VENEZUELA: The ‘Tren de Aragua’ Myth vs. Reality

In the midst of Venezuela’s rugged terrain, a notorious criminal organisation known as “Tren de Aragua” (the train of Aragua) began to form around 2014, emerging from the notorious Tocorón prison situated in the Aragua state, roughly 130km west of Caracas. While its origins may trace back even further under a different name, it was within the confines of this maximum-security prison that its power truly expanded. Leading this formidable gang was Héctor Guerrero Flores, famously referred to as “El Niño” Guerrero, who ruled over his armed followers with an iron grip. From within these prison walls, Guerrero and his associates orchestrated a profitable web of criminal enterprises that included drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, contract killing, and illegal mining. Despite this undeniable truth, security experts estimate that the influence and extent of the group, particularly in the US, has been overstated, while some have long suspected the Trump administration of weaponising unfounded claims which suggest that the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro and key leaders of the Venezuelan military are behind the Tren de Aragua, a gang which they describe as a transnational criminal organisation, even though it was dismanteld in 2019.

The Trump administration went as far as describing the presence of the gang in the U.S. as part of a destabilisation plot hatched by Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, even though there is currently no substantial evidence indicating a significant presence in the country, nor any established leadership structure, much less a coordinated campaign across multiple US states. In September 2023, the Maduro administration launched a large-scale operation with more than 10,000 security personnel to regain control of the Tocorón prison. While the operation was successful, a few key figures of the Tren de Aragua gang, such as “El Niño” Guerrero, either avoided capture or were able to flee. The myth of “El Niño” and his Tren de Aragua gang was born. All that was left for Trump’s A-Team was to compare the “Tren de Aragua” gang to the “Sinaloa Cartel”, which they did. What they omitted to tell you is that Tren de Aragua (TDA) was actually dismantled in 2019.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio boldly classified Tren de Aragua, along with seven other Latin American groups, primarily from Mexico, as foreign terrorist organisations – an inadequate term which many believe was used to justify the mass deportation of Venezuelans and US military actions against what are essentially profit-driven criminal enterprises. A recent attack on a suspected drug smuggling vessel, which the US asserts is linked to the Tren de Aragua group, has raised alarm among Venezuelans who suspect the US to be actively scheming for regime change in their country. Misleading videos depicting a US military invasion on the coast of Venezuela have made things worse, heightening anxiety among the population.

To find out more about the truths, lies, and myths about Tren de Aragua, we are featuring an article written by Juan Diego Quesada for the Spanish outlet El País…

IMAGE: “El Niño” Guerrero, the leader of Tren de Aragua, who escaped from a Venezuelan prison almost two years ago, and whose whereabouts are unknown (Source: Latercera)

Juan Diego Quesada reports for EL PAĪS…

Truths, lies, and myths about Tren de Aragua

The gang, born in a Venezuelan prison, is considered a powerful criminal organisation, but it is not capable of being a national security threat, as Donald Trump claims.

The history of Tren de Aragua is shrouded in mystery and has been the subject of plenty of speculation. It is known that it was founded sometime in the last decade by two inmates who came to command more than just the warden of the Venezuelan prison where they were held: they accumulated so much power that they built a zoo, a casino, and a swimming pool inside the complex. Very few details are known about who they really were or how they managed to prevail over other gangs, and there are few clues as to their current whereabouts. However, there are a few incontestable facts. In 10 years, the criminal organisation has expanded to almost every country in Latin America and has a presence in major cities in the United States. Its members have committed murders and constructed multimillion-dollar criminal enterprises involving drug trafficking, extortion, kidnappings, and human trafficking. They spread terror wherever they go, but their reach and importance have been exaggerated and used to criminalise other Venezuelans.

Experts maintain that Tren de Aragua in no way poses a national security issue for Washington, as Donald Trump claims. The Republican tycoon has seized on the myth to exaggerate the threat of Tren de Aragua and justify the policy of mass deportations he has undertaken since returning to the White House. Trump has compared the gang to the Sinaloa Cartel and even ISIS. It has provided one of the excuses he has used to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, which allows for the accelerated expulsion of immigrants, a mechanism used during World War II to imprison Japanese, Italians, and Germans in internment camps. And he has paid Nayib Bukele $20,000 for each of the 238 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, the maximum-security prison built by the Salvadoran president. There is not a single known case of a prisoner having left that jail, where there is no natural light or exercise yard, only a hallway with cells on either side. “Fusing a hardline approach to a criminal group of disputable clout with an excessively broad understanding of who its members might be, the Trump administration has in effect sought a pretext for speeding up mass summary deportations,” notes a report by the International Crisis Group, an international organisation focused on conflict resolution.

IMAGE: Guards at the CECOT transfer suspected members of Tren de Aragua on March 17 in Tecolula, El Salvador (Source: Presidency of El Salvador (EFE))

Trump claims that Tren de Aragua plans to invade the United States, even though it doesn’t have a known army or sufficient firepower to take even a town. “It’s not a group that has the capacity to be an enemy, not of the United States, but of any country,” says Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan investigative journalist who has written the first book about the gang, El Tren de Aragua: la banda que revoluciona el crimen organizado en América Latina (Tren de Aragua: the gang revolutionizing organized crime in Latin America), by phone. “It doesn’t even have a solid or very organised structure,” she adds.

That doesn’t mean it’s not a dangerous organisation, Rísquez warns. In a very short time, it has made its way into Mexico and Colombia, two countries with a very strong structural criminality that doesn’t tolerate the arrival of foreign competitors. In any case, Tren de Aragua is not easy to detect. Its membership has a fluid nature that allows the [group] to adapt to any environment. They’re so stealthy that their very existence has been questioned for years. Unlike Mexican cartels, they don’t publish videos in which they behead their enemies. Some arrests in Chile and Peru have shown the gang’s leaders to be discreet individuals who don’t have tattoos or flaunt the narco esthetic. “They are certainly to be feared. Now their existence is being used to stigmatise Venezuelans. But it’s not just Trump who has done this. Dina Boluarte in Peru has done it, too, or Claudia López when she was mayor of Bogotá. In Chile, there are many cases of xenophobia against the Venezuelan community. It’s not just a United States phenomenon,” the author explains.

IMAGE: Luis Alfredo Carrillo Ortiz, an alleged member of Tren de Aragua, is transferred by police officers on February 6 in Bogotá, Colombia. (Source:CARLOS ORTEGA (EFE))

The White House claims that Nicolás Maduro and key leaders of the Venezuelan regime are behind Tren de Aragua. Experts have not ruled out the possibility of some kind of negotiation between the criminal organisation and the Chavista government in the past, but to date, there is no evidence directly linking the two. “That lacks any semblance of truth,” says Tarek William Saab, Venezuela’s attorney general, over the phone. Saab is responsible for much of the repression against the Venezuelan opposition and citizens protesting against Maduro’s electoral fraud. “Tren de Aragua was dismantled here. Its leaders are in prison, dead, or subject to arrest warrants,” continues Saab. In his view, this alleged connection “is a fabrication intended to attack the Venezuelan government […] Cases of serious crimes attributed to Venezuelans are insignificant in the universe of crimes that occur in the United States,” adds the prosecutor.

The most high-profile crime linked to the organisation is that of Venezuelan dissident Ronald Ojeda. The former army lieutenant was kidnapped from his apartment in Santiago, Chile, and later tortured and murdered in February 2024. He had been in exile since 2017, when he participated in a military rebellion against Chavismo. Chilean prosecutors point to Tren de Aragua as the perpetrator of the crime and high-ranking Venezuelan government officials as responsible for giving the order. Specifically, Diosdado Cabello, the regime’s second-in-command, has been named. The intermediary, according to the same investigation, was Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero,” the gang’s top leader.

IMAGE: Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero,” leader of Tren de Aragua.

Only a blurry, black-and-white photo of Guerrero Flores exists. After serving two decades in prison, no one knows his current whereabouts. Colombian intelligence services suspect he moves between Colombia and Venezuela, across the vast border that separates the two countries. He is one of the most-wanted criminals in the world. Niño Guerrero could never have imagined that the man who occupies the Oval Office would compare him to other historic enemies of the United States, such as Osama Bin Laden or Pancho Villa. Even if only in his own imagination.

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Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2025/09/03/venezuela-the-tren-de-aragua-myth-vs-reality/