Derailing the Tren de Aragua

Shocking videos surfaced in late August of gun-wielding Venezuelan migrants storming an apartment building in the suburban city of Aurora, Colorado. One of the migrants, a 20-year-old, confessed that he is part of a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua (TdA, or “Train from Aragua”). The Aurora police department is now beefing up its budget to confront the increased crime spilling over from the sanctuary city next door in Denver.Aurora was just the beginning. In the past 11 months, there have been increasing reports of TdA activity in no fewer than 30 major cities across America. At least 100 federal investigations involving the TdA are underway, catching most of the U.S. law enforcement community by surprise. Shooting two New York City

police officers, building sex trafficking rings in Louisiana, and murdering the Georgia nursing student Laken Riley and 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray in Houston are just some of the high- profile violent crimes carried out by the TdA. Moreover, given that the Venezuelan government does not cooperate or provide any data on suspected criminals coming from their country into the United States, some law enforcement officers have dubbed the TdA as “ghost criminals” with little to identify them other than confessions and/ or tattoos. The Tren de Aragua has been around for more than a decade, first as a Venezuelan prison gang, then as a transnational criminal organization (TCO) spreading throughout Latin America, and now as a major street gang terrorizing cities in at least 20 states throughout America—and growing. Many comparisons have been drawn between the TdA and the transnational Salvadoran gang, La Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13). The TdA, however, is expanding much more quickly, likely due to its unique origin and state sponsorship in Venezuela. Unlike MS-13, which was born in Los Angeles in the 1980s, the TdA is foreign-born and was virtually nonexistent in America until 2021, distinct from other major TCOs such as MS-13 or the Mexican cartels. The TdA’s rapid expansion in the United States is a direct consequence of the Biden–Harris Administration’s failed immigration policies and lack of border enforcement.

KEY TAKEAWAYS The TdA’s goal is to establish territorial control and impose a criminal economy that connects illicit networks to penitentiaries in or near those neighborhoods. The new Trump Administration should work with Latin American partners to dismantle the TdA throughout the Western Hemisphere.

BACKGROUNDER No. 3876 | December 5, 2024

Washington DC: The Heritage Foundation, the Douglas ans Sarah Alison Center for National Security, 2024. 18p.