Venezuela’s most violent gang and Latin America’s most feared armed group could join forces in New York City, a senior FBI agent has warned.
The FBI is concerned that El Tren de Aragua is joining other criminal networks, such as the infamous MS-13, Special Agent in Charge of the El Paso Division John Morales said. New York Post.
Members of El Tren de Aragua have reportedly come to New York City after crossing the US-Mexico border – and have already unleashed their criminal schemes, including brazen phone robberies across the boroughs.
“Although these gangs would not normally intermingle, it will always remain a concern as the (Tren de Aragua) grows in strength and gains a foothold,” Morales said.
“We are currently working with our local law enforcement partners and sharing intelligence to stop the growth of Tren de Aragua.”
The FBI is concerned that El Tren de Aragua (pictured during a September prison raid) has ties to other criminal networks, such as the infamous MS-13.
MS-13, one of the largest Hispanic gangs operating in the US, started as a street gang in Los Angeles
In one of New York’s most brazen phone theft incidents to date, a 62-year-old woman was dragged down a Brooklyn street by a thief on a moped.
MS-13, one of the largest gangs operating in the US, started as a street gang in Los Angeles but grew into a transnational gang based in El Salvador. The organization has members in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico and thousands of members in the United States with numerous chapters or “cliques,” federal authorities said.
Meanwhile, NYC officials have said the dreaded Tren de Aragua could be connected to the brazen moped thieves who have been taking the phones and wallets of innocent pedestrians as part of a larger crime conspiracy involving stolen iPhones.
NYPD detectives believe the organized robbery scheme is linked to El Tren de Aragua, which they fear has sent its gangsters to cross the US-Mexico border as part of a wave of asylum seekers, the New York Post reported .
Last week, officials raided the Bronx home of the operation’s alleged ringleader, Victor Parra, 30, who officials said made calls on What’s App for stolen phones and offered migrants money to bring the stolen devices to him.
Once he had the devices, a hacker would break into people’s Apple Pays and drain their accounts, before the criminals sent the phones to Colombia to be reprogrammed and sold.
A group of migrants operate as a ‘ghost’ criminal enterprise in New York City
Mayor Eric Adams went along for the sting operation and later appeared at a news conference with police
Parra remains on the run, and while police have not yet publicly confirmed the gang’s presence in New York, authorities say El Tren de Aragua has already committed its first murder in Miami.
Former Venezuelan police officer Jose Luis Sanchez Valera, 43, was brutally murdered by Tren de Aragua gangster Yurwin Salazar, 23, according to Miami officials.
Sánchez was beaten, tortured and forced to hand over the keys to his apartment and safe, where his savings were stored in gold bars. His terrified niece, with whom he lived, crawled under the bed as the killers ran through the house.
As shocking as this brutal murder may seem, it is mild compared to what the gang is capable of, experts say.
El Tren de Aragua is less known than the Mexican cartels or Mara Salvatrucha, better known as MS-13, who was born in a Los Angeles prison in the 1980s among migrants from El Salvador.
But El Tren de Aragua is no less violent and has been allowed to flourish under the lawless regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, expanding into Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Chile.
A transgender sex worker in the Peruvian capital Lima was filmed begging for her life before being shot dead in February 2023. Her killers pumped 31 bullets into her body.
Former Venezuelan police officer Jose Luis Sanchez Valera, 43, was brutally murdered by Tren de Aragua gangster Yurwin Salazar, 23, (pictured) according to Miami officials
El Tren de Aragua moved into the neighborhood and they wanted to replace the local prostitutes with Venezuelan women.
Six were killed in one week and eighteen were shot in the feet as a warning not to walk the streets again.
Two dozen more were murdered in 2023. Another 35 are missing.
“They are penetrating local economies where Venezuelans are and using excessive force they are taking over the criminal underground,” former Border Patrol agent Ammon Blair told the Post. “They will start shooting prostitutes controlled by rival gangs and carry out the executions live on social media to establish their presence.”
The gangsters have used the wave of migration to hide among legitimate asylum seekers – more than 334,000 Venezuelans crossed the US-Mexico border in the 2023 fiscal year – second only to Mexicans.
The Border Patrol apprehended at least 41 Tren de Aragua members attempting to cross the border between October 2022 and September 2023.
The group has become so brazen in Texas that officials with the state’s anti-gang task force recently documented gangsters ordering fellow Venezuelans to use the restrooms at the border.
It is also feared that El Tren de Aragua is actively recruiting members in the city’s shelters.
The name, which emerged in 2012, means “Aragua Train,” a reference to a union for train workers in Venezuela’s Aragua state.
In September, Venezuelan authorities, led by dictator Maduro, raided Tocorón prison, the gang’s de facto headquarters. The raid made headlines around the world because of the images showing the luxury the prisoners lived in.
Within the walls of Tocorón, Tren de Aragua had built a zoo, complete with ocelots, lions and crocodiles; a swimming pool; a children’s playground; a baseball stadium with bleachers; restaurants; and a nightclub called Tokyo.
The Tren de Aragua swimming pool which was next to a children’s play area
However, experts say the raid was a sham.
It was nothing more than an “organized surrender” of Tren de Aragua to Maduro’s regime, said Humberto Prado, director of the nongovernmental watchdog group Venezuelan Prison Observatory.
The operation freed an estimated 1,000 gang members, as well as their infamous leader, Hector Guerrero Flores, alias ‘Niño Guerrero’ or ‘Warrior Child’.
His whereabouts remain unknown — although Interpol has warned he may have tried to flee to the US along with the more than 3.8 million migrants who have entered the country since President Joe Biden took office.
What is not in dispute is whether other members of Tren de Aragua have infiltrated America.
“Police authorities in Chicago, New York and Miami have already discovered elements of the Tren de Aragua in their cities,” said Joseph M. Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society.
“The same thing that is happening in South America is now going to happen here in the United States, in the Venezuelan migrant communities,” Blair told KTSM.
