This is the dangerous Venezuelan gang infiltrating the United States that you probably don't know anything about but should

CNN

By Rafael Romo, Belisa Morillo and Laura Weffer, CNN

(CNN) — An alleged multistate human trafficking ring forcing immigrant women into prostitution. The mysterious murder of a former police officer in South Florida. Attacks on police officers in New York. Drug dealer arrested in Chicago.

Local and federal officials say these seemingly unrelated crimes have a common denominator: Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal gang that originated in a Venezuelan prison and has slowly moved south and north in recent years. They say it now works in the United States. The scale of its operations is unknown, but crimes attributed to alleged gang members have concerned elected officials, and some Republican members of Congress have called on the Biden administration “to formally designate the vicious Tren de Aragua as a transnational criminal organization.”

For several years, the criminal group has been terrorizing countries in South America, including Venezuela, its country of origin, but also Bolivia, Colombia, Chile and Peru. Retired Gen. Óscar Naranjo, former vice president of Colombia and head of the Colombian National Police, told CNN that Tren de Aragua is “the most disruptive criminal organization currently operating in Latin America, a real challenge for the region “.

“Beware of this gang”

Tren de Aragua adopted its name between 2013 and 2015 but began operations years before, according to a report by Transparency Venezuela. “It has its origins in workers unions that worked to build a railway project that would connect the central-west of the country and that was never completed” in the states of Aragua and Carabobo.

According to the report, the group's leaders operated from the notorious Tocorón prison, which they controlled. When Venezuelan authorities raided it last September, they discovered a swimming pool and several restaurants inside the prison walls, in addition to weapons seized from inmates, including automatic rifles, machine guns and thousands of cartridges.

In 2015, a former Venezuelan law enforcement official told CNN, “They were already in the prime of their lives.” That year, they forged an alliance with Primeiro Comando da Capital, a Brazilian criminal organization. It was only a matter of time before they spread their tentacles across South America.

In Colombia, Tren de Aragua and a rival guerrilla group known as the National Liberation Army “operate sex trafficking rings in the border town of Villa del Rosario, in the Norte de Santander department. These groups exploit Venezuelan migrants and internally displaced Colombians in sex trafficking and take advantage of economic vulnerabilities and subject them to debt bondage,” according to the U.S. State Department’s 2023 Human Trafficking Report on Colombia. Police in the region say the organization has killed thousands of people through extortion, drug and human trafficking, kidnappings and murders.

Today, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the FBI say the gang is based in the United States.

“They have followed migratory routes through South America to other countries and have created criminal groups throughout South America as they follow those routes, and it appears that they follow the migration north toward the United States,” said Britton Boyd, an FBI special agent. in El Paso, Texas, told CNN.

U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens, who has confirmed several southern border arrests of suspected Tren de Aragua members over the last year, issued a warning in early April. “Be careful of this gang. It is the most powerful country in Venezuela, notorious for murders, drug trafficking, sex crimes, extortion and other acts of violence. Owens said on.

There are more than 70 cases in which Tren de Aragua is mentioned in law enforcement documents or prosecutors' complaints. Of that total, Texas Customs and Border Patrol identified 58 gang members between fiscal year 2023 and last May. The rest appears in complaints filed by victims or in arrest reports which indicate the suspects' possible involvement in this organized crime group.

“If nothing is done”

In New York, police say Bernardo Raul Castro-Mata, a 19-year-old Venezuelan, shot and killed two police officers last week. Castro-Mata entered the country illegally last July, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told CNN. The Venezuelan has tattoos associated with the Tren de Aragua — which court documents regarding an alleged gang member in Georgia describe as five-pointed crowns, five-pointed stars and tears — police told CNN from New York. Castro-Mata has no prior arrests, but is suspected in several thefts in Queens.

Castro-Mata remains in custody and has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. Contacted by CNN, his lawyers declined to comment.

But of all the crimes attributed to the gang, including the kidnapping and murder of a former Venezuelan police officer in South Florida in November 2023, one stands out. In late April, the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Department received a 911 call from a Spanish-speaking woman saying she was being held against her will at a residence and “forced to have sex with unknown men for money.” The woman later told investigators she was forced to have sex with strangers “to repay a US$30,000 debt to a trafficker who brought her to the United States.”

Authorities arrested two suspects – both Venezuelan nationals – at the scene, Allbert Herrera Machado, 23, and Osleidy Vanesa Chourio-Diaz, 26. Agents then arrested another Venezuelan, Josmar Jesus Zambrano-Chirinos, 23, identified in the complaint as a party leader. the sex trafficking operation carried out by the Tren de Aragua in the United States. Zambrano “operated 'hideouts' used for human trafficking in Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, New Jersey and Florida,” according to the criminal complaint reviewed by CNN. Herrera Machado and Chourio-Diaz were not linked to Tren de Aragua in the complaint.

If the allegations against the suspects are true, it would mean the gang already has the capacity to operate trafficking networks in the United States, the same way it has done in several South American countries. The challenge for law enforcement is that it is very difficult to know how many Tren de Aragua members are already in the country, despite the arrests. What some Venezuelan immigrants in Florida and other states told CNN is that they are already starting to see the same type of criminal activity in their communities that they fled in Venezuela.

Álvaro Boza, a former Venezuelan police officer now living in Florida, says he fled his country largely because the gang had become so powerful. He says they could kill law enforcement like him with impunity. A fellow police officer who refused to cooperate with the gang in his home state of Aragua was shot 50 times, Boza said. “He refused and was murdered. They tied his body to a motorcycle and dragged him throughout the San Vicente neighborhood to demonstrate the power of the Tren de Aragua,” Boza said.

In March, a group of Republican members of Congress led by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and fellow Republican Ana María Salazar sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to take action by designating the gang a “transnational criminal organization.”

In the letter, the lawmakers said: “If nothing is done, they will unleash an unprecedented reign of terror, mirroring the devastation it has already inflicted on communities across Central and South America, including in Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru. »

CNN Jaide Timm-Garcia contributed to this report.