Tren de Aragua: The Venezuelan Gang Taking Root in the United States

As the illegal migrant crisis continues, a new and dangerous criminal enterprise is flourishing on our soil.

Long before it came to the United States, Tren de Aragua began as a prison gang in the state of Aragua, Venezuela.

For several years, it maintained complete control over the Tocoron Penitentiary, running it as a quasi-municipality, complete with bars, restaurants, and swimming pools. The Venezuelan government finally regained control in 2023, although it required 11,000 troops to raid the facility.

Yet during its years of controlling the prison, Tren de Aragua grew into a multinational criminal enterprise with a presence in countries across the Western Hemisphere. More recently, it has begun to establish itself as a force to be reckoned with on American soil.

An October 2024 report by Simon Hankinson and Erin Schniederjan reveals the alarming degree to which Tren de Aragua has penetrated major American cities. These include New York City, where a single Venezuelan national has been arrested in released more than eight times; El Paso, where, in an ominous replay of the Tocoron Penitentiary, the gang has taken over a hotel as a way station for illegal migration; and Denver, where federally funded NGOs have helped gang members and other illegal aliens from Venezuela find housing in several apartment blocks.

One of the most high-profile incidents involving the gang was the February 2024 murder of Laken Riley, 22, in Athens, Georgia. The suspected killer, 26-year-old Jose Ibarra, is a Venezuelan national who entered the United States illegally, and who, along with his brother, is believed to have an affiliation with Tren de Aragua.

Concerningly, Ibarra was detained at the United States border before being released into the country. Nor is he alone in this respect: in Houston, two Venezuelan illegals arrested for the murder of a 12-year-old girl in June had been caught and released, as have illegals arrested for shooting police in New York, robbing stores in Denver, and trafficking foreign women across the border in Texas.

Meanwhile, Venezuela itself saw a marked decrease in violent deaths from 2021 to 2022, in spite of the broadening economic devastation within the country. While the causes of this decrease may be difficult to trace, Hankinson and Schniederjan write that it is “not implausible to postulate a link to Venezuela’s export of thousands of young criminals, many to the U.S.”

As a parallel, Hankinson and Schniederjan point to the rise of MS-13 in the 1980s, a Salvadorian-affiliated gang which ran rampant in the United States. As with Tren de Aragua and the current breakdown in Venezuela, the rise of MS-13 was correlated with the Salvadorean Civil War, showcasing the ability of foreign conflicts to spill over onto American soil if national borders are not sufficiently enforced.

Yet although the crisis in El Salvador has long since subsided, MS-13 continues to threaten American communities today. This provides a grim outlook for how long Americans might be dealing with the aftereffects of Tren de Aragua, even if the socialist governance which has mismanaged Venezuela for a quarter century is finally brought to an end.