By Albinson Linares and Mariana Reyes
The Aragua Train, the largest criminal organization in Venezuela, has extended its operations to the United States, as shown by several recent incidents that alert the country's authorities.
An alleged gang member and Venezuelan immigrant, Yurwin Salazar, 23, faces a murder charge in the death last November of José Luis Sánchez Valera, a retired Venezuelan police officer who lived in South Florida, and is in custody. at the Metro West Detention Center in Miami-Dade.
Yurwin Salazar-Maita alleged member of the Aragua Train who was arrested in Florida, on January 16, 2024. Miami Dade Police Department
Additionally, a recent investigation by Telemundo Chicago Investiga confirms the presence of members of the dangerous Venezuelan gang in the Chicago area.
A series of emails from officials of the Human Smuggling and Trafficking Group of the Chicago office of the Department of Homeland Security, to which Telemundo Chicago Investiga had exclusive access, show that members of the criminal group operate in the Chicago area at least from October 2023.
In the documents, officers alert their internal units saying that "the gang has strong human trafficking operations in Latin America."
"This is an organized gang, a criminal enterprise that now operates in Chicago," explains Garry McCarthy, police chief in Willow Springs, a suburb of Cook County, in an interview with Telemundo Chicago.
"Whether it's drug trafficking, smuggling, human trafficking for sexual exploitation, extortion and all those things that this gang is doing in South America," McCarthy says of the group's criminal activities.
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An arrest in Chicago
Telemundo Chicago Investiga had access to a police report and court documents showing that a Venezuelan man was arrested last month for selling drugs to an undercover officer in Chicago.
Edwin Camejo, 27, was arrested on December 11, 2023 in the Las Empacadoras neighborhood, after an operation in which more than a dozen Chicago Police officers participated, according to the report, which highlights that it is member of the band Tren de Aragua.
According to his police file, Camejo was released the next day but there are still no further details about the case.
Documents show that Camejo sold cocaine to an undercover officer three times: on October 30, November 13 and a third time, on the same day of the arrest, December 11.
According to the report, during the operation the authorities seized from Camejo a transparent plastic bag that contained 3.9 grams of a white stone-like substance, suspected of containing cocaine.
"The reason there were four separate encounters where they sold drugs to an undercover is that it takes a certain amount to create a felony. Otherwise, it could be a misdemeanor, depending on how much weight they actually purchased." "says McCarthy, to explain how these types of covert operations are carried out.
"What they do is they buy, buy and buy and then they arrest the guy and try to get to the top of the organization," he asserts.
Edwin Camejo, 27, was arrested in Chicago on December 11, 2023. Chicago Police Department
In McCarthy's opinion, the identification and arrest of a member of a criminal organization like this can occur through different means.
"So it could be self-identification. It could be tattoos, it could be in some way a prior identification with another member of the same gang," details the police chief.
Likewise, the United States Border Patrol confirmed to Telemundo Chicago Investiga that 38 members of the Aragua Train were arrested in six different sectors during fiscal year 2023, which was previously reported by CNN.
Additionally, authorities specified that at least one of the detainees was referred to the El Paso Intelligence Unit due to possible gang-related tattoos.
One of the intelligence documents from the Cook County Sheriff's Office contains photos of the tattoos with which members of this gang apparently identify themselves: an AK47 rifle, a silhouette of Michael Jordan, a crown and a skull with gas masks .
But McCarthy believes Edwin Camejo's arrest could be the tip of the iceberg of a larger threat.
"
The established bands and this band are probably going to go to war at some point. And that's when it's really going to blow up," he says.
McCarthy comments that the possibility of this confrontation worries the Chicago authorities, because the threat will be "as big as they want because it is as if the world were at their disposal."
And then he adds: "It's a recipe for disaster in Chicago."
Telemundo Chicago Investiga requested interviews with the Superintendent of the Chicago Police and Delia Ramirez, Democratic representative and vice president of the Congressional Intelligence Committee, but did not receive a response.
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Criminals detained at the border
The Aragua Train began as a prison gang in Venezuela and, according to various official investigations, has become a mafia organization known for engaging in criminal activities such as murders, kidnappings, extortion, sexual exploitation, drug and migrant trafficking, among others. crimes.
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The band has cells in several American countries in addition to Venezuela: they are in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Panama and areas of the United States, such as Miami and Chicago.
For now.
Although the authorities did not detail exactly in which areas the arrests occurred, they explained that for these types of arrests they use biometric controls and background investigations.
However, one of the challenges for detecting members of this group is the lack of diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the United States, which were canceled during the Donald Trump Government.
"We don't have data on them because I'm sure that if it's Venezuela, it doesn't share it with the United States. So
you can't connect the dots when we don't have points
," McCarthy asserts.
Art Del Cueto, vice president of the Border Patrol Workers Union, agrees with McCarthy, and other experts, on the difficulties that authorities face in detecting the entry of members of the Aragua Train.
"There are many individuals who have not been arrested, there are individuals who have not been able to locate them and who have not been able to arrest them," Del Cueto, in an interview with Telemundo Chicago Investiga.
Due to its expansion to various countries, the gang created in Venezuela rivals other criminal organizations such as the PCC of Brazil, with presence in Paraguay, Argentina and Bolivia, the MS-13, considered the most powerful gang in Central America with activities in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and the United States, and the National Liberation Army, the Colombian guerrilla that controls areas in its home country and Venezuela.
Experts and police agents, like McCarthy, wonder how many members of the Aragua Train could be in US territory.
"If they caught 38, how many did they not arrest? There will be hundreds," explains the police chief.
According to the most recent figures from Customs and Border Protection, in fiscal year 2023 alone, authorities recorded 334,914 encounters with Venezuelan citizens on the southern border of the United States.
So far in fiscal year 2024, 85,205 encounters have already been recorded with people of that nationality.
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The expansion of the Aragua Train
According to various investigations, the Aragua Train originated in 2014 while its leaders were serving sentences in the Aragua Penitentiary Center, a prison better known as 'Tocorón' and located in the north-central part of Venezuela.
"The prison was a kind of small town or small city where they were a kind of mayor or ruler who controlled everything," Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist specialized in security issues and author of
El Tren de Aragua: La banda, told Telemundo Chicago.
that revolutionized organized crime in Latin America
.
"They turn the prison into a kind of bunker and turn it into a kind of city where there was a swimming pool, where there was a disco, where there were restaurants... a zoo that was very impressive," Rísquez explained about the situation in Tocorón.
The prison was finally intervened at the end of 2023, in a military operation.
"We have completely dismantled the self-proclaimed former Aragua Train," said Remigio Ceballos, Minister of the Interior of Venezuela, about the operation.
The Government of Venezuela announced a reward for the capture of its ringleader, Héctor Guerrero Flores, known as
Niño Guerrero
, who has not been captured and was mentioned in intelligence documents from the Cook County Sheriff's Office, to which Telemundo Chicago Investiga had exclusive access.
As researchers and journalists have documented, the Aragua Train began to follow the route of Venezuelans who began to flee the complex humanitarian emergency that hit hard starting in 2014. The organization had already been expanding for several years throughout the continent, including Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil and Panama.
"Venezuela came to be in such a critical situation in which there was no need to steal, it was not profitable, it was not a business to kidnap any person, because well, no one had money, everything was in Venezuela, people were hungry, desperate" explained Rísquez, who estimates that the band could have about 5,000 members and manage annual profits of between 10 and 15 million dollars.
This criminal organization has become a national security priority in the countries where they have established their criminal activities.
"Don Héctor Pietro Materano (alias
Mamut
), is so bloodthirsty, and has a contempt for life," is how General Óscar Arriola, director of Investigations of the Peruvian Police, described one of the members of the Aragua Train who, according to authorities, directed crimes from a maximum security prison in that country.
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"These people would be responsible for selective homicides, retail sale of narcotics, extortion of merchants, sale of adulterated liquor among other criminal activities in the Bogotá area," said Francisco Barbosa, attorney general of Colombia, during a public intervention in which He referred to the band.
"It is shocking. Based on this organization, the Aragua Train, is something that we are not going to allow to continue developing in Chile. You can rest assured that we are going to persecute you," promised Gabriel Boric, president of Chile, during a speech in which he spoke about the security issues that affect his country.
According to Rísquez, the internationalization of the Aragua Train helped them expand their criminal portfolio.
"Migrants have become their first victims and the women they sexually exploit," Rísquez added.
In her book, the Venezuelan journalist explains that although there is no exact date for the international expansion of the Aragua Train, the data from her research point to the 2017 crisis as a key moment.
"It was the year of greatest political, social and economic conflict in the country, and when the third great migratory wave began, according to the National Living Conditions Survey (Encovi) 2019-2020. And it is clear that, in its internationalization, the megaband followed the route of Venezuelan migrants," writes the researcher.
However, other researchers believe that caution should be taken when linking the growth of criminal groups with migration phenomena.
"It is delicate to link crime with purely migratory processes. Although in some cases that could be related, more research is necessary, because
we cannot link migrants who come for economic needs with criminal gangs, that only unleashes xenophobia
," warns Guadalupe. Correa-Cabrera, specialist in criminal organizations and academic at George Mason University.
However, Correa-Cabrera emphasizes the great attractiveness of the US market for groups dedicated to criminal activities.
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"We are talking about criminal gangs that are dedicated to various things and are located where there are more resources. In reality, the United States is a very important place for drug dealing, and many illicit activities. That is why it is not surprising that this Venezuelan gang does what the Mexican cartels or the gangs have also done, which are groups that have used the migratory routes for their benefit," asserts the academic.
According to Rísquez's analysis, the rapid international expansion of this criminal organization is based on three fundamental factors: the economic deterioration experienced in Venezuela since 2013, the massive migration of Venezuelans, and failures in prison and security policies.
"In the case of criminal groups, an internal migration first began, towards the rural centers where the most profitable illicit economies moved: the state of Bolívar, with gold, and that of Sucre, with drug trafficking. Then came the leap abroad," concludes the researcher in her book.
One of your leaders in the US?
In the case of the United States, Rísquez says that Venezuelan police officials have assured him that some members of the Aragua Train settled in the state of Florida and have opened evangelical churches, from where they send financial aid to social organizations in Aragua.
Furthermore, the researcher states that there is a presumption that one of the leaders of the gang is in United States territory.
"After Larry Changa disappeared in Chile, Luis Rodríguez, a former CICPC commissioner who is an expert in mega-gangs, assured me that the criminal had managed to enter the United States with his family in mid-2022 through the border with Mexico," Rísquez points out in his book. .
An important precedent for the activities of the Aragua Train in the United States was detected in 2017 when a Spanish citizen, originally from Las Palmas and residing in Venezuela, was kidnapped by an armed group on the border between the states of Aragua and Guárico.
The criminals posed as police officers and stopped the vehicle in which the Spaniard and his brother were traveling.
The latter was immediately released, with the task of raising the 500,000 euros they demanded as a ransom.
"In an unusual practice among criminal groups in the country, the kidnappers amputated a finger from the victim and sent it as proof of life to his relatives. This incident, added to a series of violent and threatening calls to relatives of the kidnapped in Spain, it made the case leave the local area," Rísquez explains in his research.
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In the end, the Spanish Civil Guard and the FBI joined the investigations looking for the kidnapped citizen.
"The operation began when the Las Palmas Civil Guard received a complaint from the victim's family, indicating that the freed brother was beginning to receive extortion calls. The calls were made from Tampa, Florida. The Civil Guard contacted then to the FBI, which located the author of the calls, 'a Venezuelan citizen and resident in the United States with an extensive criminal history in his country of origin,' according to a statement from the Civil Guard," published the newspaper El
País
.
The Spanish citizen spent 38 days in captivity.
The news of the plagiarism only became known after the man was released, on February 16, 2017, in the Venezuelan state of Aragua.
The man said that while he was in captivity he remained in wooded areas and assured that he was permanently guarded by 20 armed men.
His release was achieved thanks to a joint operation between police agencies from Venezuela, Panama, Spain and the Ft. Myers Division of the FBI, in western Florida.
The identity of the kidnapped person was never revealed.