What is Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang Trump’s targeting with deportations?

By Ray Sanchez and Rafael Romo, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration has sparked controversy with its move Sunday to deport 261 people, some of whom it alleges are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, to an infamous maximum-security prison in El Salvador.

The move was controversial not only because the US president invoked the centuries-old Alien Enemies Act – previously used only in wartime – to justify some of the deportations, but because it went ahead despite a federal judge attempting to block the move. The White House has since said it did not violate the judge’s order because it was issued after the migrants in question had left the US.

This isn’t the first time Trump has targeted Tren de Aragua. An executive order, signed on January 20, called for Tren de Aragua and the Salvadoran MS-13 gang to be designated foreign terrorist organizations. Later, the administration added six Mexican drug cartels to the list.

Critics have questioned the latest move, pointing out that the White House has neither identified the deportees nor provided evidence of their alleged involvement with the gang.

Some people included in previous deportations have insisted they have nothing to do with the gang, such as Daniel Simancas Rodríguez, who spent 15 days in detention at Guantanamo Bay before being deported back to Venezuela.

He recently told CNN that US authorities had suspected him because of his tattoos and because he was from the gang’s original stomping grounds in Maracay.

“I was the only one they set aside, just for saying I was from Maracay … for them, I was already part of the Tren de Aragua,” he said.

Here’s what we know about Tren de Aragua:

Tentacles spread far beyond Venezuela

The criminal gang originated in a Venezuela prison and has slowly spread both north and south in recent years. It now operates in the United States.

The full scale of its operations is unknown. While the gang has principally focused on human trafficking and other crimes targeting migrants, it has also been linked to extortion, kidnapping, money laundering and drug smuggling, according to the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

For years, Tren de Aragua – also known as “TdA” – not only terrorized Venezuela but also countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, Chile and Peru.

Retired Gen. Óscar Naranjo, a former vice president of Colombia and chief of the Colombian National Police, has called the gang “the most disruptive criminal organization operating nowadays in Latin America, a true challenge for the region,” CNN has reported.

In Colombia, Tren de Aragua and a guerrilla group known as the National Liberation Army “operate sex trafficking networks in the border town of Villa del Rosario” and Norte de Santander, according to a US State Department 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report about Colombia.

The criminal groups exploit Venezuelan migrants and displaced Colombians in sex trafficking, taking advantage of economic vulnerabilities and subjecting them to “debt bondage,” the report stated. Police in the region reported the organization has victimized thousands through extortion, drug and human trafficking, kidnapping and murder.

OFAC said Tren de Aragua members many times kill victims who try to escape and “publicize their deaths as a threat to others.”

“As Tren de Aragua has expanded, it has opportunistically infiltrated local criminal economies in South America, established transnational financial operations, laundered funds through cryptocurrency, and formed ties with the U.S.-sanctioned Primeiro Comando da Capital, a notorious organized crime group in Brazil,” according to OFAC.

A challenge for law enforcement officials is the difficulty knowing how many members of Tren de Aragua are already in the US. Some Venezuelan immigrants in Florida and other states have told CNN they are already beginning to see the same type of criminal activity they fled in Venezuela.

Insight Crime, a think tank dedicated to organized crime, said in October that Tren de Aragua’s “reputation appears to have grown more quickly than its actual presence in the United States.”

“Additionally, there is no evidence, thus far, of cells in the United States cooperating with one another or with other criminal groups,” according to Insight Crime. “Authorities have also not revealed any proof of criminals receiving specific instructions from the organization’s leadership or sending money to Venezuela or other foreign countries.”

Gang has railway union and prison origins

Tren de Aragua adopted its name between 2013 and 2015 but its operations predate that, according to a report by Transparency Venezuela.

“It has its origin in the unions of workers who worked on the construction of a railway project that would connect the center-west of the country and that was never completed” in both Aragua and Carabobo states, according to the report.

The gang’s leaders operated out of the notorious Tocorón prison, which they controlled, the report said. When Venezuelan officials raided the prison in September 2023, they found a swimming pool and several restaurants inside, along with a cache of weapons controlled by inmates, including automatic rifles, machine guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Venezuelan authorities say they have dismantled the leadership of Tren de Aragua and freed Tocorón prison, one of the largest in the country, from the control of its members.

Adam Isaacson, director of defense oversight at the human rights advocacy group Washington Office on Latin America, told CNN US sanctions on Tren de Aragua will likely have little effect on the group’s day-to-day operations.

“For the members of the groups themselves, the penalties don’t change very much, though prosecutors may be more energetic in getting the maximum sentence for you and there could be less room for plea-bargaining,” he said via email.

“Penalties and rewards are similar. It may make it easier to devote more US intelligence and defense resources to pursuing them, though.”

Establishing a footprint across the border

US Customs and Border Protection as well as the FBI have said the gang is established in the US.

“They have followed the migration paths across South America to other countries and have set up criminal groups throughout South America as they follow those paths, and that they appear to follow the migration north to the United States,” said Britton Boyd, an FBI special agent in El Paso, Texas, CNN previously reported.

In December, a married couple was kidnapped by a group of undocumented migrants in their Aurora, Colorado, apartment complex. Police said they were bound, beaten and pistol-whipped. Several suspects were identified as Tren de Aragua members, according to Police Chief Todd Chamberlain.

The man arrested by federal agents in New York was among five suspects in custody in the investigation into “crimes involving the city’s migrant community,” Aurora police said in a statement Tuesday.

In September, Trump seized on rumors that Tren de Aragua had been running amok in Aurora and terrorizing a handful of apartment buildings. Trump described the city as a harbinger of what unchecked migration could mean for America. But Aurora police said gang influence was “isolated,” and the city countered that the real problem had been abusive housing conditions.

“TdA has not ‘taken over’ the city,” Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and Council Member Danielle Jurinsky said in a joint statement at the time.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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CNN’s Belisa Morillo, Laura Weffer, Jaide Timm-Garcia, Mark Morales, Gloria Pazmino and Stefano Pozzebon contributed to this report.