A new report released by the Heritage Foundation provides the first comprehensive English-language look at the masses Venezuelan gang Aragua Train (TdA) whose brutal exploits in the US have made national headlines.
The verdict? According to the report’s author, Joseph Humire, the threat America faces from Tren de Aragua is much worse than most people think.
Titled “Derailing the Tren de Aragua,” the report offers U.S. leaders a starting point for understanding the violent criminal organization that they say was “honed and perfected within Venezuelan prison walls and then exported to the Western Hemisphere.”
Humire told Fox News Digital he hopes the report will deliver the results Trump administration a starting point for how to respond to the TdA and dismantle it before it can take further root within US borders.
Migrants enter the US in Lukeville, Ariz. (Fox News)
“The TdA is unique among criminal organizations because there is an ideology attached to it,” Humire said in the report. “With the TdA already present in America, an understanding of the TdA is necessary to uncover their motives, tactics and overall organized crime strategy to solve this.”
What is the Aragua Train?
Humire, director of the Center for a safe and free society and a Heritage Foundation colleague, told Fox News Digital that the first thing to understand about Tren de Aragua is that it is much more than a gang. Rather, it is an organized international terrorist effort, backed by some of America’s worst enemies, to sow chaos and destabilize the US.
Tren de Aragua, meaning ‘Train from Aragua’, was born out of a Venezuelan prison more than a decade ago and burst into the national consciousness in 2023 following reports of members of the group taking a entire apartment building held hostage in Aurora, Coloradoa suburb of Denver.
Since then, reports of violent crimes by Tren de Aragua members have spread like wildfire, including the high-profile murders of nursing students Laken Riley in Georgia and 12 years old Jocelyn Nungaray in Houston.
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José Antonio Ibarra, an illegal migrant from Venezuela, was recently convicted of the murder of nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia.
American media reports and politicians have portrayed Tren de Aragua as a group of lowly thugs and criminals. However, Humire’s report emphasizes that Tren de Aragua is a state-sponsored transnational criminal organization sponsored by and embedded in the Venezuelan socialist government.
Instead of working to detect and deter criminals and terror, Humire said the most important aspects of the Venezuelan government help facilitate TdA’s operations not only within Venezuela but throughout the Western Hemisphere.
With the support of the Venezuelan government, he said TdA has a deliberate “invasion ideology” aimed at achieving territorial control over neighborhoods and regions within weeks, rather than the years-long process that most gangs and transnational criminal organizations to follow.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix/File)
Why is Tren de Aragua spreading across the US?
Although many comparisons have been made between Tren de Aragua and the El Salvadoran gang The Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13)TdA is expanding much faster, which Humire believes is likely due to its unique origins and state sponsorship in Venezuela.
He also claimed that TdA’s rapid expansion in the United States is a “direct result of the Biden-Harris administration’s failed immigration policies and lack of border enforcement.”
The Biden Parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans and the Venezuelan parole program have, in many cases, resulted in Venezuelan migrants being sent into the country en masse with little to no control. Thanks to these policies, the Venezuelan population in the US has grown by almost 1 million people (520.8%), making it the fastest growing nationality in the US as of 2021.
The result is that while TdA is new to the U.S., it now has a presence in more than 30 major U.S. cities and at least 100 federal investigations involving the group are underway, as the report puts it. enforcement community by surprise.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced Monday that the state will target a Venezuelan gang he says is notorious for brutal violence and murder and poses a threat to the safety of Texans. (X/@GregAbbott_TX)
How to ‘derail’ the train
In the first 100 days of his new administration, Humire said Trump should follow Trump’s example Texas’ efforts to eradicate the gang by keeping his promise to be a “Operation Aurora” to adopt a “whole of government approach,” using federal resources within the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the military to complement state-led law enforcement efforts, and to work with Latin American allies to TdA can be hit from any angle.
“It is believed that key TdA leaders have not yet arrived in America, meaning it is time to take preventive measures,” the report said.
Humire said the Trump’s Department of Homeland Security should immediately label TdA as a transnational terrorist group and label Venezuelan migrants as ‘special interest aliens’. The designation would reverse the Biden administration’s policy of allowing Venezuelan migrants to enter and instead allow U.S. immigration officials to better vet Venezuelan migrants.
While this may sound controversial, Humire said this would not only better protect U.S. citizens at home, but also legitimize asylum seekers fleeing Venezuela.
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Venezuelan immigrant Louis Sanchez asks Texas National Guard troops to let his family pass through barbed wire after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico in Eagle Pass on September 27, 2023. (John Moore/Getty Images)
“This is really to protect Venezuelan migrants just because you come from one of those countries,” he said. “Most Venezuelan migrants will actually agree with this because they do not want to be infiltrated by Tren de Aragua, and all Venezuelan migrants know how cruel and dangerous Tren de Aragua really is.”
What will Trump do?
Humire said there are already positive signs from the Trump transition that the newly elected president is taking his promise to dismantle TdA seriously.
“I think appointing the border czar so early in the transition process was a clear signal that this is one of the highest, if not the highest, priorities of the new Trump administration,” he said. “And Tom Homan, who was appointed border czar, is very aware of this Tren de Aragua gang and all the transnational criminal organizations that are undermining American sovereignty.”
Donald Trump (Brandon Bell/Pool via AP/File)
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He also said that some of Trump’s key cabinet appointments such as Senator Marco Rubio becomes Secretary of State And Rep. Michael Waltz for national security advisoris evidence of a whole-of-government approach in which people in government realize that TdA “could be a major problem unless we nip it in the bud immediately.”
“This is something the Biden administration could have done. They had all the necessary tools to do that, but they lacked the most important ingredient, which was political will,” he said. “So the political will in the new administration to address this issue is very strong, from the president to his appointees and everywhere.”
