BBC News, Washington
In September 2023. Venecuela’s President Nicolas Maduro sent 11,000 troops to prison the Tocorón prison in the northern state of Aragua. But they were not shipped to suppress the mess.
The troops took control of a prison from a powerful gang that turned him into something resort, along with a zoo, restaurants, nightclub, betting and pool trade.
But the gang chief, Hector Guerrero Flores, escaped.
Now the organization is a moment of de Aragua at the intersection of President Donald Trump’s ride to remove foreign criminals from the USA, part of his promise to deliver mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
Here’s what we know about a moment de Aragua.
How did the gang started?
Too de Aragua was originally a prison gang that hector Guerrero Flores turned into a “transnational criminal organization”, according to the US State Department, which offers a $ 5 million prize for information that could lead to his arrest.
Guerrero Flores, 41, was in Tocorón and outside more than a decade.
He fled in 2012 by bribing the guard and then handed over in 2013. Upon his return, he turned the prison into a leisure complex.
And it spread the influence of the gang far beyond the prison door, taking control of the gold mine in the state of Bolivar, drug corridors on the Caribbean coast and the secret border crossings between Venezuela and Colombia, according to the American State Department.
The name of the gang is translated as “Aragua train” and may have come from the Association of Railway Workers.
Luis Izquiel, a professor of criminology at the Central University of Venezuela, told the BBC that the union controlled the part of the railway that had crossed Aragua and would excrete contractors and sell jobs in jobs.
Too de Aragua under the leadership of Guerrer Flores spread to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile and diversified by the extortion of migrants into sex trade, murder and abduction.
How big is the gang?
According to most reports, a moment de Aragua spread from Venezuela when the country in 2014 entered a humanitarian and economic emergency that has done less profitable crime, and now it is believed to have nodes in eight other countries, including the US.
Ronna Rísquez, a journalist who wrote a final book on the group, estimated last year that the organization has 5,000 members and an annual profit of $ 10 million and $ 15 million.
Others estimated his membership in about half of that figure.
The prosecutor in Chile called a moment de Aragua “by a brutal organization” that uses murder and torture to achieve his goals.
Although smaller or less rich than other criminal groups in Latin America, a moment de Aragua is often compared to the Ultra-Nasile Band of the MS-13 of El Salvador.
Members of the duration of de Aragua were accused of being dressed as Chilean police officers and then abducted Venecuela’s opposition military officer Ronald Ojed, whose body was found buried in Santiago in Chile in March 2024.
The US Treasury, under the then President Joe Biden, sanctioned a moment de Aragua last summer, saying that the band was involved in sex trade across the US border.
Is there a threat to now?
On Saturday, Trump called for an 18th -century almighty enemies, for accusing the moment of de Aragu of “committing, trying and thating an invasion of the predatory invading the territory of the United States.”
He said the gang was involved in the “irregular war” against the USA -the direction of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Madur.
Shortly after taking his post in January, Trump also declared a moment de Aragua to a foreign terrorist organization, placing a group in the same category as an Islamic state and Boko Haram, Nigerian Islamist militants.
In Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois, members of the de Aragua have been arrested in recent months and accused of crimes ranging from murder to abduction.
Last summer, the NBC News reported that the Ministry of Homeland estimated that 600 Venezuela migrants in the US had to do with the band, and 100 were believed to be members.
Since 2023, 770,000 Venezuelans have lived in the US, which represented just under 2% of all immigrants in the county, according to the Institute of Migration Policy.
Most of the US government received protected status.
Customs and border protection reports meet at 313,500 Venecuelan migrants at the border 2024.
