A Tren de Aragua leader is killed in a joint strike, U.S. and Venezuela say

A joint strike by the United States and Venezuela killed a leader of the Tren de Aragua transnational gang, President Donald Trump and officials in both countries said Friday, dealing a blow to a syndicate the Trump administration has blamed for an influx of violent crime and illicit drugs.

The strike took place this past week alongside Venezuelan security forces, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, without providing a precise date. He said it targeted a compound housing Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, a founder of Tren de Aragua.

A statement from Venezuela’s communications ministry said the operation took place in Venezuela, in the southeast of the state of Bolívar. Hegseth and Venezuelan officials said Guerrero Flores had been killed in the strike.

Guerrero Flores, 43, was better known by the alias Niño Guerrero, meaning “warrior child.” He was wanted in the United States on federal charges of directing acts of terrorism, alongside other charges.

The CIA, which has dedicated expanded resources to Latin America during Trump’s second term, supplied the intelligence that led to the strike, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the operation.

Trump said on social media that the U.S. military’s Southern Command had conducted the strike at his direction as part of his pledge to dismantle foreign gangs. His administration designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization last year.

Trump said the operation had been conducted with the Venezuelan government, which has become more cooperative with the United States since the United States captured former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and helped install a more pliant replacement, Delcy Rodríguez.

Trump posted a video of a building exploding and invoked the names of crime victims in Georgia and Texas, calling the operation “retribution” for their families.

Trump has often railed against the gang, using it to push his deportation agenda and to justify his military strikes on vessels purportedly ferrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the United States. Critics have questioned whether Tren de Aragua has truly played the dangerous role that Trump says it has.

Gen. Francis L. Donovan, who leads U.S. Southern Command, thanked Venezuelan security forces in a social media post for their support in what he described as a joint operation.

The Venezuelan government said in a statement Friday that a combined operation had targeted organized crime structures. The operation was based on the exchange of intelligence between the two countries, the statement said.

Tren de Aragua originated as a prison gang in Venezuela in the mid-2000s and has since expanded across Latin America and several U.S. cities. The organization is one of the most notorious in the region, focused on sex trafficking, human smuggling and drugs, drawing intense scrutiny from U.S. law enforcement.

The Biden administration in 2024 issued a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Guerrero Flores. He was charged last year in a New York federal court under the second Trump administration with racketeering, terrorism, drug importation and firearms offenses.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.