What is the Venezuelan band directed by Trump?

In September 2023, Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro sent 11,000 soldiers to storm the Tokoron prison in the northern state of Aragua. But they were not sent to suppress a rebellion.

The troops took control of the prison from a powerful gang that turned it into something like a resort, complete with a zoo, restaurants, a nightclub, a betting shop and a pool.

But gang chief Hector Guerrero Flores escaped.

The Tren de Aragua organization is now in the crossing of President Donald Trump’s pursuit of removing foreign criminals from the United States as part of his promise to deliver mass deportation to illegal immigrants.

Here’s what we know about Tren de Aragua.

Tren de Aragua was originally a prison gang that Hector Guerrero Flores has become a “transnational criminal organization”, according to the US State Department, which offers a $ 5 million award for information that can lead to his arrest.

The 41 -year -old Guerrero Flores has been in Tocoron for more than a decade.

He fled in 2012 by bribing a guard and then damaged in 2013. After returning, he turned the prison into a free time complex.

And he expanded the gang’s influence far beyond the gates of prison, taking control of gold mines in the state of Bolivar, drug corridors on the Caribbean and secret border crossings between Venezuela and Colombia, according to the US State Department.

The name of the gang is translated as a “Aragua Train” and may have come from the Union of Railways.

Luis Itskiel, a professor of criminology at the Central University of Venezuela, told the BBC that the Union controls part of the railway that has passed through Aragua and will blackmail artists and sell jobs to workplaces.

Tren de Aragua under the guidance of Guerrero Flores has expanded to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile and diversified by the extortion of migrants in sex trafficking, killing contracts and abduction.

On most accounts, Tren de Aragua was distributed by Venezuela as the country entered the humanitarian and economic emergency in 2014, which made crime less profitable and is now thought to have nodes in eight other countries, including the United States.

Ron Rishkes, a journalist who wrote the final book about the group, estimated last year that the organization has 5,000 members and annual profits between $ 10 and $ 15 million.

Others have evaluated his membership approximately half of this figure.

A Chile prosecutor called Tren de Aragua a “brutal organization” that uses murder and torture to achieve its goals.

Although smaller or less rich than other criminal groups in Latin America, Tren de Aragua is often compared to the MS-13 ultra-nasilial band by El Salvador.

The members of Tren de Aragua are accused of lining as Chilean police and then abducted a military officer from Venezuelan opposition Ronald Ogoda, whose body was found buried in Santiago, Chile, in March 2024.

The US Department of Finance, under President Joe Biden then, sanctioned Tren de Aragua last summer, saying that the gang was involved in sexual traffic across the US border.

On Saturday, Trump refers to the Law on Enemy of the Alien Enemies of the 18th Century, as he accused Tren de Aragua of “performing, experience and threatening an invasion of a predatory invasion of the territory of the United States.”

He said the gang was engaged in an “irregular war” against the United States in the direction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Shortly after taking office in January, Trump also declared Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organization, placing the group in the same category as the Islamic State and Boko Haram, Islamist Nigeria fighters.

In Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois, the alleged members of Tren de Aragua have been arrested in recent months and accused of crimes ranging from murder to abduction.

Last summer, NBC News announced that the Ministry of Home estimated that 600 Venezuelan migrants in the United States had ties with the band, with 100 being thought to be members.

By 2023, 770,000 Venezuelans lived in the United States, representing slightly less than 2% of all immigrants in the county, according to the Institute for Migration Policy.

Most have received protected status from the US government.

Customs and Border Protection Reports, which meet 313,500 Venezuelan migrants on the border in 2024.