What is Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang whose alleged members Trump deported

White House Press Secretary Katherine Leavitt said on Sunday, “A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft… full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil.”

Who are the Tren de Aragua (TdA)?

The Tren de Aragua (TdA), or “train from Aragua” in Spanish, was founded in 2014 in the Tocorón prison in the state of Aragua in central Venezuela. The name is attributed to a union of railroad workers who were building a railroad connection between Caracas and Aragua.

The TdA emerged as part of the “pran” system, where incarcerated crime bosses organised elaborate drug and kidnapping networks and collaborated with gangs outside prisons. Its control over Tocorón was absolute: it ran a zoo, disco, and a restaurant and bar inside its premises while orchestrating murders and kidnappings outside.

The onset of Venezuela’s economic crisis in 2017 led the TdA to expand its criminal operations to neighbouring Colombia, Peru and Chile. Its notoriety expanded as it recruited Venezuelans fleeing President Nicolas Maduro’s reign, often criticised as being dictatorial. Today, the gang is believed to have built up drug networks, sex trafficking rings and extortion rackets targeting Venezuelans spread across South America.

In January, Chile accused the Venezuelan government of colluding with the gang to enable the murder of former Venezuelan opposition military officer Ronald Ojeda. Last March, Ojeda’s body was found buried in a neighbourhood in Santiago, Chile, days after being kidnapped by TdA members disguised as Chilean police officers.

How big is the gang?

According to Ronna Risquez, who authored a book on the group, the organisation had 5,000 members and made annual profits between $10 million and $15 million last year.

Of these, only a few hundred members are believed to be in the US, a fraction of the 800,000-strong Venezuelan population in the US.

Why is the US deporting alleged TdA members?

In her statement on Sunday, the White House Press Secretary called the TdA “a direct threat to the national security of the United States”. The statement also described the gang as “one of the most violent and ruthless terrorist gangs on planet earth” who “rape, maim and murder for sport”.

In September, security footage showed alleged TdA members who were heavily armed and forced their way into an apartment in Aurora, Denver. Trump then vowed to “liberate Aurora” from Venezuelans who were “taking over the whole town.”

US officials have suspected TdA members of shooting two New York police officers, playing a role in the death of a former Venezuelan police officer in South Florida, and other crimes from Chicago to Texas. Law enforcement has arrested TdA members from New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas and California.

Last July, the Biden administration had designated the gang as a “transnational criminal organization” alongside El Salvador’s MS-13 and Italy’s Camorra. This designation blocked any of their assets in the US that were controlled by foreign nationals. The State Department also offered a $12 million reward for the capture of their leaders.

How did the US identify TdA members?

There appears to be no definite process for the identification of TdA gang members.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directive from 2017 identified individuals as gang members if “they admit membership in a gang, have been convicted of violating Title 18 USC 521 or any other federal or state law criminalizing or imposing civil consequences for gang-related activity, or if they meet certain other criteria such as having tattoos identifying a specific gang or being identified as a gang member by a reliable source.”

Bill Hing, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, told The Washington Post that suspicion of gang affiliation was reason enough for ICE to arrest migrants, even if the case did not hold up before an immigration judge.

“That doesn’t mean (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) will prevail in front of an immigration judge with that allegation, but if that person is undocumented that person will get deported anyway,” Hing said.