Venezuelan street gang terrorizing U.S. migrant communities

Police in Aurora, Colo., have linked 10 individuals to a Venezuela-based transnational criminal group known as Tren de Aragua, or the Aragua Train. So far, officers have arrested eight of the gang members on charges that include attempted burglary, aggravated assault, attempted murder, kidnapping, and motor vehicle theft.

A representative from the Aurora Police Department confirmed to WORLD that officers have investigated reports of the gang committing violence against members of the migrant community. Neighboring Denver has housed more than 30,000 migrants in hotels over the past two years, many of them Venezuelans who then made their way to Aurora.

On Sept. 11, ​​Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and City Council member Danielle Jurinsky, who chairs the city’s public safety committee, released a joint statement responding to concerns about the gang. Two weeks earlier, the city made national headlines when a surveillance video captured heavily armed men entering an apartment and hurrying through the halls of the complex. In the statement, local officials said police have arrested gang members in Denver and Arapahoe County. Law enforcement agencies have established a special task force “in collaboration with Aurora and other local, state, and federal partners,” according to the statement.

Law enforcement has only recently identified the group’s presence in the United States and, so far, its crimes appear relatively isolated, but Tren de Aragua has terrorized Venezuelan migrant communities across South America for years.

How did the group start ?

Tren de Aragua originated as a prison gang in the Venezuelan state of Aragua. The group’s center of operations was in the massive Tocorón prison, from which leaders expanded the gang’s influence outside the prison walls, even overseeing units in at least three other South American countries, according to the think tank InSight Crime. Gang members and their families extorted inmates and transformed the prison into a lavish fortress that included a swimming pool and several restaurants.

In September 2023, 11,000 Venezuelan police and army personnel stormed the gang’s prison headquarters but failed to dismantle its operations. Top leaders escaped the prison prior to the raid as a result of a likely tip off or negotiated exits, Insight Crime reported. The group has evolved to capitalize on changing conditions, extorting migrant enclaves in surrounding nations and building new criminal enterprises throughout South America.

As Tren de Aragua has grown, though, Venezuela’s economy has disintegrated, fueling unrest and, in return, government repression. According to the Migration Policy Institute, since 2015 more than 7 million Venezuelans have fled their homeland—roughly 25 percent of the entire Venezuelan population. Members of Tren de Aragua migrated too, seeking profit outside their impoverished nation in neighboring Colombia, Peru, and Chile. Last year, the United States created a transnational intelligence group with Peru to track the gang’s activity in multiple countries. Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil have also reported the gang’s presence, according to sources that spoke with InSight Crime.

Bram Ebus, a consultant for the International Crisis Group who researches organized crime in Latin America, said the group pales in comparison to other organized Mexican and Colombian crime syndicates. Often, local Colombian police exaggerate Tren de Aragua’s activity, Ebus pointed out, to distract from their own underhanded dealings with Colombian gang leaders.

Whom do they target?

While other transnational criminal groups such as the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel primarily traffic in drugs, Tren de Aragua specializes in another commodity: people. As millions of fellow Venezuelans fled, the gang assumed control of many informal border crossings between Venezuela and Colombia, Insight Crime learned. It also smuggled migrants and trafficked women for sexual exploitation.

“They have joined this exodus of people,” said Michael Paarlberg, an associate fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies. As a political science associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, Paarlberg specializes in organized crime in Latin America. “Migrants are often vulnerable people, and they are easily victimized and easily exploited,” he said.

What many people don’t understand about transnational criminal groups like Tren de Aragua is that they “primarily prey on their own communities,” Paarlberg noted.

The gang provides high-cost transportation services, in some cases offering package deals that include accommodations and food along the way to other South and Central American countries, Mexico, and, more recently, the United States. Members often control low-cost housing along migration routes. The line between smuggling and trafficking is often blurry, Paarlberg noted. While migrants may initially seek out their services and pay what they thought was the required fee, the gang members may end up “charging them more than they promised or they are demanding that they do something to work off a debt,” effectively forcing migrants into indentured servitude, he said.

When did the group arrive in the United States?

While most Venezuelans initially sought refuge in neighboring countries, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border over the past few years, and Tren de Aragua members have been among them.

Some of these Venezuelan immigrants who initially settled in other South American nations decided to head north to escape the gang’s escalating violence and threats, investigators with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project learned.

“Only relatively recently have some Venezuelans been reaching the U.S. border and seeking asylum in the U.S.,” Paarlberg said. “The vast majority of Venezuelans who have left Venezuela have not ended up in the United States and are not trying to get to the United States.”

Still, border authorities encountered about 190,000 Venezuelan individuals attempting to cross the border illegally in 2022. More Venezuelans than any other single nationality crossed the border in September 2023. Last year, President Joe Biden created a temporary parole program for up to 30,000 immigrants per month from Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cuba who have financial sponsors living in the United States. The administration paused the program in August after an internal report found evidence of sponsorship fraud and human trafficking concerns. Later that month, officials said the administration would restart the program.

In July, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions against Tren de Aragua and designated the group a transnational criminal organization. Brian Nelson, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement that the department’s designation “underscores the escalating threat [Tren de Aragua] poses to American communities.”

Members of the gang are now suspected in more than 100 police cases across the United States, a high-ranking Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told The Wall Street Journal. Law enforcement suspects the gang in sex trafficking in Louisiana, the shootings of two New York City police officers, and the murder of a former Venezuelan police officer in South Florida.

On Monday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization and announced the state is launching a strike team to identify and arrest members. “They are involved in the extortion, kidnappings, rape, assaults, and sex trafficking of migrants,” said Texas Department of Public Safety director Steve McCraw, who joined the press conference.

Some reports of the gang’s activity have been overblown or disputed. Last week, the county attorney’s office in El Paso, Texas, filed an injunction to temporarily shut down Gateway Hotel after reports of illegal activity in the building. Initial reports mentioned Tren de Aragua. A spokesperson for the office clarified in an email to WORLD that “some criminal activity may have been associated with individuals involved in gangs.” But the legal action “was not prompted by criminal activities attributed to any specific group or gang,” according to the county attorney’s statement.

“They are not really a problem in the way that we have seen in other countries of Latin America,” Paarlberg noted. “Partly because their numbers are so small, and partly because, frankly, our police are better.”

How does the vetting process work at the border?

It can be difficult to determine whether an individual is a member of a criminal group if they do not have a criminal history in the United States or if their home country does not share its criminal data with the U.S. government, said Ammon Blair, a senior fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Blair is a 20-plus year army veteran with over 10 years of experience as a Border Patrol agent in the Rio Grande valley.

When agents encounter immigrants in the field, they take down their biographical information and country of nationality. But “it’s almost impossible to determine whether they belong to Tren de Aragua or not,” Blair said, since many immigrants falsify or discard their identification documents.

Agents can upload an individual’s fingerprint to the National Crime Information Center, a criminal database shared between all 50 states and the federal government. ICE and its investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations, can also share biometric data on immigrants once they enter the country with state and local law enforcement.

Authorities can also check their information against records at the International Criminal Police Organization. The United States has mutual agreements with select nations to share information about criminal histories. But these databases only document individuals who have already committed a crime, and ICE may be forced to release an individual on an alternative to detention, such as an ankle monitor, before these lengthy checks are completed due to a lack of detention space, Blair said.

A Border Patrol spokesperson told CNN Español that agents detained 38 possible Tren de Aragua members between October 2022 and October 2023. One Tren de Aragua member who crossed the border illegally was released into the country and ordered to report to an ICE office where his removal proceedings case was eventually dismissed. Less than a month later, he was the prime suspect in the shooting of two New York City police officers.

In an emailed statement to WORLD, Homeland Security Investigations spokesman Mike Alvarez said the agency is “aware of recent violent crime and arrests involving individuals allegedly associated with Tren de Aragua gang and continues to monitor emerging trends and assist partner law enforcement agencies in more than 34 regions throughout the United States and around the globe.”