.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X that the strike occurred earlier in the week on a Tren de Aragua compound in Venezuela.

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said at the time that the gang is responsible for countless acts of violence, extortion and drug trafficking in North America, South America and Europe. Trump nominated Clayton on Thursday to be director of national intelligence.

The U.S. State Department had offered rewards of up to $5 million for information leading to Guerrero Flores’ arrest

In a post on his social media site, Trump wrote, “Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else and, under my leadership, we will find these vicious murderers and drug lords anytime, anyplace, and send them to the depths of hell where they belong.” Trump’s post referred to Guerrero Flores by his alias, “Niño Guerrero.”

The post also included unclassified video, shot from above, of a small building with a green roof exploding.

Hegseth said, “The operation underscores the shared U.S. and Venezuelan commitment to take the fight to narco-terrorists and deny them any safe haven in our hemisphere.”

Venezuela’s ministry of communications did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the operation.

Trump has taken a series of extraordinary actions against the gang, including a series of strikes on small boats his administration has accused of smuggling drugs to America. At least 207 people have been killed in boat strikes by the U.S. military in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” in early September.

Trump and administration officials have consistently blamed Tren de Aragua for being at the root of the violence and illicit drug dealing that plague some U.S. cities. The president spent months repeating the claim — contradicted by a declassified U.S. intelligence assessment — that Tren de Aragua had operated under Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s control. The U.S. whisked Maduro out of Venezuela to face U.S. drug charges in January.

Tren de Aragua originated more than a decade ago at an infamously lawless prison with hardened criminals in Venezuela’s central state of Aragua. The gang has expanded in recent years as millions of Venezuelans migrated to other Latin American countries or the U.S. in search of better living conditions.

Guerrero Flores returned to the prison in Aragua for murder and other convictions in 2013, when Venezuela’s crisis began as corruption, mismanagement and a drop in crude prices wrecked the oil-dependent economy. Guerrero Flores and a few other inmates saw a profitable opportunity as the government neglected prisons.

They assumed control and administration of the prison, establishing a system that controlled the entire inmate population through force and extortion. Over time, they transformed the facility into a sort of city that included a zoo, baseball field, casino and restaurants. Guerrero Flores had his own lavish suite.

The size of the gang is unclear. Countries with large populations of Venezuelan migrants, including Peru and Colombia, have accused the group of being behind a spree of violence in the region. Still, unlike other criminal organizations from Colombia, Central America and Brazil, Tren de Aragua has no large-scale involvement in smuggling cocaine across international borders, according to InSight Crime, a think tank that tracks crime across Latin America.

In Venezuela, gang leaders have long been known to participate in various illegal activities, including gold mining.

Trump campaigned for a second term promising to crack down on immigration and crime. While polls show his favorability ratings have sagged on his handling of the economy, immigration remains Trump’s strongest issue, according to the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Early on a Tuesday morning last month, the sky still black, a group of deputies from the Laramie County sheriff’s office set out to patrol two major interstates that cross their corner of southeast Wyoming. Over the course of five hours, they made 41 traffic stops, issued 12 citations, made two criminal arrests and — through a new partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — detained seven immigrants.

One person was asleep in the backseat of a silver pickup truck stopped for a too-dim rear license plate light. Two passengers in a minivan that had been going 12 miles per hour over the limit were also taken into custody. Four others were detained after their pickup, too, was stopped for speeding.

All were booked into the county jail to await transfer to an ICE detention facility. The deputies working the immigration operation earned a combined $1,325 in overtime courtesy of the federal government.

The Trump administration has enlisted hundreds of state and local law enforcement agencies in its mass deportation campaign by deputizing their officers as immigration agents, extending ICE’s reach far beyond where the agency typically operates.

Living in the United States without authorization is a civil violation, not a criminal offense, and local police officers have no responsibility to enforce federal immigration law. But after completing a 40-hour virtual training, certified officers can inquire about the immigration status of people they encounter in the course of routine police work; call ICE if they suspect a person is undocumented; and, if given the go-ahead, take immigrants into custody.

Before President Trump returned to office, the program — named 287(g) for a section of federal immigration law — had largely consisted of agreements with local agencies to identify and process immigrants already held in jails. The Trump administration expanded the cooperation, and for the first time offered cash incentives to agencies to sign up and make arrests.

Participation has exploded, and de facto ICE officers are now on the ground in hundreds of cities and counties across 31 states. Several thousand officers have been credentialed — state troopers, sheriff’s deputies, police officers, constables — on top of the 12,000 new officers and agents that ICE hired last year. The rush to sign up and cash in has included some unusual agencies, too, like Louisiana’s State Fire Marshal and Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Perhaps most significantly, the program has the potential to turn highways and roads into sites of immigration enforcement.

“ICE does not have that generalized patrol authority, so it’s really great for ICE that they can use state and local police in this way,” said Naureen Shah, the director of immigration policy at the American Civil Liberties Union, whose Wyoming office is suing Laramie County over its agreement with ICE.

Brian Kozak, the Laramie County sheriff, said the program allows his office to be more efficient and move detainees through his jail more quickly.

“If someone is undocumented, it’s faster for our deputies to book them on an ICE hold and not even do the local charges. Then they don’t have to sit in my jail waiting for those local charges to be adjudicated,” he said, though he added that more serious felony offenses would still be charged.

‘A tremendous asset’