President Donald Trump announced Friday that U.S. forces had killed the leader of Tren de Aragua, one of Latin America’s most feared criminal organizations, in a military strike carried out inside Venezuela earlier this week.
The operation was conducted in close coordination with Venezuelan security forces, Trump said.
“At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Nino Guerrero, the infamous leader of Tren De Aragua, one of the most bloodthirsty terrorist organizations on Planet Earth,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday evening.
The target was Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, widely known by his alias Nino Guerrero. Trump’s post included a video showing a green-roofed building consumed by a massive explosion.
What We Know So Far
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed on X that the strike had taken place earlier in the week and that Guerrero’s death had been verified. The Central Intelligence Agency provided intelligence support for the operation, a senior administration official said.
U.S. Southern Command General Francis Donovan said the strike targeted a Tren de Aragua compound in Venezuela’s Bolivar state.
Venezuela’s communications ministry confirmed the joint operation in a statement Friday, saying it involved intelligence sharing and specialized technical support. “During the operation, clashes occurred with members of these criminal structures, resulting in the death of Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias Nino Guerrero, the leader of a criminal organization,” the ministry said.
Guerrero had been among the most wanted fugitives tracked by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The State Department had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture in late 2024.
In December, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged him with ordering, directing, and facilitating acts of terrorism inside the United States. Then-U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton described him as the “mastermind of Tren de Aragua’s evolution from a Venezuelan prison gang into a transnational terrorist organization,” according to CNN. Clayton has since been nominated by Trump to serve as Director of National Intelligence.
Guerrero became a fugitive in October 2023, when Venezuelan authorities reclaimed Tocorón prison in Aragua state, the facility where the gang was founded. He was not found during the raid and had been evading capture ever since.
What Authorities Are Saying
The Trump administration has maintained that Tren de Aragua operates with the knowledge and complicity of the former Venezuelan government under Nicolas Maduro. The State Department formally designated the group a foreign terrorist organization.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has imposed sanctions on the gang over alleged involvement in drug smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering, extortion, and contract killings.
Retired Colombian General Oscar Naranjo, a former vice president of Colombia, previously described Tren de Aragua as “the most disruptive criminal organization operating nowadays in Latin America.”
Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez, who has held power since a U.S.-backed military operation in January resulted in Maduro’s capture and transfer to American custody, has received White House support. Maduro has pleaded not guilty to U.S. federal charges that include narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, and weapons-related offenses.
Why This Matters
The killing of Guerrero marks the most direct use of American military force against a criminal organization on South American soil in decades.
Tren de Aragua began inside Tocorón prison and expanded rapidly as Venezuela’s economic collapse drove millions of citizens to flee the country. The gang embedded itself in migration routes running through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile, trafficking and extorting the very people using those corridors.
Its reach eventually extended into the United States and across the Atlantic. Guerrero’s brother was arrested in Spain in March 2024, in what Spanish police identified as the first confirmed Tren de Aragua cell in Europe, CNN reported.
The Trump administration used concerns about the gang’s U.S. presence to justify deporting more than 200 individuals to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador earlier this term. The move drew legal challenges after officials provided limited public evidence that many of those deported had verifiable ties to the organization.
The Department of Defense also began conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific suspected of drug smuggling, some linked to Tren de Aragua, starting around September of last year. More than 200 people have been killed in those operations. The CIA conducted a separate drone strike in December on a Venezuelan port facility it believed the gang was using to store and move drugs, according to sources familiar with the matter.
What Happens Next
Whether Guerrero’s death disrupts Tren de Aragua’s operations or simply triggers a leadership transition remains unclear. Criminal organizations have historically proven resilient to the loss of individual leaders.
The U.S.-Venezuela coordination behind this strike signals a level of security cooperation between Washington and Caracas that would have been unthinkable before Maduro’s removal. How far that partnership extends going forward will be closely watched across the region.
Venezuela’s government said in its Friday statement that it remains committed to fighting organized crime within its borders.
Reuters/CNN
