President Donald Trump is pictured throughout an occasion the place he indicators a proclamation in regards to the fishing business, within the Oval Workplace of the White Home, Thursday, June 11, 2026, in Washington.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
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Jacquelyn Martin/AP
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump mentioned Friday {that a} “swift and lethal kinetic” U.S. strike has killed Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, whom he referred to as “the infamous leader” of the Tren de Aragua gang.
Tren de Aragua has been labeled by the US as a terrorist group. Guerrero Flores was charged in a New York federal courtroom with racketeering conspiracy and different crimes, together with lending help to terrorists in crimes that stretched greater than a decade, authorities introduced in December.
Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X that the strike occurred earlier within the week on a Tren de Aragua compound in Venezuela.
U.S. Legal professional Jay Clayton mentioned on the time that the gang is liable for numerous acts of violence, extortion and drug trafficking in North America, South America and Europe. Trump nominated Clayton on Thursday to be director of nationwide intelligence.
The U.S. State Division had supplied rewards of as much as $5 million for data resulting in Guerrero Flores’ arrest
In a put up on his social media web site, Trump wrote, “Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else and, under my leadership, we will find these vicious murderers and drug lords anytime, anyplace, and send them to the depths of hell where they belong.” Trump’s put up referred to Guerrero Flores by his alias, “Niño Guerrero.”
The put up additionally included unclassified video, shot from above, of a small constructing with a inexperienced roof exploding.
Hegseth mentioned, “The operation underscores the shared U.S. and Venezuelan commitment to take the fight to narco-terrorists and deny them any safe haven in our hemisphere.”
Venezuela’s ministry of communications didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the operation.
Trump has taken a collection of extraordinary actions in opposition to the gang, together with a collection of strikes on small boats his administration has accused of smuggling medicine to America. At the least 207 individuals have been killed in boat strikes by the U.S. army within the jap Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea because the Trump administration started focusing on these it calls “narcoterrorists” in early September.
Trump and administration officers have constantly blamed Tren de Aragua for being on the root of the violence and illicit drug dealing that plague some U.S. cities. The president spent months repeating the declare — contradicted by a declassified U.S. intelligence evaluation — that Tren de Aragua had operated below Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s management. The U.S. whisked Maduro out of Venezuela to face U.S. drug expenses in January.
Tren de Aragua originated greater than a decade in the past at an infamously lawless jail with hardened criminals in Venezuela’s central state of Aragua. The gang has expanded lately as thousands and thousands of Venezuelans migrated to different Latin American nations or the U.S. looking for higher dwelling situations.
Guerrero Flores returned to the jail in Aragua for homicide and different convictions in 2013, when Venezuela’s disaster started as corruption, mismanagement and a drop in crude costs wrecked the oil-dependent economic system. Guerrero Flores and some different inmates noticed a worthwhile alternative as the federal government uncared for prisons.
They assumed management and administration of the jail, establishing a system that managed the whole inmate inhabitants by power and extortion. Over time, they reworked the power right into a type of metropolis that included a zoo, baseball discipline, on line casino and eating places. Guerrero Flores had his personal lavish suite.
The dimensions of the gang is unclear. Nations with giant populations of Venezuelan migrants, together with Peru and Colombia, have accused the group of being behind a spree of violence within the area. Nonetheless, not like different legal organizations from Colombia, Central America and Brazil, Tren de Aragua has no large-scale involvement in smuggling cocaine throughout worldwide borders, in response to InSight Crime, a suppose tank that tracks crime throughout Latin America.
In Venezuela, gang leaders have lengthy been recognized to take part in numerous unlawful actions, together with gold mining.
Trump campaigned for a second time period promising to crack down on immigration and crime. Whereas polls present his favorability rankings have sagged on his dealing with of the economic system, immigration stays Trump’s strongest problem, in response to the AP-NORC Heart for Public Affairs Analysis.
