EXCLUSIVETren de Aragua's deep global ties to terrorists helping them unleash carnage across the U.S.
Tren de Aragua, the gang that has unleashed a wave of crime across the US, is linked to Iran and Hezbollah and is even more terrifying than most Americans know, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.
The gangsters - responsible for the murder of Laken Riley, the beating of NYPD officers and the take-over of multiple apartment complexes across the US - were funded by Hezbollah long before they crossed the US-Mexico border in 2022.
US law enforcement is still grappling to understand the enormity of who Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang turned international criminal organization, really is.
However, experts who have tracked TdA, as the South American syndicate is known, have for the first time linked Tren de Aragua to Hezbollah - and are urging Americans not to mistake it for a simple street gang made of up of uneducated, young thugs.
'I don't like to call them a "gang" because they're a highly sophisticated network that goes all the way up to the (Nicolas) Maduro regime,' retired federal agent Victor Avila, Jr. told DailyMail.com.
'The connection that TdA has through Venezuela with terrorist organizations, with Iran and Hezbollah...for some reason people don't want to pick that up, they don't want to talk about it.'
For years, Iran and Venezuela's dictators have engaged in a bromance fueled by their mutual hatred for the US and its economic sanctions that have crippled both the governments in Tehran and Caracas.
Hezbollah, an Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon, has been welcomed by the Maduro regime, who has rolled out the red carpet so the extremists can 'operate freely', according to the Miami Herald.
Soldiers stand guard near a poster of the late leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, during a rally to commemorate him and to show support to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen October 4, 2024
In 2021, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush wrote an op-ed for the newspaper, urging the Biden administration that Hezbollah's presence in Venezuela posed a 'grave threat' to the United States.
Iran and Hezbollah in Venezuela
The two international pariahs have been chummy since former communist dictator Hugo Chavez lead Venezuela from 1999-2013.
After Chavez died of cancer, his hand-picked successor Nicolas Maduro, took the countries’ relationship to the next level.
Under Madro’s illegitimate rule (he remained in power despite losing elections in 2018 and 2023 in what's been called the 'mother of all electoral frauds') the South American nation 'become a forward operating base in the Western Hemisphere for Iranian forces,’ Bush wrote.
The alarming developments include Iran using an airline to send petroleum equipment to Venezuela’s state-run oil company.
Like a James Bond villain, Maduro sent stolen gold bars to Tehran, the US alleged in 2020.
'Maduro's thugs looted nine tons of gold bars and sent it to the Iranian regime,' U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted in May 2020.
'The world's leading thieves are partnering with the world's leading state sponsor of terror. The greatest victims are the Venezuelan and Iranian people.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on July 30, 2006 in Tehran, Iran
Venezuelans honor Iran's General Qasem Sulemani with mural. Suemani was killed in a drone strike by the US in 2020
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (C) and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (L) shake hands before an inter-delegation meeting at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezula on August 27, 2016
In this photo released Thursday, June 10, 2021, by the Iranian army, an Iranian warship moves in the Atlantic Ocean. Iran has dispatched two warships to the Atlantic Ocean, a rare mission to demonstrate the country's maritime power, state TV reported Thursday, without specifying the vessels' final destination
In a show of power, Iran’s leaders sent warships into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time ever to flex their military muscles in the West.
The two nations are also helping each other get around US sanctions, with Iran peddling Venezuela’s petroleum to China.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah has been welcomed with open arms with its members given legal residency in Venezuela. The move allows the Middle Easterners to legally travel on the South American continent.
The terrorist network has also been targeting Israelis living in Colombia and keeping tabs on Americans in Venezuela.
Now in new countries, Hezbollah is running illegal businesses and using their profits to finance their terrorist plots around the world.
In exchange, Iran and Hezbollah are beefing up Maduro's military capabilities, helping the country where most residents don’t own clothing dryers with the same sophisticated surveillance and drone technology it uses against Israel.
Maduro has been working on creating a ‘listening post’ in the northern part of his country to spy on airline and maritime communications, and is believed to be working on acquiring long-range missiles with Iran’s help.
Venezuela's dictator and his 'soldiers'
Tren de Aragua, which means 'train from Aragua' for the Venezuelan province where the gang was born, has carried out the dictator's orders for years.
‘The Maduro regime is essentially a cartel. They have the name of the “Cartel de los Soles,"' Miami immigration attorney Rolando Vazquez said in a interview with DailyMail.com.
'They are the largest cartel on this side of the hemisphere so all criminal organizations underneath him, if they’re not in line with them, they can’t operate.’
Under Maduro's regime, Tren de Aragua expanded outside of the walls of the Tocoron prison where it was born, spreading within Venezuela and later throughout South America.
In Venezuela, being a TdA member carries a status symbol, and they are well known 'Chavisitas'-- loyal supporters of the communist regime that began with Hugo Chavez.
'These guys are "Chavisitas." These guys are communists, they're socialists,' Avila added.
'They have a very different ideology than anybody else. They have been trained since a young age to disregard authority.'
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, third left, reviews an honor guard as he is accompanied by his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi, left, during his official welcoming ceremony at the Saadabad Palace in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 11, 2022
A motorcyclist passes in front of a mural painted by the Venezuelan artist Nelson Santana and a brigade of the La Piedrita community depicting slain Iranian general Qasem Soleimani (L) alongside late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (R) at the 23 de Enero neighborhood in Caracas on January 4, 2023
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, right, and his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro shake hands at the conclusion of their joint news briefing at the Saadabad Palace in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 11, 2022
(L) Victor Avila is a retired Supervisory Special Agent with ICE-HSI U.S. Immigration and Customs (R) Rolando Vazquez is an immigration attorney in Miami, Florida and has strong ties to the Venezuelan community in the US
In 2018, Maduro-- now in his third term-- stole his first election, and the people revolted.
While many Venezuelans sought to kick him out of power only to be brutally squashed, other Venezuelans simply gave up and left, seeking refuge in other Latin American countries-- hoping to eventually return to their homeland.
As an exodus began, Tren de Aragua seized on the opportunity to exploit their own desperate countrymen and make money off them as they fled Venezuela-- charging them to leave their borders or enter new countries.
Many Venezuelans fled their homes to get away from the extreme poverty and corruption, but also from Marduro's henchmen, like TdA.
Executing Maduro's orders in the US
In 2020, the Trump administration charged Maduro and 14 of his current and former officials with narco-terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking charges.
As the leader of the Cartel of the Suns, Maduro's government worked with the FARC, a paramilitary group in Colombia, to 'flood' the US with cocaine since 1999.
'These officials repeatedly and knowingly betrayed the people of Venezuela, conspiring, for personal gain, with drug traffickers and designated foreign terrorist organizations like the FARC,' then-DEA Acting Administrator Uttam Dhillon said.
With clandestine shipments through sea and flights to Honduras, called an 'air bridge' to Honduras, the Cartel of the Suns moved an estimated 250 or more tons of cocaine a year out of their country.
'As alleged, Maduro and the other defendants expressly intended to flood the United States with cocaine in order to undermine the health and wellbeing of our nation,' US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman stated.
Additionally, prosecutors were hoping to stop the Cartel of the Suns, called that because the corrupt officials wear a sun insignias on their uniforms, from laundering their drug profits through banks and property in South Florida.
The Department of Justice announced a $15 reward for Maduro's arrest and multi-million rewards for his top lieutenants.
The DOJ released these images in 2020, as it charged top members of the Venezuela's government, including current President Nicolas Maduro, with being drug traffickers
In the superseding indictment, US prosecutors allege Venezuela's government trafficked tons of cocaine into the US. The feds claim the 'Cartel de los Soles,' which Madro leads, used an 'air bridge' to move the drugs into the US
Nicolas Maduro remains president of Venezuela despite stealing two elections, most recently in 2023
As pandemic travel restrictions were lifted around the globe, many Venezuelans looked to the US as an escape, with nearly 8 million people abandoning their homes for other countries, according to the United Nations.
As Venezuelans poured over the US's southern border, TdA members mixed in with asylum-seekers, posing as refugees.
Since Venezuela and the US do not have diplomatic relations, the two nations don't share criminal records-- meaning there was no way to properly vet Venezuelans arriving at the international boundary.
Criminal history would come back clean even for the worst Venezuelan criminals who crossed into the US as they were checked by US Border Patrol agents.
‘What Maduro did was send them over here for the purpose of expanding their operations and terrorizing and attacking US citizens,' Vasquez said.
‘In my opinion, what Maduro did was an act of war. He sent his agents here to attack us.'
As DailyMail.com first reported in 2023 when we broke the story about TdA arriving in the US, Maduro's soldiers went to cities across America, carrying out his orders.
'Think of them as the soldiers for these regimes,' Avila added.
'These are the guys who are actually on the ground carrying out the orders of whatever the regime wants to do. Is it going to be a terrorist attack? Is it going to be just murdering young girls and raping them?'
Under orders from the Maduro regime, Tren de Aragua got to work, establishing itself in the US while making money for their bosses back home.
TdA followed a model it repeated in several US cities of taking over apartment complexes in cities like Aurora, Colorado where they took over at least four rental properties.
'I believe that they’re setting up their network right now. These guys are setting up faster than MS-13 did. They’re getting into these apartment complexes and what they’re doing is they’re starting with prostitution,' John Fabbricatore, the former director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for Colorado told DailyMail.com.
Two of the 19 individuals arrested during the Oct. 19 raid at the Palatia Apartments in San Antonio where authorities say Tren de Aragua had been operating
At least four of the people arrested on October 5 in San Antonio have been confirmed as gang members
Tren de Aragua gang tattoos (pictured above) were part of a Department of Homeland Security bulletin that was recently shared with federal agents
TdA has taken over at least four apartment buildings in the Denver area, exploiting and terrorizing their migrant neighbors.
A bombshell report by a law firm that represents one of the apartment management companies assaults, threats of murder, extortion and even child prostitution.
'Prostitution is a big money-maker, and the thing with prostitution is that it brings guys in that they can then sell dope to,' Fabbricatore explained.
'These guys come in, they meet these Johns and shake them down. See if they want to buy drugs. They’ve started with moving these girls through, and if you go in these apartments, you’ll see these young girls. It’s bad.’
The Aurora model was copied and pasted in four apartment complexes in San Antonio, Texas and likely many other American cities.
San Antonio's police chief warned of TdA members who were caught wearing red-colored clothing.
'Red is the color of Maduro’s political party. That’s why TdA wears red,' Vazquez shared.
In both Texas and Colorado, police arrested TdA members they classified as 'shot callers,' or 'enforcers.'
These mobsters with rank have direct ties to Maduro, law enforcement has confirmed.
Adelvis Jose Rodriguez-Carmona is one of four alleged Tren de Aragua members arrested in Chattanooga, Tennessee who has been linked to a sex trafficking ring by the authorities
'The connection that TdA has, through Venezuela to terrorist organizations-- with Iran and Hezbollah,' Avila said. 'They're not migrants. They're not refugees. They're not economic migrants. They are in a very separate category all by themselves, and it is the link to terrorism.'
When Trump took office in January, his administration promised to arrest criminal migrants as part of the largest mass deportation plan the Republican campaigned on.
At least a few dozens TdA members have been arrested in raids across the nation, however Immigrant and Customs Enforcement has not responded to request for an official tally.
Rounding them up is of the utmost importance, Avila believes, referring an order the gangsters have received, giving them the 'green light' to shot law enforcement in the US.
Already, suspected TdA members are accused of killing a federal immigration agent in Mexico, as he tried to stop them from reaching the US-Mexico border near El Paso, Texas.
'These guys don't care. They don't want to be confronted by any kind of authority, and that's what makes they very dangerous,' Avila warned.
