EXCLUSIVE — The Trump administration has waged an aggressive campaign against Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, whose members entered the United States through the vulnerable U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration.
The White House, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Justice launched Homeland Security Task Forces in 2025 with the goal of identifying, finding, and removing criminal rings and terrorist organizations embedded in U.S. communities, particularly Tren de Aragua.
It is the largest campaign against transnational crime that the government has undertaken in history and one of the reasons violent crime rates overall have dropped precipitously nationwide since 2025, according to White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis.
“President Trump created the Homeland Security Task Force to eradicate gangs, cartels, and transnational criminal organizations who entered the United States, and operated with impunity, as a result of the Biden administration’s disastrous open border policies,” Bis said in a statement. “Our message to Tren de Aragua and all the transnational criminal organizations is simple: we will dismantle your networks, seize your profits, and put the safety of the American people first. The days of vicious gangs, like TdA, profiting off of the death of American citizens is over.”
Task force data publicly released for the first time to the Washington Examiner showed law enforcement arrested 1,296 Tren de Aragua gang members between Jan. 20, 2025, and Oct. 8, 2026, and charged nearly 350 Tren de Aragua members and associates with federal crimes.
“President Trump’s Homeland Security Task Forces have encountered TdA gang members almost every state,” an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson wrote in a statement. “This is one of the most vicious gangs on planet earth. They rape, maim, and murder for sport.”
Tren de Aragua enters America
The gang has been around for a decade and has grown since its early days of operating inside a Venezuelan prison, spreading across Venezuela into South America and reaching the U.S.
Former Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales, whose district was along 800 miles of the southern border, said the group was known “to rape children, murder, and commit nearly every other crime under the sun.”
Since Joe Biden took office in January 2021, 700,000 immigrants from Venezuela were encountered at the southern border through September 2024, making it easy for the gang’s members to hide within the migrant population.
The problem for Border Patrol agents was that they could only screen illegal immigrants in custody against available information. Venezuela does not share in-country crime data with the U.S., making it difficult for agents to know if an individual in custody is a convicted criminal back home.
Without adequate bed space to detain immigrants long term and with Venezuela’s refusal to accept repatriated citizens from the U.S., the government released most of them into the country.
Federal law enforcement had launched more than 100 investigations into crimes in which Tren de Aragua members are involved, as of late 2024, according to an NBC report.
Two New York police officers were shot in the line of duty by suspected Tren de Aragua gang members in September 2021. Nineteen-year-old Bernardo Raul Castro Mata of Venezuela was arrested for the shootings and had tattoos affiliated with the gang, including a five-pointed crown, five-pointed stars, and teardrops, according to the New York City Police Department.
Georgia nursing student Laken Riley was murdered in February 2024 while on a jog, and police identified Venezuelan illegal immigrant Jose Ibarra as her suspected killer. Ibarra is a reported member of the gang, and that revelation put the criminal organization in the spotlight.
The Biden administration designated Tren de Aragua as a transnational criminal organization in 2024 following requests from Republicans who said the group’s members have penetrated the southern border. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Tren de Aragua, a cross-border crime ring that has been cited in connection to brutal crimes against U.S. citizens by illegal immigrants released at the border into the country under the Biden administration.
Tren de Aragua faces new president
At Trump’s direction in February 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Tren de Aragua and a number of Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, citing that the organization had cells through South America and the U.S. known for carrying out kidnappings, bribing public officials, extorting businesses, and ordering attacks to kill U.S. law enforcement.
The crimes extended deep into the U.S. The DOJ has charged members with murder, sex trafficking, kidnapping, weapons and drug trafficking, robbery, and widespread financial crimes, according to DOJ spokeswoman Nicole Navas Oxman.
The DOJ has not only gone after the general members of Tren de Aragua, but also sought out its leaders.
Tren de Aragua’s leader, Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, was killed in June during a joint U.S.-Venezuelan military strike.
“At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Niño Guerrero, the infamous leader of Tren De Aragua, one of the most bloodthirsty Terrorist Organizations on Planet Earth,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Earlier this month, the DOJ announced the capture of Anibal Alexander Canelon Aguirre, one of the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives in March 2026. He is the alleged mastermind behind sophisticated malware used to steal cash from ATMs nationwide. The gang had orchestrated a $40 million fraud scheme that was based on accessing the ATM machines.
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Four members who entered the U.S. illegally during the Biden administration and were released into the country from the border pleaded guilty in June for a double murder in New York’s Bronx borough in 2024. Three of the four criminals had been ordered deported by an immigration judge, but due to the Biden administration’s lax approach to immigration enforcement and the 1.5 million backlogged cases of illegal immigrants ordered deported, ICE was unable to arrest them.
Trump’s prioritization of deportations has changed how ICE is operating and more than doubled the number of deportation officers nationwide, leading to more arrests and removals.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
