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CHAPTER 1
The Origins of Tren de Aragua

This is a preview chapter of Tren de Aragua - The Guide to America’s Growing Criminal Threat, to be released by World of Crime on May 22, 2025. Sign up here to get a review copy.

At dawn on September 20, 2023, a convoy of armored vehicles rumbled toward the gates of Venezuela’s Tocorón prison. Inside this notorious penitentiary – long considered untouchable by outsiders – the scene that greeted the 11,000 troops who stormed in was surreal. Hardened inmates looked on as soldiers beheld a luxury stronghold hidden behind bars: a makeshift zoo filled with exotic animals, a swimming pool, restaurants, even a gleaming nightclub and casino​.What should have been a grim penal complex had been transformed into a gangster’s palace, complete with a professional baseball field and lavish suites for crime bosses.

For nearly a decade, Tocorón had been the capital of Tren de Aragua - Venezuela’s most feared criminal syndicate. From within these walls, gang leaders presided over a transnational crime empire. The raid was the Venezuelan regime’s grand attempt to reassert control. Following this, officials trumpeted that Tren de Aragua was dismantled, pointing to dozens of arrests and the liberation of Tocorón​.

But as soldiers counted prisoners, nearly half of Tocorón’s inmates – including Tren de Aragua’s elusive boss, Niño Guerrero – were nowhere to be found​. Still, Venezuela cried victory and that the gang had been removed from existence.

Not so. The fall of Tocorón simply marked the end of one chapter.

Tren de Aragua was already outgrowing its prison cradle. It was now firmly entrenched as a transnational menace, its tentacles extending into illegal gold mines, migrant smuggling rings, and urban underworlds from Colombia to Chile. It was even creeping north toward the United States.

From Prosperity to Collapse

Not so long ago, Venezuela stood atop Latin America’s economic hierarchy, buoyed by colossal oil wealth. In the late 20th century, it was a relatively stable democracy flush with petrodollars – so prosperous that it even provided free heating oil to impoverished Americans during the presidency of Hugo Chávez​.

For decades, oil riches had funded an expanding middle class, gleaming infrastructure, and ambitious social programs. By the early 2000s, under Chávez’s socialist administration, Venezuela still basked in the glow of high crude prices and enjoyed one of the region’s fastest-growing economies​.

Yet the seeds of dysfunction were quietly taking root. Venezuela had become a classic petrostate, overly dependent on oil exports and rife with corruption among a narrow ruling elite​.

The influx of oil revenue masked weak institutions and festering corruption, as officials siphoned off fortunes and neglected to build anything beyond the oil boom. When global oil markets turned and mismanagement collided with bad luck, Venezuela plunged into an astonishing free fall. Starting in 2014, a cascade of crises – the collapse of oil prices, unchecked government overspending, and the crippling of productive industries – triggered an economic meltdown​. The nation’s GDP soon plummeted by nearly two-thirds, a drop exceeding even that of the United States during the Great Depression​.

By the late 2010s, the once-wealthy country saw its currency worthless and store shelves bare. Basic necessities vanished: Venezuelans queued for hours for bread and medicine, only to find supplies exhausted. Hospitals ran out of soap and antibiotics. Many families could no longer afford enough food for a healthy diet. Public services and the rule of law crumbled in tandem.

Venezuela’s streets descended into chaos. Crime rates exploded to unprecedented levels, turning cities into hunting grounds for kidnappers and thieves. By 2017, Venezuela had one of the highest violence rates in the world – an average of 73 violent deaths every single day​.

Armed gangs proliferated in poor barrios and along smuggling routes, emboldened by near‑total impunity, while ordinary people, pushed to desperation by hunger and poverty, sometimes turned to petty crime or black‑market hustling to survive. Over 90% of crimes went unpunished in these years, as Venezuela’s justice system all but collapsed.​

Emerging from this chaos were powerful criminal groups, many adopting the moniker "Tren de…" followed by a geographical identifier, before Tren de Aragua rose to national notoriety. Among these precursor organizations were gangs such as Tren del Llano and Tren de Guayana, which formed loosely organized syndicates capable of widespread violence and intimidation.

Tren del Llano, for instance, led by José Antonio Tovar Colina, known as "El Picure," terrorized Venezuela’s central plains region with activities that included armed robbery, vehicle theft, kidnapping, extortion, and drug trafficking. El Picure had been part of Venezuela’s criminal landscape since 2008, focused on drug trafficking, extortion, and car theft. But the economic crisis of the mid-2010s emboldened him to go further. Tren del Llano became connected to frequent shootouts with police, massacres of rivals, and far more widespread extortion.

El Picure was shot dead by security forces in 2016, but Tren del Llano survived and is still active in 2025.

The Venezuelan state's response to these early "Tren" gangs was inconsistent and ineffective. Police operations aimed at capturing leaders were repeatedly thwarted, either due to corruption within law enforcement ranks or by the criminals' own sophisticated intelligence networks. When arrests did occur, they were often temporary setbacks, with gang leaders continuing to command their networks from within notoriously permissive prison environments. In many cases, corrupt prison authorities collaborated directly with gang leaders, facilitating their criminal enterprises and even allowing them to consolidate power behind bars.

Behind the surge in street crime was an even darker development: the entanglement of crime and state at the highest levels. As Venezuela’s crisis deepened, senior figures in the security forces and government were widely accused of complicity in trafficking rings and mafias. Elements of the Bolivarian armed forces morphed into crime syndicates, harnessing their power for profit.

Investigations and insider testimonies pointed to a “Cartel of the Suns” – a network of top military commanders who facilitated cocaine exports, protected cartels, and enriched themselves through drug and gold smuggling rackets. Under the cover of ideological revolution, Venezuela had in many ways become a criminalized state. Kleptocracy bled the national coffers dry, and organized crime flourished. The central government maintained its grip on power, but beyond the presidential palace, much of the country had slipped into fiefdoms, given over to political loyalists who could use criminal gangs to enrich themselves as they saw fit.

Amid this turmoil, millions of Venezuelans voted with their feet, fleeing the country in one of the largest human migrations in modern history. Since 2015, an estimated 7 to 8 million people have left Venezuela to escape economic devastation and insecurity.

Families packed what belongings they could carry and headed out by bus or on foot, creating a refugee crisis across South America. This exodus not only transformed the social landscape of Venezuela – emptying neighborhoods and separating families – but also exported Venezuela’s burgeoning criminal networks abroad. The vast majority of refugees were honest citizens seeking safety, but woven among the columns of migrants were opportunistic gang members ready to profit from this exodus.

Tren de Aragua would use this opportunity to great effect.

Chavismo’s Faustian Bargain

How did the Venezuelan state, born of a socialist “Bolivarian Revolution,” become an incubator for organized crime? The answer lies partly in the deliberate choices made by Hugo Chávez’s government and its successor, who struck a devil’s bargain: to maintain political control amid spiraling chaos, they ceded ground to criminal actors and even harnessed them for their own ends. In no domain was this more evident than Venezuela’s prisons, where the regime effectively outsourced authority to the underworld.

In 2005, facing unmanageable violence behind bars, Chávez’s government enacted a quiet policy shift that would have profound consequences. According to Venezuela’s Observatorio de Violencia, authorities agreed to hand over internal control of prisons to the inmates themselves – a desperate bid to reduce deadly riots by letting prisoner leaders keep order.

The bargain was simple: the state would withdraw guards from the cell blocks, and in exchange, prisoner “bosses” would police their own, ensuring no mass disturbances or prison breaks. What blossomed from this arrangement was the pranato system – named after the prison slang pran, meaning chief or kingpin. Inmates with the fiercest reputations or best criminal connections assumed absolute authority within the penitentiaries.

They imposed their own laws, meted out brutal punishments, and ran lucrative enterprises from behind bars, from drug sales to kidnapping schemes coordinated by cellphone. Pranes extorted protection money from fellow prisoners and even from prison staff, effectively turning Venezuela’s jails into autonomous narco‑kingdoms. Government officials publicly denied coddling criminals, but in practice, they had made a pact with the devils in their prisons.

Iris Varela, appointed in 2011 as Minister of Penitentiary Services, pursued a policy where inmates would be responsible for reducing crime in prisons – critics would say she let the inmates run the asylum.

By the mid‑2010s, Venezuela’s major penitentiaries were ruled by prison warlords armed with automatic weapons and grenades, astonishingly easy to obtain in a land awash with illegal arms. The state’s retreat from its custodial duties meant that prison walls were no longer barriers to crime, but rather buffers protecting criminal enterprises. Prison bosses could direct murders or extortions on the outside with impunity, all while enjoying a life of relative comfort inside.

Nowhere was this state‑sanctioned criminal enclave more pronounced than at Tocorón prison in Aragua state. In the 2010s, Tocorón became synonymous with the power of the pranato.

It was not the biggest prison in Venezuela, but it was among the most infamous, thanks to the gang that made it its fortress: Tren de Aragua. The rise of Tren de Aragua is inextricably linked to the permissive haven that authorities created at Tocorón. By 2014 – around the time the gang coalesced – Tocorón had essentially been “handed over” to pran rule. That outcome was no accident; it was enabled by figures at the highest levels of Venezuela’s government.

Tareck El Aissami, a powerful Chavista official, played a pivotal role in this. El Aissami served as Venezuela’s interior minister (overseeing security forces) and later as governor of Aragua state from 2012 to 2017 – the very years Tren de Aragua was organizing and expanding. Rather than crack down on the burgeoning gang, El Aissami and Minister Iris Varela created a climate of impunity that allowed it to flourish.

Under their watch, weapons flowed in, guards looked the other way, and the prison economy boomed under gang control.

According to analysts, 2014 marks the true birth of Tren de Aragua inside Tocorón, and 2016 the beginning of its rapid expansion beyond the prison walls.

During El Aissami’s governorship in Aragua, police sources observed the gang’s activities “increasing both inside and outside the state” unchecked. Whether through willful collusion or willful blindness, regional authorities essentially partnered with the gang.

It was a dangerous symbiosis. By the end of the 2010s, Tren de Aragua had grown from a local menace into a multi‑headed hydra, thanks in large part to this state‑crime alliance.

Lawless Paradise

At first, Tren de Aragua was just one gang among several in Venezuela’s underworld. For a time, it was Tren del Llano, led by El Picure which was better known. But fate and the peculiar physics of Venezuelan crime would soon vault Tren de Aragua ahead of the pack. Venezuela’s prison system became the gang’s unlikely launchpad to supremacy.

Some founding members of Tren de Aragua, notably Niño Guerrero, Johan Petrica, and Larry Changa, who would become known as “The Three Fathers,” arrived at Tocorón prison through distinct yet interconnected criminal trajectories shaped by Venezuela's economic and social collapse. Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, known as “Niño Guerrero,” grew up amidst deepening poverty in Maracay, the capital of Aragua.

He entered the criminal world early, first dealing drugs locally before escalating to more violent crimes. By age 21, Guerrero had already been implicated in several homicides, notably the killing of a police officer in 2005. His violent and brazen crimes culminated in his arrest in 2010, when he was apprehended with stolen property, weapons, and narcotics, leading to a 17-year sentence.

Johan José Romero, alias “Johan Petrica,” emerged from the notorious Valles del Tuy, an area south of Caracas infamous for organized crime. Petrica had been implicated in murder and drug trafficking from the early 2000s. Although briefly imprisoned in 2003, he quickly violated parole conditions. His path to Tocorón remains somewhat unclear, but he was transferred there around 2007. In Tocorón, he strategically aligned himself with the established crime boss José Gabriel Álvarez Rojas, alias “Chino Pedrera.”

Chino Pedrera’s gang was already well-established in Tocorón, he was the closest thing to a pran the prison had at the time. Research suggests that he took Petrica, in particular, under his wing. However, his death in February 2016 at the hands of the police removed competition and allowed Tren de Aragua to truly take off.

Imprisoned for murder and drug charges, Guerrero quickly rose to become the pran of Tocorón. He was charismatic and ruthless, with a deep respect for religion and family, as well as for enforcing strict discipline. Those who defied the gang’s rules inside prison could end up beaten or stabbed, or worse.

Under Guerrero’s leadership, Tren de Aragua transformed into something Venezuela had never seen before – a vertically integrated criminal enterprise spanning both the prison population and the “street” population.

With Guerrero ensconced as the de facto king of Tocorón, the prison became the beating heart of Tren de Aragua’s empire. Journalists who managed to peek inside described scenes straight out of a crime boss’s fantasy. Within the prison’s perimeters, Tren de Aragua leaders and their families enjoyed amenities that ordinary Venezuelans struggling outside could only dream of.

There were restaurants serving hot meals and areas for conjugal visits that looked more like motel rooms. Gang members lounged by the swimming pool on humid afternoons and partied in an improvised nightclub after dark. A menagerie of animals – from crocodiles to ostriches – roamed a zoo built on site, reportedly for the entertainment of the inmates and their children who visited on weekends.

How was such opulence possible in a prison?

Tren de Aragua had effectively privatized Tocorón. The gang ran a thriving illicit economy: inmates’ relatives were charged for everything from a spot in a less‑crowded cell to permission to bring in supplies. Weapons and contraband flowed in freely – often smuggled by or with the tacit approval of prison authorities. Over time, Tocorón’s walls were literally breached: sophisticated tunnels were dug to the outside, allowing pranes and trusted henchmen to slip out at will. Locals from nearby towns would sneak in through these tunnels to attend parties or strike deals, blurring inside and outside. The prison ceased to function as a correctional facility; it was the Tren de Aragua’s impregnable headquarters, protected from rival gangs and, until 2023, from state interference.

This unholy experiment in criminal self‑rule allowed Tren de Aragua to refine its operations and expand its reach. Inside Tocorón, new recruits were inducted into the gang, often young men doing short stints for petty theft who emerged as hardened Tren operatives loyal to Niño Guerrero.

The prison also served as a secure communications hub. Authorities later discovered that the Tren had amassed an arsenal of military‑grade weapons on site – including assault rifles, machine guns, grenades, and even explosives. This cache meant that if security forces ever attempted a raid (as they eventually did), the gang could mount fierce resistance or simply escape under fire. In essence, Tocorón was a parallel state: the Tren built an “insurgent” infrastructure there, complete with logistics, security, and even a form of governance for those living under its rule.

It’s important to note that while Tocorón was the jewel in the Tren’s crown, Venezuela’s wider collapse enabled many mini‑Tocoróns.

Prisons across the country, like the now‑infamous Vista Hermosa and Rodeo, saw pranes wielding similar control. Tren de Aragua, however, distinguished itself by breaking the bounds of the prison more effectively than any other.

From their Tocorón command center, Niño Guerrero and his lieutenants extended their influence outward – to the nearby town of San Vicente, to the streets of Aragua’s capital, Maracay, and then nationwide. They set up clandestine networks in the barrios, employing lookouts and informants to spot police presence. They infiltrated the local economies: controlling the sale of stolen car parts, cornering the black market for food staples, and running gambling rings.

Kidnapping for ransom became a signature activity. The gang targeted not only wealthy individuals, but also the growing cohort of Venezuelans receiving remittances from abroad; even middle‑class families scraped together dollars to pay Tren de Aragua extortionists rather than rely on impotent police.

Meanwhile, Venezuelan politicians continued to shield the gang’s growth, intentionally or not. It was widely suspected (though seldom openly proven) that officials like Tareck El Aissami, then one of the most powerful men in the country, had financial ties to the Tren’s earnings, possibly using the gang as muscle for hire.

In one dramatic revelation, US investigators disclosed text messages from 2015 – seized in a drug case against two of President Nicolás Maduro’s relatives – discussing the murder of a Tren de Aragua leader, known as Carlos Breaker.

Gruesome evidence, including photos of Carlos Breaker’s dismembered body, and conversation suggested that Tren de Aragua was functioning as hired enforcers for the regime’s illicit interests. Whether eliminating inconvenient associates or intimidating political adversaries, the gang’s cruelty was a tool covertly available to powerful patrons.

Such episodes underscore how intertwined Venezuela’s state and its organized crime had become. Tren de Aragua was not an isolated aberration; it was a product of a systemic melding of the underworld with the revolutionary government.

Criminal Innovations

By the late 2010s, Tren de Aragua had secured its base at home. Now it began to innovate and expand its criminal portfolio, following the flows of money in a country stripped of conventional opportunities. In a collapsed economy, certain illicit markets boomed – and the Tren showed a keen instinct for exploiting each one.

One of the most lucrative frontiers was illegal gold mining. Venezuela’s southeastern region, especially Bolívar state, has one of the richest gold deposits in the world. As the central state lost its grip, wildcat mining operations multiplied, and armed gangs rushed in to control the gold fields. Tren de Aragua was no exception.

Around 2018, rumors emerged that Tren enforcers had appeared in mining towns like Las Claritas and Tumeremo, far from their Aragua home base. Those rumors soon proved true. Johan Petrica, the gang’s second-in-command, had moved there. He contacted and bribed local military commanders to insert itself into the Orinoco Mining Arc, the heart of Venezuela’s gold trade.¹⁵

In these mining zones, Tren de Aragua essentially replicated its Tocorón model on the open frontier: it established a protection racket over the mines and surrounding communities, bringing a brutal kind of order. Miners were forced to pay a cut of their gold production to the gang, known as the vacuna (vaccine) – ostensibly “protection” money that guaranteed they could work in peace.

According to on‑the‑ground investigations, Tren de Aragua envoys set up checkpoints on roads to the mines, controlled fuel distribution, and fixed prices for food and goods in local shops. In Las Claritas, villagers spoke in whispers of El Sistema (The System) - a euphemism for the Tren’s regime. “Here, nobody can bring in even a carton of eggs without their permission,” one local said. The gang decided who could work the mines, rented out heavy machinery, and even meddled in the local clinic – patients had to pay in gold to receive treatment, with Tren henchmen watching over the doctors.¹⁶

The scale of wealth was staggering: an informant detailed how a single profitable mine under Tren de Aragua control could yield 30 to 50 kilograms of gold per day, worth over $1.5 million daily at market prices.¹⁷

By extracting a share of this bonanza, Tren de Aragua was effectively printing money. They used the proceeds to buy more weapons, more vehicles, and to grease the palms of any officials in their way. Gold, in a sense, became the new cocaine for Venezuelan gangs – and Tren de Aragua was at the forefront of this “Wild West” gold rush, often clashing with other gangs and guerrilla groups for dominance of the mines.

Even as it dug into the gold trade, the Tren expanded into another booming illicit economy: human trafficking and smuggling. The mass exodus of Venezuelans provided a tragically rich opportunity to profit from the desperation of migrants. Tren de Aragua operatives set up shop at key crossing points of the migration routes.

On the Venezuela‑Colombia border, for instance, Tren members began selling “travel packages” to migrants – offers to guide groups safely across multiple borders on the long journey to places like Peru or Chile. For a hefty fee, the gang offered what it called guaranteed transit: they would bribe border guards, provide transport, and arrange safe houses along the way.

Of course, many who paid the Tren’s coyotes found the guarantees worthless – some were abandoned mid‑journey, others were delivered into exploitative situations. The gang soon set up outposts in Colombia. In the infamous Colombian border slum of La Parada, just over the bridge from Venezuela, Tren de Aragua’s predator instincts flourished. They began to recruit vulnerable young women among the migrants, luring them with false promises of jobs, then forcing them into prostitution rings that the gang managed in various cities.

In other cases, Tren de Aragua cells simply kidnapped migrant women and girls outright. The US Treasury would later report that Tren de Aragua traffickers move women across borders for sexual exploitation and debt bondage, and if any victim tries to escape, they are often killed – with the gang publicizing the murder to terrorize the others.¹⁸

By 2019 and 2020, authorities in Peru and Chile were uncovering Tren de Aragua‑run sex trafficking rings and massacres linked to the gang’s internecine disputes.

Extortion remained the gang’s bread‑and‑butter across all these enterprises. Whether it was a small shopkeeper in Maracay, a miner in Bolívar state, or a migrant family trying to send money back home, the Tren found a way to levy a tax.

By 2021, Colombian authorities acknowledged that the gang had infiltrated several cities, often by embedding themselves in Venezuelan migrant communities. In Bogotá, for example, police investigating street crimes found that some suspects invoked Tren de Aragua name – either truthfully as low‑level affiliates, or falsely to scare victims. The aura of fear around the gang began to travel faster than the gang itself.¹⁹

Across South America, petty Venezuelan criminals could claim “we are Tren de Aragua” to magnify their threat, even when they had no direct link to the gang.

In this way, Tren de Aragua evolved into both a concrete organization and a franchise of terror – a brand that could be used by freelancers and splinter groups, complicating efforts to pin down its true scope.

Collapse of a Stronghold

For years, Tocorón prison stood as a nearly untouchable fortress of Tren de Aragua, its existence an open secret that embarrassed Venezuelan authorities. By 2023, however, the political calculus had shifted. Nicolás Maduro’s government, eager to project strength and possibly responding to international pressure and domestic outrage, decided to strike at the heart of the beast.

On the morning of September 20, 2023, the operation began. A massive force – some 11,000 soldiers and special forces – encircled Tocorón and stormed the compound in a blitz. Resistance inside was surprisingly light; most of the rank‑and‑file inmates quickly surrendered or fled into the surrounding countryside.

In truth, Tren de Aragua’s leaders had seen the writing on the wall in the preceding days and executed a well‑timed escape. Tipped off by corrupt insiders, Guerrero and his top lieutenants vanished through the secret tunnels shortly before the first helicopters swooped in. When troops gained full control of Tocorón, they were stunned by what they found, confirming every rumor: the opulent gangland amenities (the zoo, pool, nightclub) were real, as were stockpiles of arms and ammunition. Photos circulated of soldiers posing with tigers and flamingos from the prison zoo, and of makeshift “VIP suites” with king‑size beds that had housed the pran’s inner circle.

The government declared victory. Interior Minister Remigio Ceballos announced that 88 gang members had been arrested in the raid and boasted that they had “completely dismantled” the Tren de Aragua. Authorities relocated over 1,600 prisoners to other facilities and began tearing down the luxury structures inside Tocorón.

For a moment, it appeared the pranato era might be coming to a close, with Maduro’s regime reasserting control over its long‑lost prisons. But the victory was not as complete as Caracas claimed.

Independent prison monitors noted that Tocorón’s inmate population was well over 3,000 – meaning roughly 1,400 prisoners were unaccounted for after the raid.²¹ Many of these included Tren de Aragua’s elite, who had slipped away into the night. Among them, of course, was Niño Guerrero. Almost immediately, sightings of Guerrero were rumored in border regions and neighboring countries. Colombian intelligence suspected he had crossed into Colombia, seeking refuge among criminal compatriots there. Other reports suggested some Tren figures might have fled south to Brazil or west to Peru. Wherever they went, the dispersal of so many trained criminals posed a new kind of threat: Tren de Aragua was now cut loose from its home base, but far from eradicated – its members were mobile, desperate, and looking to rebuild.

The fall of Tocorón effectively scattered the seeds of Tren de Aragua across Latin America. In Venezuela, the gang’s infrastructure took a serious hit – no longer could leaders direct operations with the same ease from their penthouse prison.

They also lost a degree of face: the raid showed that even the mighty Tren was not invincible on its own turf. But the gang had long anticipated such a scenario.

The diaspora of Venezuelan migrants provided ideal cover. In the chaotic wake of the Tocorón raid, many lower‑level gang members melted into the stream of refugees still leaving Venezuela by foot each day. Law enforcement in countries from Colombia to Chile received alerts about fugitives potentially entering their territory. Indeed, within weeks, Tren de Aragua suspects were arrested in Bolivia and Peru, and Colombian police intensified their surveillance of migrant‑heavy neighborhoods.

The crackdown also revealed something telling: four high‑ranking officials in charge of Tocorón were arrested for collaborating with the gang, and reportedly they named other government figures who had been on the Tren’s payroll. This confirmed what many had long assumed – the gang’s successes were greased by corruption at the top. Even as Venezuela’s government congratulated itself on finally moving against Tren de Aragua, it was impossible to ignore that Chavismo had nurtured this monster in the first place.

A Transnational Threat

In the aftermath of Tocorón, Tren de Aragua was forced to transform yet again. What had been a largely Venezuela‑centric operation fully morphed into a transnational criminal network without a fixed base. By 2024, the gang’s activities were documented in at least eight countries, leading security experts to compare it to notorious hemispheric gangs like MS‑13. Cells or offshoots of Tren de Aragua were implicated in crimes in Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, and the United States. No longer confined to one prison or one province, the Tren became a moving target – and a moving threat.

One of the most significant areas of scrutiny has been Mexico and the US‑Mexico borderlands. As Venezuelan migrants in huge numbers journeyed northward through Central America, Tren de Aragua operatives followed the flow, embedding themselves in migrant caravans and smuggling rings.

By late 2023, Mexican authorities began sounding the alarm that Venezuelan gang members, specifically from Tren de Aragua, were active on their soil.

In southern Mexico, reports emerged of Venezuelan migrants being kidnapped en masse by Tren de Aragua‑affiliated coyotes, held in stash houses until relatives paid ransom. In one raid near the Guatemala border, Mexican police freed 70 kidnapped migrants – all held by a Venezuelan‑run crew allegedly tied to Tren de Aragua.

Meanwhile, in Mexico City, an intelligence report leaked that the Tren had a presence in at least six states across Mexico, using the capital as a hub. They were said to engage in extortion among migrant neighborhoods and even offer themselves as hitmen for local drug cartels. However, there has been little evidence to back up these assertions.

The specter of Tren de Aragua thus became another headache for Mexican law enforcement already battling homegrown cartels. As one Mexican security chief put it in early 2024, “We have received many reports from Venezuelan migrants who were held captive by members of that gang.”

But so far, there is little to no evidence of embedded, coordinated cells from Tren de Aragua in Mexico.

Even more explosively, the United States began to report Tren de Aragua’s footprint on its soil. Throughout 2023, isolated incidents hinted at a new player in immigrant communities. In New York, police investigating a sex trafficking ring found Venezuelan enforcers coercing young women. In Chicago and Miami, arrests were made of Venezuelan nationals with ties to organized crime back home. But it was an incident in Aurora, Colorado – a suburb of Denver – that catapulted Tren de Aragua into US headlines. In the summer of 2023, a home security camera video surfaced online showing a squad of heavily armed, masked men kicking in the door of an Aurora apartment, in what appeared to be a targeted kidnapping or hit. Official reports identified them as Tren de Aragua.

Though local police cautioned that some reports were exaggerated, the viral video caught the attention of political leaders. Former US President Donald Trump seized on the incident, vowing on the campaign trail to liberate Aurora from what he portrayed as Venezuelan gangsters taking over the area.

Suddenly, Tren de Aragua became a talking point in US politics, fueling debates over border security and immigration. The rhetoric rapidly outpaced reality, however – there was certainly no takeover of American cities.

In response, US authorities ramped up a crackdown. In July 2024, President Joe Biden’s administration sanctioned Tren de Aragua as a significant Transnational Criminal Organization. This designation – grouping the Tren with the likes of MS‑13 and Italy’s Camorra – imposed financial freezes and offered $12 million in rewards for the capture of its top three leaders.

Once President Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025, the US government went even further by designating Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization – an extraordinary label for what began as a local mafia. The reasoning was clear: the gang’s violence was no longer contained by borders, and its willingness to exploit and murder innocent civilians (especially migrants) was deemed akin to terrorist tactics.

As of early 2025, Tren de Aragua stands at a crossroads. Its founder and figurehead, Niño Guerrero, remains at large, now internationally wanted and on Interpol red notices. The gang’s operational model has had to evolve: it can no longer rely on a single secure base or on Venezuelan state protection to the degree it once did.

Instead, it has adopted a decentralized, franchise‑like structure across countries, with semi‑autonomous cells linked by personal ties and shared brand identity. This also lowers the barrier to entry. Any criminal gang with Venezuelan roots can claim affiliation to Tren de Aragua. Conversely, law enforcement can conveniently get attention, access to special budgets, even get a promotion by claiming any Venezuelans arrested were Tren de Aragua.