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In September 2023, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro despatched 11,000 troopers to storm the Tocorón Jail within the northern state of Aragua. However they weren’t dispatched to quell a riot.

The troops have been taking again management of the jail from a strong gang that had turned it into one thing of a resort, full with zoo, eating places, nightclub, betting store and swimming pool.

However the gang’s boss, Hector Guerrero Flores, escaped.

Now the Tren de Aragua organisation is within the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s drive to take away overseas criminals from the US as a part of his pledge to ship mass deportations of unlawful immigrants.

Here’s what we do learn about Tren de Aragua.

Tren de Aragua was initially a jail gang that Hector Guerrero Flores changed into a “transnational prison organisation”, in accordance the US state division, which is providing a reward of $5m for data that would result in his arrest.

Guerrero Flores, 41, was out and in of Tocorón for greater than a decade.

He escaped in 2012 by bribing a guard and was then rearrested in 2013. Upon his return, he reworked the jail right into a leisure advanced.

And he expanded the gang’s affect far past the jail’s gates, seizing management of gold mines in Bolivar state, drug corridors on the Caribbean coast, and clandestine border crossings between Venezuela and Colombia, in accordance with the US state division.

The gang’s identify interprets as “Prepare of Aragua”, and it might have come from a railroad staff’ union. Aragua, on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, is among the nation’s 23 states.

Luis Izquiel, a criminology professor on the Central College of Venezuela, instructed the BBC that the union managed a bit of the railway that crossed Aragua and would extort contractors and promote jobs on work websites.

Tren de Aragua has underneath Guerrero Flores’s management expanded into Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile and diversified from extorting migrants into sex-trafficking, contract killing and kidnapping.

By most accounts, Tren de Aragua unfold out of Venezuela when the nation entered a humanitarian and financial emergency in 2014 that made crime much less worthwhile, and now’s believed to have nodes in eight different nations, together with the US.

The group, partly, operates by forming alliances and partnerships with native prison organisations.

In Ecuador, for instance, the gang is believed to work with teams loosely affiliated with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, whereas in Colombia some have alleged that they’ve labored with members of the left-wing Nationwide Liberation Military guerrilla group, or ELN.

Ronna Rísquez, a journalist who has written the definitive guide on the group, estimated final yr that the organisation has 5,000 members and annual earnings of between $10m and $15m.

Others have estimated its membership at roughly half that determine.

A prosecutor in Chile has referred to as Tren de Aragua a “brutal organisation” that makes use of homicide and torture to attain its goals.

Whereas it’s smaller or much less rich than different prison teams in Latin America, Tren de Aragua is usually in comparison with the ultra-violent MS-13 gang from El Salvador.

Tren de Aragua members have been accused of dressing up as Chilean cops after which kidnapping Venezuelan opposition army officer Ronald Ojeda, whose physique was discovered buried in Santiago, Chile, in March 2024.

The US Treasury, underneath then-President Joe Biden, sanctioned Tren de Aragua final summer time, saying that the gang was concerned in sex-trafficking throughout the US border.

On Saturday, Trump invoked the 18th Century Alien Enemies Act as he accused Tren de Aragua of “perpetrating, making an attempt, and threatening an invasion of predatory incursion towards the territory of the US”.

He stated the gang was engaged in “irregular warfare” towards the US on the route of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Shortly after taking workplace in January, Trump additionally declared Tren de Aragua a overseas terrorist organisation, putting the group in the identical class because the Islamic State and Boko Haram, Nigeria’s Islamist militants.

In Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois, alleged Tren de Aragua members have been arrested in latest months and charged with crimes starting from homicide to kidnapping.

In a single notable instance, two suspects arrested for beating a police officer in Instances Sq. have been believed to be members of the gang, in accordance with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

A Tren de Aragua member can be suspected within the kidnap and homicide of a 48-year outdated Florida resident – a Venezuelan nationwide – in early 2024, in accordance with native media experiences.

Final summer time NBC Information reported that the Division of Homeland estimated that 600 Venezuelan migrants within the US had connections to the gang, with 100 believed to be members.

As of 2023, there have been 770,000 Venezuelans residing within the US, representing barely lower than 2% of all immigrants within the county, in accordance with the Migration Coverage Institute.

Most had been given protected standing by the US authorities.

Customs and Border Safety experiences encountering 313,500 Venezuelan migrants on the border in 2024.

Trump has usually stated that Venezuela’s crime price has fallen to document lows as a result of the nation “emptied out its prisons” by sending migrants to the US.

Statistics stored by the Venezuelan Violence Observatory recommend this may be partly true, with Venezuela’s homicide price falling considerably between 2015 and 2023, with some analysts saying that waves of migration – together with gang members – created an improved safety scenario in Venezuelan cities.