What to Know About Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan Gang Trump Is Targeting for Deportations

The gang is suspected of being used by the Venezuelan government to destabilize surrounding nations and the United States.

Police escort alleged members of Tren de Aragua deported by the U.S. government to be imprisoned in El Salvador as part of an agreement with the Salvadoran government, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 16, 2025. Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia/Handout via Reuters

The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua made headlines last year when stories emerged alleging its members had taken control of several apartment buildings in a Colorado suburb, extorting and terrorizing local residents.

The gang has been operating for over a decade but has recently come under scrutiny as President Donald Trump has classified them as a state-sponsored terrorist organization with ties to Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and implemented mass deportations of their members using a 200-year old law known as the Alien Enemies Act.

Here’s what to know.

Origins

Tren de Aragua (TdA) originated in Tocoron prison in the Venezuelan state of Aragua, which had been taken over by its inmates. The name is Spanish for “Train of Aragua,” and it is possible that some of its original members were disaffected rail workers.

Since its inception around 2014, TdA has snaked out to other South American countries, and has been linked to a wide slate of crimes including drugs, human trafficking, predatory lending, and extortion schemes in Colombia, Chile, and Peru.

Chilean officials blame the group for the April 2024 kidnap and murder of former Venezuelan lieutenant Ronald Ojeda, a dissident from Maduro’s government who had been granted asylum in Santiago.

In November 2023 media outlet InsightCrime reported that anti-Venezuelan sentiments were growing in Peru, fueled by a TdA-linked gang’s extortion and harassment of local business owners.

Following a protest by business owners and attacks on Venezuelan migrants, the offshoot gang released a video threatening to kill local motorcyclists in retaliation.

Although Venezuelan police raided Tocoron prison and regained control in 2023, a Venezuelan native who asked for anonymity told The Epoch Times that locals understood that TdA thoroughly infiltrated that country’s law enforcement.

The person also said they felt Maduro was using the gang to weaken the surrounding nations through crime and unrest.

Activities in America

Joseph M. Humire, executive director of the think tank Center for a Secure Free Society, testified before Congress that Venezuela, along with Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran, was seeking to “capitalize on the U.S. border and immigration crisis,” by introducing TdA as chaos agents to destabilize the United States.

Humire said Maduro’s government used TdA to control human trafficking, operating through organizations such as the state-run immigration outfit SAIME.

“In 2018, it was discovered that the Venezuelan government financed politicized [nongovernmental organizations] in Honduras, such as Pueblo Sin Fronteras (PSF) responsible for organizing the Central American caravans. Venezuela’s interests in weaponizing migration align with its function as a platform for external state actors, namely China, Russia, and Iran, who have employed the ways and means of asymmetric warfare to destabilize the Western Hemisphere,” he told a House panel on March 11.

Humire said the operation spread to the United States in 2021, and also involved Mexican cartels making their presence felt in Texas, while TdA is most present on the East Coast, especially in New York.

TdA drew widespread national attention when it was alleged that its members were in control of three apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado, and were extorting that building’s tenants, who were mostly Venezuelan natives.

Aurora police were at first hesitant to cite TdA, saying they believed the gang’s activities were “isolated.”

The mayor of Aurora blamed the federal government for the takeover, and launched a task force to inquire why so many Venezuelan illegals had been shuffled into the same group of apartment buildings.

In a similar incident, police in El Paso, Texas, raided and shut down the Gateway Hotel after members of the gang had taken control of it for over a year.

TdA was also implicated in the murder of 33-year-old Texan Nilzult Arneaud Petit, who police believed was killed as part of an ATM theft scheme gone wrong.

Jose Ibarra, who in November was convicted of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley in February 2024, is allegedly tied to TdA. Riley’s death resulted in a law enabling the deportation of any illegal immigrant arrested for crimes including shoplifting, theft, or assault on a police officer.

In March 2024, Florida GOP Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio urged President Joe Biden to declare the group a transnational criminal organization. They said the move was justified by the gang’s negative impact on American cities where they had taken root, especially on Venezuelan communities in Florida.

Biden agreed and sanctioned TdA in July 2024.

TdA and the Trump Administration

The State Department in February designated TdA, along with several other foreign gangs and cartels, as a foreign terrorist organization, implementing a Day One order by Trump.

On March 15, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to immediately arrest and deport suspected members of TdA.

As justification for the move, the White House released a statement saying the gang’s activity constitutes a foreign “invasion,” and that it has been operating allegedly “at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.”

Just before the announcement was made, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit on behalf of a group of five illegal immigrants suspected of being TdA to prevent their deportation. The ACLU alleged that Trump was misusing the law to deprive the deportees of due process.

“It cannot be used here against nationals of a country—Venezuela—with whom the United States is not at war, which is not invading the United States, and which has not launched a predatory incursion into the United States,” they said in court documents.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on March 15 issued a verbal block in court on those five deportations and later issued a written ruling generally blocking similar deportations under the 200-year-old law.

However, a plane carrying over 250 deportees was already en route to El Salvador, where Trump had negotiated an agreement with that country’s president to house them for $6 million. The Department of Justice later said that it had complied with the judge’s bench order in regard to the five plaintiffs in the case, but that his written order halting the removal of all deportees had not been issued until after the flight took off.

Boasberg in a hearing on March 17 asked the government to submit additional details about the deportations but stopped short of declaring that officials had intentionally defied his court order.

Reuters and Aldgra Fredly contributed to this report.