The fight against the Tren de Aragua has been intensifying in Latin America with several feats, thanks in part to increased cooperation and intelligence exchange of partner nations’ security forces. The Tren de Aragua, which started in Venezuela and whom Argentina and the United States designated as a terrorist organization, has been spreading its tentacles and wreaking havoc throughout the region.
In the Chilean northern province of Arica, the criminal court handed down on March 6 prison sentences adding up to roughly 560 years to 34 members of Los Gallegos, a cell of the Tren de Aragua, Chilean daily La Tribuna reported. The convicted men, 31 Venezuelans and three Chileans, were found guilty of crimes such as criminal association, drug and arms trafficking, kidnapping, and homicide, among others.
In a statement, the Chilean Public Prosecutor’s Office described the trial as “historic” and said it was one of the “most relevant at the national level in the fight against transnational organized crime.”
In another major operation in the Chilean capital, Santiago, in late January, agents from the Public Prosecutor’s Office dismantled the Tren de Aragua Pirates, another cell of the criminal group that carried out kidnappings, homicides, and extortion between 2023 and 2024.
This gang is linked to the murder of Carabineros Major Emmanuel Sánchez in Santiago, who was shot down in April 2024 as he attempted to stop a crime, and to the murder of former Venezuelan military officer, Lieutenant Ronald Ojeda, a dissident of the Nicolás Maduro regime, who was killed in February 2024 near Santiago, “allegedly upon orders of Diosdado Cabello,” Chilean news site Bio-Bío reported.
Chilean authorities carried out 21 raids in the Santiago metropolitan region, leading to the dismantling of the Pirates. The raids included prison searches, where inmates linked to the gang are held, Héctor Barros, chief prosecutor of the Organized Crime and Homicide Teams, told Chilean daily La Tercera. In total, police forces arrested 23 criminals.
The Pirates operated in Chile under the command of Adrián Gómez, alias El Turco, who was arrested in the United States in December 2024, Argentine news site Infobae reported. Other members of the Pirates included Larry Álvarez, alias Changa, and Carlos Gómez, alias El Bobby, who were arrested in Colombia.
“Criminal organizations have increased their crimes. They are now much more violent and harmful to society,” Chief Carolina Namor, head of International Cooperation at the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI), told Diálogo. “The effectiveness of the PDI in pursuing criminals from the Tren de Aragua in Chile makes them feel the pressure and move to other countries, where fortunately interagency coordination is having an effect, and they are being arrested.”
Chief Namor used the arrest of the criminals involved in the kidnapping and death of Venezuelan Lt. Ojeda as an example. “To achieve this, we worked very closely with the Colombian National Police and the FBI of the United States,” she said. Lt. Ojeda’s decomposed body was found in a suitcase, encased in concrete, days after his kidnapping in the Chilean capital in February 2024.
In Colombia, in late February, authorities also dealt an important blow to the Tren de Aragua, by capturing two key figures in Santander department: Jeison Lorca Salazar, and Derwin Isaías Chávez Mora, both involved in drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, and homicide, Infobae reported.
Lorca is believed to be the second most important leader of the Tren Aragua in Colombia. For his part, Chávez was among the group members’ most wanted by international authorities and Interpol, Infobae reported.
Argentina is also moving fast to eradicate the international gang’s presence. In February, the Argentine Ministry of Security classified the Tren de Aragua a terrorist organization, “because it represents a serious and multifaceted threat to national security.” The move places the gang on the Public Registry of Individuals and Entities Linked to Acts of Terrorism, which includes al-Qaeda and individuals linked to Hezbollah and the AMIA bombing, among others.
“This means freezing assets, blocking operations and total persecution,” Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said via X. “We are decisively confronting the mafias […]; we are not going to allow this criminal organization to continue spreading terror in our country.”
The measure taken by the Argentine government follows that of the U.S. government, which added the Tren de Aragua to its list of global terrorist organizations.
The Tren de Aragua has spread throughout the region, “adapting to the urban criminal dynamics of each city where they embed themselves,” InSight Crime, an organization that studies crime in Latin America indicated.
“The Tren de Aragua […] are interested in precarious territories, where there is a lot of poverty and marginality,” Alejandro Arévalo, a researcher at Chile’s National Academy of Political and Strategic Studies, told Diálogo. “It is convenient for them to settle in places with these characteristics, because there they can torture, generate mechanisms of pressure on the neighbors to settle there and develop their illicit activities.”
In September 2024, then Undersecretary of the Interior Manuel Monsalve and then Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Chile Richard Yoneoka, now Chargé d’Affaires, met to discuss border security and countering organized crime, agreeing to collaborate on border control, to improve the security of Chileans.
“We are positive as an institution that inter-police coordination will bring more achievements and captures of the members of the Tren de Aragua in the region,” Chief Namor concluded. “It’s crucial to coordinate police work and take it to different countries in an integrated, combined, professional, safe, serious way, for everyone involved in the process. Not only for the country, but for the entire region.”
