Top Tren de Aragua leader killed in US military strike, Trump announces
By Michael Williams, Rafael Romo, CNN
(CNN) — One of the top leaders of Tren de Aragua, a cartel and US-designated terrorist organization, has been killed in a US military strike, President Donald Trump said Friday.
Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, known as Niño Guerrero, was credited with transforming a Venezuelan prison gang into a transnational operation with tentacles stretching through large swathes of Latin America, the United States and even across the Atlantic to Spain.
Guerrero, who was listed as a most wanted fugitive by US Immigration and Custom Enforcement, was killed in “a swift and lethal kinetic strike,” Trump announced Friday evening on Truth Social.
His post included a video showing a green roofed building disappearing under a cloud of billowing smoke caused by a massive explosion.
The president said the strike was “coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well.”
It was conducted earlier this week in collaboration with Venezuelan security forces, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth lated added on X.
Venezuela’s government said the joint operation involved intelligence sharing and specialized technical support.
“During the operation, clashes occurred with members of these criminal structures, resulting in the death of Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero,” the leader of a criminal organization,” the country’s communications ministry said a statement.
US Southern Command Commander Gen. Francis Donovan said the joint operation had targeted “a Tren de Aragua compound,” in a statement on X.
Wanted man
The Tren de Aragua gang was founded inside Tocorón prison in Venezuela’s Aragua state, from which it draws its name.
The gang controlled the prison –– even building a swimming pool and restaurants inside –– until the Venezuelan government reclaimed it in October 2023. But Guerrero, then meant to be an inmate, wasn’t found and had been on the run since.
The State Department had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture in late 2024.
Then in December, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged Guerrero with ordering, directing and facilitating acts of terrorism within the US.
At the time, US Attorney Jay Clayton described him as the “mastermind of Tren de Aragua’s evolution from a Venezuelan prison gang into a transnational terrorist organization.” (Clayton has since been nominated by Trump to serve as the Director of National Intelligence).
That announcement was part of a massive pressure campaign against Venezuela, its leaders and the drug cartels that operate within the country.
Spreading reach
For years, Tren de Aragua – also known as “TdA” – not only terrorized Venezuela but also countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, Chile and Peru.
And the gang has slowly spread its reach in the US and even to Spain, where Guerrero’s brother was arrested in March 2024 –– leading police to identify the first suspected cell of Tren de Aragua in the country.
Retired Gen. Óscar Naranjo, former vice president of Colombia, once called the gang “the most disruptive criminal organization operating nowadays in Latin America.”
The full scale of its operations is unknown. While the gang has principally focused on human trafficking and other crimes targeting migrants, it has also been linked to extortion, kidnapping, money laundering and drug smuggling, according to the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
The group adopted its name between 2013 and 2015 but its operations predate that, according to a report by Transparency Venezuela.
One challenge for law enforcement officials is knowing how many members of Tren de Aragua are already in the US. Some Venezuelan immigrants in Florida and other states say they are beginning to see the same type of criminal activity they fled in Venezuela; but Insight Crime, a think tank dedicated to organized crime said in October 2025 that Tren de Aragua’s “reputation appears to have grown more quickly than its actual presence in the United States.”
Gang targeted by Trump
Near the beginning of his second term, Trump designated Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization.
Last March, his administration sparked controversy with its move to deport more than 200 people, some of whom it alleged were members of Tren de Aragua, to an infamous maximum-security prison in El Salvador – even though officials provided scant evidence of gang involvement and many of the deportees denied being linked to the group.
Starting around last September, the Department of Defense began targeting alleged drug-smuggling boats operating around the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, with some of the vessels linked to the gang.
More than 200 people have been killed in strikes on those boats. The Trump administration has not provided public evidence of the presence of narcotics on the boats struck, nor their affiliation with drug cartels.
The CIA also carried out a drone strike last December on a port facility on the coast of Venezuela, which it believed was being used by the Tren de Aragua to store drugs and move them onto boats for shipping, according to sources familiar with the matter.
In its statement late Friday, Venezuela’s government said it is committed to fighting organized crime in the country.
Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has been backed by the White House to run the country since the president ordered a military raid against Venezuela in January that resulted in the capture of its then-president, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro was transferred to US custody. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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CNN’s Ray Sanchez contributed reporting
