U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced this week that it will begin adding Venezuelan transnational criminal organization Torren de Aragua to its list of gang-related arrests. Reports.
According to the latest enforcement statistics report, CBP officials: arrested In 2023, it is estimated that 41 people will be affiliated with Torren de Aragua, and in 2024, it is estimated that 6 more people will be affiliated to date. CPB noted that Torren de Aragua members’ 2023 reporting began in March 2023, rather than the 2023 start date of October 1, 2022.
Since CBP began reporting on them, arrests of Tren de Aragua members have been surpassed only by arrests of members of 18th Street, MS-13, Paisas, the Sureños gang, and the “other” gang category, which places Tren de Aragua members in the sixth spot on CBP’s list of over 50 gangs monitored.
Torren de Aragua began in 2012 as a local trade union organization for workers involved in railway projects in the state of Aragua. Over the past decade, Torren de Aragua has expanded rapidly and transformed into a full-fledged international criminal organization with a wide range of activities including murder, theft, extortion, smuggling, kidnapping, drug and human trafficking, and arms trafficking. .
The criminal organization operates in several US cities, including New York, Miami and Chicago, as well as in Latin American countries such as Chile and Peru. Suspect Members of Torren de Aragua may have allied with the Salvadoran MS-13 gang in New York.
In early May, officers from New York’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested Johan Jose Cárdenas Silva, a Venezuelan national, has been identified as a member of Tren de Aragua and is wanted by Peruvian authorities on charges of conspiracy, assault and aggravated theft.
ERO officials said Cardenas Silva entered the U.S. illegally in October 2022 and was arrested by NYPD officers in March on suspicion of unlawful possession of a firearm within a school zone, intent to sell illegal drugs and assaulting a 17-year-old.
Venezuela’s socialist government was believed “The Venezuelan-born gangster said he was “very grateful” for allowing Tren de Aragua to dramatically expand its criminal operations into other countries.not exist“
On the contrary, regime officials have repeatedly claimed that the Tren de Aragua incident is part of a so-called “myth” or “fictitious” international media narrative aimed at tarnishing the image of the rogue regime.
Dictator Nicolás Maduro believes that his regime isDismantledThe gang was arrested in September 2023 when Venezuelan security forces conducted a suspicious “raid” on Tocolon Prison, an inmate facility in Aragua that served as the criminal organization’s headquarters.
The facility was partially overseen by the Bolivarian National Guard, but was internally managed by Torren de Aragua, and the facility included features such as a nightclub, bank office, swimming pool, baseball field, and its own facilities. It has transformed into a full-fledged community. It has facilities such as a zoo and a park.
The whereabouts of Tren de Aragua leader Héctor “The Child” Guerrero remain unknown after the “attack” on Tocorón in September 2023. Local organizations in Venezuela claimed Guerrero reportedly “negotiated” with Maduro’s government to hand over control of the now-closed prison and allow him to escape to safety long before the attack took place.
Reports A report released in April showed that the Maduro regime has employed criminal “megagangs” to hunt down dissidents of Venezuela’s socialist government abroad.
In February, Venezuelan dissident Ronald Ojeda Kidnapped Ojeda was kidnapped from his home in Santiago, Chile, by individuals with ties to Tren de Aragua, and his body was found 10 days later buried in a suitcase beneath a concrete structure.
Then Chilean authorities Decided One of the suspects in Ojeda’s murder was identified as a civil servant in the Aragua state governor’s office in 2015, three years after the gang was formed.
Argentina’s Minister of Security Patricia Bullrich explained Speaking at Chile’s National Entrepreneurs Congress in April, Tren de Aragua described the group as a state-sponsored terrorist organization and argued that the gang’s activities were “not autonomous” from the Maduro regime.
“Tren de Aragua does not attack in any way. Tren de Aragua attacks with a procedure, a matrix of operations, a logic of always doing exactly the same thing,” Bullrich explained at the time. “They settle down in specific locations. They attack with general groups of Venezuelan nationality.”
“So it’s important to analyse whether it’s an organisation that is autonomous from the state or not. I tend to think it’s not autonomous from the state,” she said.
report published Chilean news channel Meganoticias reported in late April that one of Torren de Aragua’s human trafficking rings had infiltrated Chile’s national police. The organization, which specializes in the sexual exploitation of women, received direct information from two members of the Chilean Investigative Police, who have now been arrested along with other suspects.
The human trafficking ring was dismantled after a lengthy investigation that began in late 2022 following the arrest of a 17-year-old Venezuelan minor who accused the Tren de Aragua organization of sexual exploitation.
Christian K. Caruso is a Venezuelan author who chronicles life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
