The criminal gang known as the Tren de Aragua, which emerged from Venezuela’s prison system, has evolved beyond the limits of conventional criminal activity to become a transnational terrorist organization. According to experts, the group’s expansion across the Americas, which now poses one of the most significant threats to regional security, would not have been possible without the support of the Nicolás Maduro regime.
While the group’s rise has primarily been a focus in South American countries, it has also expanded its footprint into nearby Caribbean islands. The infiltration of the Tren de Aragua into Trinidad and Tobago’s underworld is fueling a “deeper national security crisis,” Defense Minister Wayne Sturge said in late July, warning that local gangs are being “absorbed into a dangerous transnational network” and that this shift has led to a “different level of violence.”
In an April report, nongovernmental organization Transparencia Venezuela highlighted that the group has a presence in dozens of countries of the region, including the Dutch Caribbean Islands of Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire, as well as Trinidad and Tobago. A recent report from InSight Crime indicates that the group is poised to expand to the Caribbean nations of Guyana and Suriname due to their proximity to the town of Las Claritas in Venezuela’s Bolívar state, where it controls mining activities.
In February, the U.S. government designated the Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization, a classification soon adopted by Argentina and Trinidad and Tobago. This was followed by a formal designation by the Peruvian Congress and a petition from several countries to the Organization of American States (OAS) to officially declare the group as such.
Orders from Miraflores
The kidnapping and murder in Chile of Retired Venezuelan Army Lieutenant Ronald Ojeda, who opposed the Maduro regime, has put a spotlight on the activities of the Tren de Aragua. The crime, carried out in February 2024, shocked Chilean society.
In January 2025, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Héctor Barros, publicly stated that the perpetrators were members of the criminal group born in Venezuela’s Tocorón prison, but that “behind the crime of Ronald Ojeda is the Venezuelan regime.” The international community has since cooperated with Chilean authorities in locating and arresting those involved in the Ojeda case. In February, the United States reported the arrest of Edgar Benítez Rubio, alias El Fresa, wanted for his role in this crime. That same month, Luis Alfredo Carrillo, alias Gocho, also implicated in the murder, was arrested in Colombia.
According to former Venezuelan judicial police commissioner Iván Simonovis, the Ojeda case shows that the Tren de Aragua can no longer be solely seen as a group of criminals motivated by financial gain. “This is part of a geopolitical strategy that originated in Miraflores. It is now a criminal group that is moving from one place to another, that is, it’s an organization designed to cause terror and destabilize. Consequently, it must be treated as such,” he told Diálogo.
For Simonovis, the relationship between the Venezuelan dictatorship and the Tren de Aragua is similar to that between the Iranian regime and terrorist groups such as Hezbollah or Hamas. “The regime was outsourcing things it couldn’t do to the Tren de Aragua, and it decided to commission that group to carry out crimes,” he said.
In September 2023, Venezuelan regime troops stormed the Tocorón prison, the Tren de Aragua’s operational base. However, the group’s top leader, Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias Niño Guerrero, and his lieutenants had already left the prison, and have so far not been captured. According to a report from online magazine Small Wars Journal, the raid on the prison may have deprived the Venezuelan terrorist group of one of its sources of income, but it did not put an end to its activities. The organization’s leadership, having remained intact, has since fueled a violent expansion beyond Venezuela’s borders, with profits from human trafficking, among other crimes.
According to Simonovis, Niño Guerrero has remained in Venezuela since then, allegedly subordinate to Venezuelan Army Colonel Alexander Granko Arteaga, an officer identified by the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela as a commander of the group of torturers within the Military Counterintelligence General Directorate (DGCIM).
The link between the Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan regime was corroborated by analyst Antonio de la Cruz, executive director of think tank Inter-American Trends. He stressed that the U.S. Attorney General’s Office has also reached this conclusion.
“With regard to the members of the Tren de Aragua, there are links to Mexican cartels. And the other thing they have determined is that they are an arm of Maduro and Diosdado Cabello,” de la Cruz told Diálogo.
This hierarchy, de la Cruz said, establishes a relationship with another group also operating from Venezuela: the Cartel of the Suns, dedicated to drug trafficking, and allegedly involving Maduro, Cabello, and head of defense, General Vladimir Padrino. In July, the U.S. Treasury added the Cartel of the Suns to the list of specially designated global terrorists, noting its support to the Tren de Aragua.
For de la Cruz, the designation of the Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization could allow for “special actions” to be taken against its members — wherever they may be.
