June 23, 2026
The leader of the feared Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, was killed in a missile strike in the southern state of Bolívar, according to US President Donald Trump. More than anyone else, it was Trump who moved the prison gang into the public eye, claiming on the campaign trail that it was staging a criminal invasion of the United States, under the direction of former Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro.
Tren de Aragua is a hyper-violent federation of gangs. It has expanded beyond Venezuela to Colombia, Peru, and Chile, riding on the back of a wave of migration of some eight million Venezuelans who fled the economic collapse presided over by Maduro.
But the fact that the gang’s leader, Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero,” was killed in a remote part of Venezuela, was just another indication that Tren de Aragua was in decline, painted as a terrorist organization, and abandoned by the Venezuelan officials and politicians who once protected and profited from it.