:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/elcomercio/36HAZBN3F5GI7KBIZWU6OMDD54.jpg "Aragua Train expands in the United States: Venezuelan criminal gang appears mentioned 70 times in police documents or prosecutors' accusations | Venezuela | Warrior Child | USA | WORLD")
What the authorities of USA they feared is already happening. The Venezuelan criminal organization Aragua Trainwhich has expanded through several South American countries coinciding with the migratory wave of its compatriots, is already operating in the United States, where it has taken some of its most lucrative criminal modalities, such as human trafficking.
According to a CNN investigation, There are more than 70 cases in which the Aragua Train is mentioned in police documents or accusations by prosecutors in the United States.. Additionally, between fiscal year 2023 and May 2024, the Border Patrol in Texas identified 58 people as part of the criminal gang.
In ChicagoAccording to CNN, police files record at least ten criminal cases in which alleged members of the Aragua Train they could have been involved.
According to documents obtained by CNN, Some victims have received telephone threats from alleged members of the gang They demand money from them or they will be killed if they don’t comply.
In one of those cases reviewed by CNN, the victim reports having been subjected to a sexual assault.
Another victim told how she escaped from three men who tried to take her away in a vehicle and showed her a video of her brother, who is in Venezuelawhile he was allegedly subdued with a strap around his neck and at the same time he was hit in the stomach.
In another case, a 23-year-old man accused of being an alleged member of the Aragua Train He apparently sold drugs on three occasions to someone who turned out to be an undercover police officer. ChicagoCNN said.
On February 24, the police Chicago arrested a man accused of being part of the Aragua Train for the crimes of aggravated illegal use of a weapon, lacking a firearm identification card, driving without a permit or insurance and possessing cannabis.
On May 29, Jason Owenshead of the US Border Patrol, reported the arrest in Texas of 10 subjects linked to the Aragua Train.
They were forced into prostitution
Earlier this month, the American press reported that the police in Louisiana arrested three subjects linked to the Aragua Train by forcing Venezuelan immigrants into prostitution.
The women were captured in Venezuela and with deception they facilitated their arrival in the United States.
The accused, identified as Josmar Jesús Zambrano Chirinos, Allbert Machado y Osleidy Vanesa Chourio Díaz, offered support to women to cross the border into Mexico. They told them that once in US territory they would be given housing and even employment in the United States.
But in reality they They were forced into prostitution.
According to El Nuevo Herald, one of the victims called 911 and asked for help. Thus, the authorities managed to capture the subjects.
Two of the women indicated that they were forced to have sex with strangers to pay an amount imposed as a debt by criminals.
Both victims said that They only let them rest between 4:00 am and 8:00 amas long as they were not requested by a client at that time, reported El Nuevo Herald.
According to CNN, one victim said that Zambrano was the ringleader and that he would have told him that he could keep all the benefits of the first week working as prostitutebut would later get only 15%.
In addition, the subject charged her US$50 a day for accommodation and had offered her that, if she brought two more friends to work like her, would reduce your debt by US$2,500.
One of the women assured that, according to her calculations, there are at least 30 victims in the country who are in a situation similar to hers.
When the police raided the house of Louisiana where the women were, they found cash, used condoms, cell phones with potential clients who requested the services of women and Accounting books that supposedly documented how much money each woman earned daily and how much she owed.
The detainee Allbert Machado He told police he was offered a job Louisiana to run a brothel and that he accepted because he needed the money.
CNN also indicated that in New York, at least two of the seven people who were involved in a fight that went viral on social networks against some police officers, have been identified by a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) as alleged members of the Aragua Train.
In Florida, Miami-Dade police found the lifeless body of José Luis Sánchez Valera, a retired Venezuelan police officer who lived in Miami. According to court records, at the time of his death Valera was bound by his hands and feet inside his vehicle. The cause of death was reported as mechanical asphyxiation, CNN reported.
There are two detainees in this case and the authorities link them to the Aragua Train, something his defense lawyers have denied.
Besides…
The Aragua Train strategy to expand
Former Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano explained to CNN what the expansion process of the Venezuelan criminal gang is like. He said that the Aragua Train First it enters to occupy spaces where there is no strong criminal control. They start with the business of human trafficking and managing irregular migration. They deceive their potential victims by assuring them that they will support them on the route until they reach their destination.
Then they start running businesses related to the drug microtrafficking, just as where there is little territorial control of large gangs. Once they gain these spaces, they incorporate the local criminals they displaced to use them in their criminal dynamics.
After They enter a consolidation phase, where they become a multi-crime gang, since they begin to have territorial control in the businesses of extortion, kidnapping, sale of weapons, hitmen, etc. It is the same strategy that they have used in Colombia and in other South American countries such as Peru.
Molano points out that the Aragua Train has not been able to dominate Ecuador because in this country there are 22 local criminal gangs that are very strong.
A criminal wanted by Peru
In mid-May, the US Enforcement and Removal Office (ERO) confirmed the arrest of the Venezuelan Johan José Cárdenas Silvawhom he points out as belonging to the Aragua Train.
BBC Mundo reported that Cárdenas Silva He was requested by the Peruvian authorities for the crimes of illicit association, assault and aggravated robbery.
“Cárdenas falls due to an alert from Peru. We have a criterion that tells us that he may indeed be a member of the Aragua Train. In the other cases, there were suspicions, but there was nothing solid that assured us of their participation,” Ronna Rísquez, author of the book “El Tren de Aragua: the gang that revolutionized organized crime in Latin America,” told BBC Mundo.
The subject entered USA in October 2022 irregularly, said BBC Mundo. He was arrested on March 27 by the New York police along with eight other people for illegal possession of a firearm in a school zone, intention to sell illegal substances and causing injuries to a minor under 17 years of age.
On April 1, the Nassau County Police Department arrested him again and charged him with the crimes of grand larceny in the fourth degree for theft of property worth more than US$1,000 and petit larceny, the BBC reported.
On April 9, the New York City ERO received notification that Cárdenas He was an international fugitive wanted by Peruvian authorities for an arrest warrant issued in October 2018.
Besides…
The history of the Aragua Train
He Aragua Train nation from the union of workers who worked in the construction of the section of the Venezuelan Railway in 2005which toured the states of Aragua y Carabobo; hence its name.
The union charged for the assignment of jobs and extorted contractors in exchange for security. Later, he expanded his criminal activities. When construction was halted in 2011, the syndicate was already functioning as a criminal gang, according to InSight Crime.
The mega-gang reached its criminal peak in 2013, after Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias ‘Warrior Child’, was recaptured and imprisoned in the prison of Stumpwhere he established alliances with union members.
In Tocorón, Guerrero He quickly climbed the prison hierarchy until he became the “take”.
In jail ‘Warrior Child’ He had complete control and began to charge a monthly amount from the other prisoners for the construction of gyms, swimming pools, playgrounds, restaurants, nightclubs and other works inside the prison.
Outside of Stumphe Aragua Train encountered few obstacles to establishing its control and expanding its territory and criminal operations.
‘Warrior Boy’ He recruited criminal gang leaders from the San Vicente neighborhood, located in Maracay, and established another operations center there. One of those bands, known as the “The Flipper”, by the alias of its leader, Kenferson Sevilla Arteagatook complete control of the neighborhood.
Thanks to its alliance with this group, the Aragua Train managed to legally establish the Somos El Barrio JK Foundation, a façade through which the organization would begin to acquire capabilities of social control over the community.
Then, during the Chavista government Tareck El Aissami In Aragua, a large part of the state police apparatus was dismantled and San Vicente was converted into one of the well-known “peace zones”, territories where the government prohibited the action of the security forces. Thanks to this, the Aragua Train consolidated a solid base in the neighborhood.
Today the Aragua Train and the groups under his command are dedicated to extortion, kidnappings, drug trafficking, hitmen, vehicle theft, migrant smuggling and human trafficking in Venezuela and other countries of America.
According to Transparencia Venezuela, the criminal megagang has more than 4,000 members.
In September 2023, ‘Niño Guerrero’ escaped from the Tocorón prison before the authorities entered that prison to transfer all the prisoners to other prisons.