{"id":8915,"date":"2024-09-25T16:53:21","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T20:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=8915"},"modified":"2024-09-25T16:53:21","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T20:53:21","slug":"tren-de-aragua-gang-started-in-venezuelas-prisons-and-now-spreads-fear-in-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=8915","title":{"rendered":"Tren De Aragua Gang Started in Venezuela\u2019s Prisons and Now Spreads Fear in the Us"},"content":{"rendered":"
Soldiers raid the Tocor\u00f3n Penitentiary Center, in Tocor\u00f3n, Venezuela, Sept. 20, 2023. The Tren de Aragua gang originated at the prison. (AP Photo\/Ariana Cubillos, File)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Former federal agent Wes Tabor says his phone has been lighting up with calls from police departments around the U.S. for advice on how to combat the growing threat from the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.<\/p>\n

Tabor was in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration\u2019s office in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas in 2012 when the gang was still new and when Tabor had barely heard of it.<\/p>\n

Venezuela had long been a major transit zone for cocaine smuggled by Colombian guerrillas, with a leftist government that had close ties to some of America\u2019s top adversaries, from Iran to Russia. So the homegrown street gang, although a concern to U.S. Embassy personnel in their daily movements around Venezuela\u2019s dangerous capital, was not considered a major security risk to the United States.<\/p>\n

Now, more than a decade later, the gang has become a menace even on American soil and has exploded into the U.S. presidential campaign amid a spree of kidnappings, extortion and other crimes throughout the western hemisphere tied to a mass exodus of Venezuelan migrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat sets this group apart is the level of violence,\u201d said Tabor, now retired from the DEA. \u201cThey\u2019re aggressive, they\u2019re hungry and they don\u2019t know any boundaries because they\u2019ve been allowed to spread their wings without any confrontation from law enforcement until now.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s starting to change.<\/p>\n

In July, the Biden administration sanctioned the gang<\/a><\/span>, placing it alongside MS-13 from El Salvador<\/a><\/span> and the Mafia-styled Camorra from Italy on a list of transnational criminal organizations and offering $12 million in rewards for the arrest of three leaders. Then, this month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared Tren de Aragua a Tier 1 threat, directing state police to target the gang and paving the way for stiffer penalties for members. Other states may soon follow suit.<\/p>\n

Gang gains notoriety in the US<\/strong><\/p>\n

Focus on the gang jumped after footage from a security camera surfaced on social media showing a group of heavily armed men brazenly entering an apartment in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado.<\/p>\n

That prompted former President Donald Trump to vow to \u201c liberate Aurora<\/a><\/span> \u201d from Venezuelans he falsely said were \u201ctaking over the whole town.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police have called the reports exaggerated<\/a><\/span> but nonetheless acknowledged that it is investigating 10 gang members for involvement in several crimes, including a July homicide.<\/p>\n

Among them is a Venezuelan who was arrested in another Denver suburb and accused of helping someone else steal a motorcycle and pointing an AR-15 at a tow truck driver who had asked him to move his car. Another was suspected of stealing designer Gucci sunglasses in Boulder and has a multi-state criminal record, including for carjacking and vehicular assault.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, from the heartland to major cities like New York and Chicago, the gang has been blamed for sex trafficking, drug smuggling and police shootings as well as the exploitation of migrants.<\/p>\n

The size of the gang and the extent to which its actions are coordinated across state lines and with leaders believed to be outside the U.S. are unclear.<\/p>\n

The Tren originated in an infamous prison<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Tren, which means \u201ctrain\u201d in Spanish, traces its origin more than a decade ago to an infamously lawless prison with hardened criminals in the central state of Aragua. It nonetheless has expanded in recent years as more than 8 million desperate Venezuelans fled economic turmoil under President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s rule<\/a><\/span> and migrated to other parts of Latin America or the U.S.<\/p>\n

One of the founders is Hector Guerrero, who was jailed years ago for killing a police officer, according to InSight Crime, a think tank that monitors organized crime in the Americas. Guerrero, better known by his alias El Nino, Spanish for the \u201cboy,\u201d later escaped and then was recaptured in 2013. He fled prison again more recently, as Venezuela\u2019s government tried to reassert control over its prison population, and is believed to be residing in Colombia.<\/p>\n

Authorities in countries such as Chile, Peru and Colombia \u2014 all with large populations of Venezuelan migrants \u2014 have accused the group of being behind a spree of violence in a region that has long had some of the highest murder rates<\/a><\/span> in the world. Some of its more sensationalist crimes, including the beheading and burying alive of victims, have spread panic in poor neighborhoods where the gang extorts local businesses and illegally charges residents for \u201cprotection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republican lawmakers make an issue of the gang<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now there are concerns about its ruthless tactics reaching U.S. shores as members infiltrate the nearly 1 million Venezuelan migrants who have crossed into the U.S. in recent years.<\/p>\n

Eleven Republicans led by Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week calling for a coordinated strategy from the Biden administration to combat the gang.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe administration\u2019s weak enforcement of immigration laws allows gangs, like Tren de Aragua, to control routes and exploit migrants,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n

Venezuelan officials express bafflement<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, back in Venezuela, officials have watched the attention on Tren de Aragua in the U.S. and have expressed their bafflement.<\/p>\n

A year ago, President Nicolas Maduro\u2019s government claimed it had dismantled the gang after retaking control of the prison where the group was born. In July, Foreign Minister Yv\u00e1n Gil declared that the Tren de Aragua is a \u201cfiction created by the international media.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, Diosdado Cabello, a longtime ruling party-leader, linked the criminal group to an alleged plot backed by the U.S. and the opposition to kill Maduro and some of his allies following the July 28 presidential election.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States knows how to carry out destabilization operations,\u201d Cabello said Friday when he announced the arrest of several people, including a U.S. citizen, for their alleged roles in the foiled anti-Maduro plan. \u201cWhy don\u2019t they stop them?\u201d<\/p>\n

– Joshua Goodman, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former federal agent Wes Tabor says his phone has been lighting up with calls from police departments around the U.S. for advice on how to combat the growing threat from the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Tabor was in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration\u2019s office in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas in 2012…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":8917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/371879d\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5616x3739+0+2\/resize\/820x546!\/format\/webp\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2Fda%2F17%2Fdd38f7cd3ad7cc0b5a24c43e1b6a%2F1408c521d7244565b335b0abd2fcaec8","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8918,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8915\/revisions\/8918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}