Trump says the American army destroyed a boat operated by Tren de Aragua off Venezuela. Here’s what you need to know about the gang.
The American deadly military strike in the Caribbean this week A boat allegedly transported from drugs From Venezuela is the last measure that President Trump has taken to fight the threat he sees from the Gang Tren of Aragua.
The White House offered little details during the Tuesday attack and insisted that the 11 people on board were gang members. The criminal organization, which retraces its roots to a Venezuelan prison, is not known to have an important role in global drug trafficking but for its involvement in contract killings, extentions and human smuggling.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth warned On Wednesday, the United States will keep assets positioned in the Caribbean and strike anyone “traditional in the waters we know is an designated Narco terrorist”.
US officials have not yet explained how the soldiers determined that those aboard the ship were members of Tren from Aragua. The strike represents a paradigm shift in the way in which the United States is willing to combat drug trafficking in the Western hemisphere and seems to send a combative message to the governments of the region as well as to drug traffickers.
Tren of Aragua’s operations propagate beyond Venezuela
Tren de Aragua created more than a decade ago in a infamous prison with hardened criminals in the central state of Aragua in Venezuela. The gang has widened in recent years, recruiting more than 7.7 million Venezuelans who have fled economic unrest in their country of origin and have emigrated to other countries in Latin America or in the United States
Trump and administration officials have always blamed the gang to be behind violence and illicit drug trafficking that afflict certain American cities. Trump repeated his complaint – contradicted by a declassified assessment of intelligence in the United States – which Tren de Aragua operated under the control of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
During his presidential campaign in 2024, Mr. Trump described Aurora, Colorado, as a “war zone” invaded by gang members. The city police chief rejected this characterizationExplaining that the gang was linked to violent crimes organized concentrated in three complexes of apartments in the city.
Aurora police chief Todd Chamberlain said this year that his department had counted a total of nine confirmed members of Tren from Aragua who have crossed Aurora in the past two years.
The size of the gang is not clear. Countries with large populations of Venezuelan migrants, including Peru and Colombia, have accused the group of being behind a wave of violence in the region.
The authorities of Chile first identified Gang operations in 2022. Prosecutors and investigators declared that the group initially engaged in the trafficking in human beings, organizing unauthorized border passages and sexual exploitation, but over time, members have expanded their activities to more violent crimes, such as removal, torture, extortion and drug trafficking.
While Tren de Argua dominated ketamine traffic in Chile, unlike other criminal organizations in Colombia, Central America and Brazil, it has no large -scale involvement in the smuggling of cocaine through international borders, according to Insight Crime, a reflection group which published last month a 64 -page report on the Gang based on two years of research.
“We have not found any direct participation of ADD in the transnational drug trade, although there are cases of them acting as subcontractors for other drug trafficking organizations,” said Jeremy McDermott, co-founder of Colombia of Insight Crime.
McDermott added that with affiliated cells distributed in Latin America, it would not be a huge leap for the gang one day plunge into the drug trade.
Bolivia without coastal and Colombia, with access to the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea and a border with Venezuela, are the best cocaine producers in the world.
Trump appointed Tren of Aragua a foreign terrorist organization
During his first day in power, Trump took measures to designate the gang a foreign terrorist organization alongside several Mexican drug cartels. The Biden administration had sanctioned the gang and offered $ 12 million in awards for the arrest of three of its leaders.
Mr. Trump’s executive decree accused the gang of working in close collaboration with the senior officials of Maduro – in particular the former vice -president and sole governor of the State of Aragua, Tierck El Aissami – to infiltrate migration flows, flood the United States of cocaine and conspiracy against the country. An American intelligence assessment published earlier this year found minimal contact between the gang and the low -level officials of the Venezuelan government, but said that there was no direct coordination between the Gang and the Government.
In March, Trump also declared the group an invasion force, invoke a law of the 18th century in wartime This allows the United States to expel non-citizens without any legal recourse. Below Act extraterrestrial enemiesthe administration sent more than 250 venezuelans men to A maximum security prison in SalvadorWhere they stayed beyond and without access to a lawyer until their July deportation in Venezuela.
A The panel of the American court of appeal this week ruled That Trump cannot use this law to accelerate the deportations of the persons that his administration accuses of being members of Tren of Aragua. A final decision on the issue will however be rendered by the Supreme Court.
The Trump administration alleged that the men expelled from the prison were members of the Gang Tren in Aragua, but provided little evidence. One of the justification managers used was that men had certain types of tattoos that meant gang membership, including crowns, clocks and other symbols. But the experts said Tattoos are not reliable markers of gang affiliation.
Trump quotes the gang to justify the military strike
The United States has not published the names and nationalities of the 11 people killed on Tuesday. He also did not offer an estimate of the amount of medication he says that the boat was carrying.
Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, told journalists on Wednesday that the US military would continue fatal strikes on alleged drug trafficking ships, but he dodged questions about the details of the strike, including if the inhabitants of the boat were warned before the attack.
But, he said, Trump “has the right, in demanding circumstances, to eliminate imminent threats to the United States.”
“If you are on a boat full of cocaine or fentanyl or something else, heading to the United States, you are an immediate threat to the United States,” journalists he told Mexico during a visit to Latin America.
The government of Venezuela, which has long minimized the presence of Tren of Aragua in the South American country, limited its reaction to the strike to the question of the veracity of a video showing the attack. The Minister of Communications, Freddy ñáñez, suggested that he had been created using artificial intelligence and described it as “almost caricatured animation, rather than a realistic representation of an explosion”.
Hegseth replied that the strike “was certainly not an artificial intelligence”, adding that he had watched live images of Washington while the strike was made.
The strike shows that the US government is “literally fatally serious” in its targeting of drug traffickers, said Ryan Berg, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies program, a Washington -based reflection group.
But he wondered if the link with Tren of Aragua had more to do with the “familiarity” that the Americans now have with the gang.
“I certainly hope that the American government will have intelligence and that we do not shoot first and do not ask questions later,” said Berg.
