In his January 20, 2025 Executive Order, U.S. President Trump declared the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua a “terrorist” organization that is a “national-security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime.” Then, on March 15, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in order to make the claim that the Tren de Aragua was part of a “hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States.” While there have been links between organized crime and the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro, Trump’s depiction of the relationship between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government is highly misleading.
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez’s ruled from 1999 through 2013, winning multiple elections and maintaining popular support. Nonetheless, over time Chávez centralized power in the executive and suppressed dissent from civil society in the face of multiple coup attempts. The weakening of democratic institutions, corruption, and economic crisis provided a perfect environment for organized crime to thrive. By 2015, Venezuela’s homicide rate was 90 per hundred thousand, by far the highest in Latin America. Under Chávez’s hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro, authoritarianism, economic crisis, and human rights abuses accelerated, exacerbated by hostility and crippling sanctions imposed by the United States. Although the murder rate has decreased since 2017, hovering around 26 per hundred thousand last year, civil society has weakened, giving way to mass out-migration, paramilitary and gang activity, and an increasingly dictatorial government.
A Prison Gang
The Tren de Aragua was born under Chávez in the early 2000s as a criminal band involved in extortion, drug trafficking, kidnapping, and robbery. Like other gangs in Latin America, including MS-13 and Barrio 18, Tren de Aragua grew into its present form in prison.
The gang’s leader, Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero,” was incarcerated in the Tocorón prison in the state of Aragua in 2010. He escaped and was then recaptured in 2013. In 2018, he was sentenced to 17 years for his crimes, including three murders. In the ensuing years, Guerrero primarily sought to enrich himself and other gang members by using the prison where he was incarcerated as a base for the gang’s criminal operations.
The Tren de Aragua’s control over the Tocorón prison, managing all operations and discipline within the prison walls, reveals the weakness of Venezuela’s government. Even as Maduro has increasingly ruled with an iron fist, using the national guard, police, and military to suppress opponents, he has also relied on a network of paramilitaries, Colombian guerrilla groups, and gangs to maintain order. In 2023, Rocio San Miguel, president of the Venezuelan organization Control Ciudadano, claimed that 70 percent of Venezuelan territory was controlled by guerrilla groups and criminal gangs (San Miguel was detained by authorities in February of last year and remains in custody).
In her book on the Tren de Agua, the investigative journalist Ronna Rísquez describes a prison filled with luxury stores, a swimming pool, restaurants, a disco, ATM machines, and even a zoo with tigers, all operated by gang members. According to Rísquez’s interviews with those inside, prisoners who resisted were threatened, beaten, and killed. Roberto Briceño León, director of the Venezuelan Violence Observatory told InSight Crime in 2018 that “The government decided to essentially do nothing, and deliver the jails to the prisoners.”
Beginning around 2014, Tren de Aragua’s influence began to extend beyond the prison to the nearby city of San Vicente. In that city, Tren de Aragua’s front-group, Somos El Barrio JK, provided basic social services and maintained strict controls over public spaces. San Vicente was one of several cities designated Peace Zones in 2014, in which the police retreated in exchange for assurances that local gangs would lower the soaring homicide rates. An investigative report by InSight Crime detailed the various links between the Venezuelan state and Somos El Barrio JK. As one teacher put it, “It is another government…Nothing can be done within the school that they don’t find out about.”
High-ranking Maduro government officials have also worked with Tren de Aragua. The former governor of Aragua, Tarreck el Aissami, was seen entering Tocorón to negotiate with gang leaders, according to witnesses interviewed by Ríquez. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Aissami in 2017 for drug trafficking and ties to the Mexican cartel Los Zetas. In 2017, Maduro appointed Aissami Vice President. Using these powers, Aissami allegedly provided Venezuelan passports to known terrorist groups, including Hezbollah. Aissami resigned from the Venezuelan government in 2023 and was detained last year on charges of treason, corruption, and criminal association.
Weaponizing Fear
However, the notion that Tren de Aragua is the same thing as the Venezuelan state is simply untrue.
Tren de Aragua has expanded its criminal operations beyond the state of Aragua in Venezuela, and has also extended its reach into other countries, including Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Chile, and the United States. However, the notion that Tren de Aragua is the same thing as the Venezuelan state is simply untrue.
Perhaps the best evidence that Maduro has opposed Tren de Aragua came on September 20, 2023, when he sent 11,000 troops to retake the Tocorón prison. Venezuelan Minister of Interior, Justice, and Peace Admiral Remigio Ceballos declared after the raid: “This is a great blow that has been dealt to all those criminal organizations that have been totally dismantled, totally dismantled.” While InSight Crime analysts believe this was a negotiated surrender of the prison, which allowed thousands of gang members including its leader Guerrero to escape before the takeover, there is clearly an important distinction between the Venezuelan state and Tren de Aragua.
One can credibly argue that a “hybrid-state” existed in the city of San Vicente, but that is not an accurate representation of the relationship between organized crime and the Maduro regime across the entire country. In other words, while there is evidence of high-level officials collaborating with gangs like Tren de Aragua, there is no evidence that the Venezuelan government is weaponizing Tren de Aragua to “invade” the United States. As the journalist Rísquez put it, “It’s not a group that has the capacity to be an enemy, not [only] of the United States, but of any country.” She added, “it doesn’t even have a solid or very organized structure.” The idea that a prison gang with an estimated 5,000 members in Latin America could pose a threat to the United States, with the largest military on the planet, is laughable.
Many Latin American countries, including El Salvador, have weak democratic institutions, partly as a result of the United States supporting military dictatorships, especially during the Cold War. The absence of a strong civil society and rule of law has led to high levels of state corruption in the very country where the accused gang members are being sent by Trump. The current president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, negotiated with gangs when he was mayor of San Salvador. In 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice accused officials in the Bukele regime of ferrying the leaders of gangs outside of the country prior to the 2022 crackdown. Specifically, U.S. prosecutors alleged that top Salvadoran officials helped MS-13 leader Élmer Canales Rivera escape from prison and enter Mexico after the 2022 declaration of a State of Exception. If the logic behind adopting the Alien Enemies Act applies to Venezuela, it would also apply to El Salvador and many other countries.
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the United States has the right to deport Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act gives the state enormous powers that could potentially be applied to millions of migrants.
All of this is being done by the administration in the name of “national security” on the basis of a false claim that Tren de Aragua represents an “invasion” by a foreign government.
In recent weeks, Venezuelans accused of being Tren de Aragua members have been rounded up with no due process and flown to a notoriously inhumane prison in El Salvador in direct defiance of federal judge’s order. Judge James Boasberg called the use of the Alien Enemies Act “incredibly troublesome and problematic,” and accused the government of “evad[ing] its obligations” to return the migrants and to provide information about the removal. The judge also found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for violating his orders. All of this is being done by the administration in the name of “national security” on the basis of a false claim that Tren de Aragua represents an “invasion” by a foreign government. In some cases, evidence of gang affiliation used by the administration to justify the deportations consists of nothing more than newspaper stories, the presence of tattoos on one’s body, or being in the vicinity of other accused gang members.
The evidence suggests that the Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is more about fomenting anti-immigrant hysteria in the United States. While the Tren de Aragua is a notorious gang, no public evidence suggests it is a terrorist organization. The gang engages in illegal activities for money, not based in any particular ideology. Its members are not being sent by the Venezuelan state to invade the United States, and Trump has not even proven that the Venezuelan nationals being sent to El Salvador are gang members. In fact, family members of 50 of the deportees sent to El Salvador provided documentation from Venezuela showing they had clean criminal records.
Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is based on an assertion that the Tren de Aragua is the Venezuelan state, or a branch of it. The history of the origins of this gang and changing relationship with the Chávez and Maduro regimes shows this depiction is misleading at best. This is not the first time that national security is being used to circumvent due process, but basic ignorance about Venezuela should not be the grounds for invoking monumental wartime government powers.
Elliott Young is Professor of History at Lewis & Clark College and the author of Forever Prisoners: How the United States Made the World’s Largest Immigrant Detention System.