The United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Thursday imposed sanctions on Héctor “The Child” Guerrero, leader of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization, and five other members of its top brass.
The U.S. is offering a $5 million bounty for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Guerrero alongside bounties on other sanctioned Tren de Aragua leaders totaling up to $12 million.
“Today’s action highlights the critical role of leaders like Niño Guerrero and his lieutenants in Tren de Aragua’s efforts to increase its destabilizing influence throughout the region,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said. “The Trump Administration will not allow Tren de Aragua to continue to terrorize our communities and harm innocent Americans.”
“In line with President Trump’s mandate to Make America Safe Again, Treasury remains dedicated to dismantling Tren de Aragua and disrupting the group’s campaign of violence,” he added.
In addition to Guerrero, the sanctions target his wife Wendy Marbelys Rios Gomez, Tren de Aragua co-founder Yohan Jose “Johan Petrica” Romero, and top gang members Josue Angel “Santanita” Santana Peña and Wilmer Jose “Wilmer Guayabal” Perez Castillo. Collectively, the five individuals are attributed a litany of criminal charges such as terrorism, theft, homicide, extortion, bombings, human and drug trafficking, and illegal mining.
Tren de Aragua originally started in 2012 as a local trade union gang in the eponymous state of Aragua, Venezuela, and saw a rapid expansion into a full-fledged transnational crime syndicate over the past decade. The organization spread to other Latin American countries such as Colombia and Chile in the late 2010s before establishing a criminal presence in the United States in recent years.
Experts believe that Tren de Aragua expanded under the auspices of the socialist regime of Nicolás Maduro, which is believed to maintain close ties to the group. Reports indicate that the Maduro regime has allegedly employed Tren de Aragua to hunt and persecute dissidents abroad. In February, the FBI reportedly assessed that Venezuelan officials “likely facilitate” the migration of Tren de Aragua members to “destabilize” other countries.
The United States formally designated Tren de Aragua a terrorist organization in February. In March, President Donald Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport a group of 252 Venezuelan illegal migrants suspected of being Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador as per the terms of an agreement between Trump and President Nayib Bukele.
Since then, the Maduro regime has repeatedly accused Bukele of “kidnapping” the 252 Venezuelans, claiming that their deportation under the Alien Enemies Act is comparable to the persecution of the Jewish people by Nazi Germany and their imprisonment in concentration camps.
Like many of Venezuela’s criminal gangs, Tren de Aragua operates under a fiefdom-esque system known as Pranato (“Pranate”), with its leader Héctor Guerrero the gang’s “pran,” a Spanish acronym that loosely translates to “Finished-off, Natural-Born Killer Prisoner.” Pran is roughly used similarly to the term “thug” or “chief thug.” The pranato reportedly further flourished in Venezuelan inmate centers thanks to the “humanist” socialist prison reforms introduced by the Maduro regime in 2013. Gangs operating under the pranato control the insides of Venezuela’s prisons and orchestrate criminal activities from within while the Bolivarian National Guard safeguards the prison’s exterior.
Prior to his “disappearance,” Guerrero was allegedly “serving” a 17-year prison sentence on multiple criminal charges at the Tocorón prison. As Tocorón’s pran, Guerrero turned the prison’s interior into Tren de Aragua’s main headquarters in Venezuela. The facility once featured its own zoo, baseball field, bars, a casino, a nightclub, bank, pool, playgrounds, and its own cryptocurrency farm, among other amenities.
Experts believe that the Maduro regime negotiated with Guerrero before the “raid,” allowing him and his top brass to safely escape through a series of tunnels that connected the inmate center with the nearby Lake Valencia. According to OFAC, Josue Angel Santana Peña, one of the five individuals sanctioned, was imprisoned alongside Guerrero before the “raid.”
Weeks after the “raid,” authorities from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in Chicago, Illinois, reportedly confirmed the presence of Tren de Aragua’s gang members in the city. Several other U.S. states such as Louisiana, New York, Colorado, and South Carolina saw Tren de Aragua members commit criminal activities within their territory in the following months.
While Héctor Guerrero’s whereabouts remain unknown since the 2023 “raid” on Tocorón, Spain extradited his brother and Tren de Aragua leading figure Gerso Guerrero to Venezuela in July 2024. The Venezuelan socialist regime requested his extradition on the grounds that Gerso Guerrero will be “tried” on charges of aggravated extortion, money laundering, association, illicit trafficking of arms and ammunition, terrorism, and financing of terrorism. The trial is yet to take place at press time.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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