Southwest
Who is Tren de Aragua? Vicious Venezuelan gang 'following in the path of MS-13' in America
In New York City, children as young as 11 are accused of robbing residents at knife and gunpoint in gang-related initiation rites.
Surveillance video from Aurora, Colorado purportedly shows an employee of a management company brutally beaten by a group of men for refusing to accept a bribe. And in the border state of Texas, two foreign nationals were arrested last month for their alleged role in a conspiracy to illegally transport firearms which were likely to be used in other violent crimes.
The suspects in these recent criminal acts, spread across the nation, are connected to a street gang from Venezuela, known as Tren de Aragua, or TdA. The outfit has grown in infamy in the United States after a spree of heinous crimes that have grabbed national headlines and raised alarm among law enforcement and policymakers, who warn that Americans are in danger so long as the gang operates in the United States.
“TdA is nothing more than a thug-for-hire organization. And that is dangerous to Americans,” said Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, who has followed the gang’s activities closely. Gonzales represents Texas’ 23rd Congressional District, which comprises two-thirds of the Texas border. He has for months sounded the alarm about Tren de Aragua’s growing influence in border communities that are ill-equipped to combat the gang’s brutality.
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Still image from social media video shows suspected juvenile Tren de Aragua members based out of the Roosevelt Hotel, who have allegedly been attacking the nearby Times Square in a string of robberies. (Obtained by New York Post)
“Tren de Aragua is an invading criminal army from a prison in Venezuela that has spread their brutality and chaos to U.S. cities and small towns,” Gonzales and other GOP lawmakers wrote to President Biden in March, requesting that the president designate the gang as a Transnational Criminal Organization. “If left unchecked, they will unleash an unprecedented reign of terror, mirroring the devastation it has already inflicted in communities throughout Central and South America, most prominently in Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru.”
Who is Tren de Aragua?
South of the border, Tren de Aragua has built an international criminal empire on corpses left in the wake of its drug and human trafficking operations. Its members are said to have committed murders, rapes, extortion, kidnapping and other horrific crimes. Now, authorities warn, the brutal gang’s criminal activities are an increasing threat to American communities.
“They’re the worst of the worst,” Gonzales told Fox News Digital in an interview. “They have no rules or code of ethics.”
Researchers have traced the origins of Tren de Aragua, which translates to “train of Aragua,” to the Tocoron prison in the Aragua state in Venezuela, sometime between 2013 and 2015.
“Under the Maduro, and before him, Chavez regime, one of their ideas was to reduce incarceration and prison reform, by which they basically meant letting people out early. And this really gave the gang an enormous sort of manpower surge,” said Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center.
These images from a CBP intelligence bulletin, show tattoos and identifiers for Tren De Aragua. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a $5,000 reward for information leading to the identification and arrest of known or suspected TdA members. (ICE)
One of the founders is Hector Guerrero, who was jailed years ago for killing a police officer, according to InSight Crime, a think tank that monitors organized crime in the Americas. Guerrero, better known by his alias El Nino, Spanish for the “boy,” later escaped and then was recaptured in 2013. He fled prison again more recently, as Venezuela’s government tried to reassert control over its prison population, and is believed to be residing in Colombia.
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Authorities in countries such as Chile, Peru and Colombia — all with large populations of Venezuelan migrants — have accused the group of being behind a spree of violence in a region that has long had some of the highest murder rates in the world. Some of its more sensationalist crimes, including the beheading and burying alive of victims, have spread panic in poor neighborhoods where the gang extorts local businesses and illegally charges residents for “protection.”
“With a particular focus on human smuggling and other illicit acts that target desperate migrants, the organization has developed additional revenue sources through a range of criminal activities, such as illegal mining, kidnapping, human trafficking, extortion, and the trafficking of illicit drugs such as cocaine and MDMA,” said John Torres, a former Special Agent in Charge for Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) with 27 years experience working with DHS and the Justice Department.
Suspected members of the Venezuela-based transnational gang Tren de Aragua were seen on surveillance footage shared by the El Paso County Attorney’s Office at the Gateway Hotel. (KFOX14/El Paso County Attorney’s Office)
Torres, who is now president of security and technology consulting for Guidepost Solutions, a global security, compliance and investigations firm, explained in comments to Fox News Digital that TdA has leveraged its transnational networks to traffic people, especially migrant women and girls, across borders for sex trafficking and debt bondage.
“When victims seek to escape this exploitation, TdA members often kill them and publicize their deaths as a threat to others,” he said.
Since its founding more than a decade ago, TdA has rapidly expanded throughout South America. It has laundered funds through cryptocurrency and allied with other gangs, such as the Brazil-based Primeiro Comando da Capital.
The gang’s activities eventually landed on U.S. law enforcement radar and in September 2023, Homeland Security Investigations announced a partnership with the Peruvian government to form a Transnational Criminal Investigative Unit (TCIU) in Peru to crack down on TdA operations. By then, the TdA organization had expanded into Colombia, Peru, Chile and other countries.
Tren de Aragua in the U.S.
According to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Tren de Aragua has been operating in Texas since at least 2021, when gang affiliates were arrested for human trafficking. The governor last month designated TdA as a “foreign terrorist organization” and launched a statewide operation to aggressively go after the gang.
At a Sept. 16 press conference, Abbott said more than 3,000 illegal immigrants from Venezuela have been arrested in Texas for crimes including human smuggling, many with ties to the gang. The governor noted that more than 100 TdA members were arrested at the Gateway Hotel in downtown El Paso, a city officials have called “ground zero” for the gang’s activities. The El Paso County Attorney’s Office had issued a temporary and permanent injunction to shut down the hotel because of “habitual criminal activity” after 693 police calls were placed at the property in just two years for suspected illegal and gang-related activity, according to a complaint.
Abbott’s action came after surveillance video went viral showing heavily armed men kicking down an apartment door in Aurora, Colorado. It purportedly showed alleged members of Tren de Aragua who had reportedly taken over apartment buildings in the city and were extorting residents for protection payments.
TEXAS GOV. ABBOTT DESIGNATES VENEZUELAN GANG, TREN DE ARAGUA, AS A FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday announced the state is going to target a Venezuelan gang that he said was notorious for brutal violence and murder and posed a threat to Texans’ safety. (X/@GregAbbott_TX)
The video catapulted TdA into the spotlight of the 2024 presidential campaign, with Republican nominee former President Trump vowing to “liberate Aurora” from illegal alien criminals he claimed were “taking over the whole town.”
Aurora police have called allegations that gangs had “taken over” buildings in the city an exaggeration, although they have acknowledged the presence of TdA in the community.
Four people with possible connections to the gang were later arrested at the Ivy Crossing Apartments in Aurora on “a variety of charges” including drugs and stolen vehicles, according to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office. Local officials said another 10 confirmed TdA members were arrested on Sept. 11 on charges including child abuse, attempted first-degree murder, illegal discharge of a firearm, and more.
However, CBZ Management, which operates 11 apartment complexes in Colorado, has claimed that TdA members have commandeered entire apartment buildings in Aurora by threatening its employees and tried to extort the company for a cut of rent money in exchange for their continued operation of the properties.
Suspected members of the Venezuela-based transnational gang Tren de Aragua were seen on surveillance footage partying and drinking to the point of vomiting with children present, according to legal documents. (KFOX14/El Paso County Attorney’s Office)
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