US-Venezuela joint operation kills leader of Tren de Aragua gang

The leader of the transnational gang Tren de Aragua has been killed in southern Venezuela as part of a joint operation with the United States, in what a top Pentagon official on Saturday described as a warning to “narco-terrorists” in Latin America.

Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias Nino Guerrero, was “neutralised” in southeastern Bolivar state, Venezuela’s Ministry of Communications said in a statement on Friday.

US President Donald Trump said Guerrero was killed in “a swift and lethal kinetic strike” by US forces, in an attack “coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela”.

“As a result, Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Friday night.

On Saturday, a senior aide to Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth said the killing was meant to serve as a stark warning.

“The death of Nino Guerrero sends a clear message to Latin America. There is no refuge for narco-terrorists in our hemisphere,” Patrick Weaver, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, said in a post on X on Saturday morning.

Trump’s social post confirming Guerrero’s killing was accompanied by a 10-second video, showing an overhead view of a building surrounded by greenery before an explosion erupts, sending up a cloud of smoke. No people are clearly visible in the footage.

‘Countless acts of violence’

Founded in Venezuela, Tren de Aragua has been designated a terrorist organisation by the United States and is also active in Colombia, Peru and Chile.

Federal prosecutors in New York filed racketeering, drug and firearms charges against the gang leader in December.

“Guerrero Flores has been the mastermind of Tren de Aragua’s evolution from a Venezuelan prison gang into a transnational terrorist organisation,” US Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement when the indictment was announced.

Tren de Aragua, under Guerrero Flores’s leadership, has “committed countless acts of violence, extortion, and drug trafficking all over North America, South America, and Europe”, he said.

The US State Department had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

According to a report by the InSight Crime think tank, Guerrero made Tren de Aragua “what it is today during his incarceration at Tocoron”.

Under his leadership, Tocoron “became one of the country’s most notorious prisons, largely because of the unofficial policy of the Venezuelan government of handing control of certain prisons … over to criminal leaders known as pranes”.

“This freedom and the gang’s criminal revenues allowed for the construction of a zoo, a swimming pool, a playground, a restaurant, and a nightclub inside the prison,” the report added.

The joint operation is the latest sign of improving ties between Caracas and Washington since the capture of former president Nicolas Maduro by US forces in January. The two countries restored diplomatic relations in March, which had been severed in 2019.

The United States is in the process of reactivating its embassy in Caracas.