Texas Governor Designates Tren De Aragua as Terrorist Organization

( Spanish) – Texas Governor Greg Abbott appointed this Monday the criminal gang Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization and announced the launch of an “aggressive operation” in that state to “interrupt the operations” of that organization of Venezuelan origin, according to an official statement.

“The recent entry and expansion of the vicious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a dangerous and deadly problem facing our state and our nation,” Abbott said at a news conference. “We will not allow them to use Texas as a base of operations to terrorize our citizens. They have a target on their backs and we are going after them. Texas is the wrong state to try to do business in.”

The Tren de Aragua is classified as the largest and most powerful criminal gang in Venezuela, according to reports from the organization Insight Crime and the United States Government.

The gang was based in Tocorón prison, in north-central Venezuela, until the prison was evacuated by Venezuelan authorities in September 2023. Eighteen years earlier, in 2005, it had started within a workers’ union working on a railway project that would link the states of Aragua and Carabobo. Hence its name, “Tren de Aragua”. Its leader is Héctor Rustherford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero”, whose whereabouts are unknown.

After 2013, with the deepening of the economic crisis in Venezuela, the gang began to have a presence in several South American countries – Chile, Colombia and Peru mainly – and the United States, according to reports from the authorities of those territories.