President Donald Trump has announced that the US military killed the leader of the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua in an airstrike.
"At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Niño Guerrero," Trump wrote on social media.
Niño Guerrero—whose full name is Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores—was the long-time leader of Tren de Aragua, one of Latin America's most dangerous criminal organizations and a key target of the Trump administration. The president has accused the gang of engaging in "irregular warfare" against the United States and designated it a foreign terrorist organization, placing it alongside groups like the Islamic State.
Trump also shared footage of the strike, which shows a green building and an adjacent shed being obliterated in a fiery explosion. According to the president, the military action was "coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well."
The strike follows a dramatic US operation in January, when American forces seized then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his compound in an overnight raid. Maduro now faces criminal charges in New York, with US authorities accusing him of collaborating with Tren de Aragua in efforts against America.
Tren de Aragua began as a prison gang, but under Guerrero's leadership it evolved into what the US State Department describes as a "transnational criminal organization." The department had offered millions of dollars for information leading to his arrest.
Under Guerrero's direction, the gang expanded into Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile, and diversified its operations from extorting migrants to sex trafficking, contract killing, and kidnapping.
Guerrero had a long history of evading justice. In 2012, he escaped prison by bribing a guard, only to be rearrested in 2013. After returning to custody, he transformed the Tocorón Prison in the northern state of Aragua into a leisure complex featuring a zoo, restaurants, a nightclub, a betting shop, and a swimming pool.
In September 2023, then-President Maduro sent 11,000 soldiers to storm the prison and regain control. Guerrero escaped once again.
Even while moving in and out of prison, he continued to expand the gang's reach, seizing control of gold mines in Bolívar state, drug corridors along the Caribbean coast, and clandestine border crossings between Venezuela and Colombia, according to the US State Department.