What is Tren de Aragua? The criminal organization's origins, activities and reach within the U.S.
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The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is known for its vicious crimes and rapid spread throughout Latin America. They create chaos in Chile, they create chaos in Peru, and they want to create also chaos in countries in order to shape the condo of their borders and also to create the sensational instability, the criminality of this country.

That was an unnamed former Venezuelan military officer discussing the threat of Trender Aragua on Fox News in 2024.

The gang was created inside Venezuela's Stocoron prison in 2014. It essentially controlled the prison, ordering kidnappings, robberies, and murders outside of the prison walls. By 2017, the group's activities spread outside Venezuela's borders. The country's crumbling political institutions and economy led to some 8 million Venezuelans leaving the country, and Trenaragua recruited from that diaspora.

And by 2023, the gang had been reported in Texas and Chicago. So in July of 2024, the Biden administration took a significant step. They designated Tren de Aragua as, quote, a transnational criminal organization. That declaration came from the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Then Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas appeared on Meet the Press at the time.

We are indeed doing everything we can to dismantle criminal gangs and transnational criminal organizations. And quite frankly, we've devoted an unprecedented level of resources and personnel and focus to this effort. So that was 2024, which, of course, also was an election year.

The Trump campaign turned the credible threat of Trenda Aragua into an incredible political opportunity. On the stump, Trump repeatedly blamed the Biden administration's handling of the border as the reason why Trenda Aragua got a foothold in the U.S. Trump claimed he'd do better. Let me tell you, if I were president now, those guys would be out of here before you left this room.

Well, now president, Trump has taken action. Though the legality of that action is being heavily scrutinized in court.

On March 15th, the president invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. It's a measure that authorizes a president during a declared war or in the event of an, quote, an invasion by any foreign nation or government to issue rules on restraining citizens or nationals of the hostile nation or government. Now, the rules also allowed the restraint to happen without a court hearing.

The Alien Enemies Act has been invoked only four times in all of U.S. history. The Trump White House used the act to justify the massed arrest and deportation of Venezuelans on U.S. soil. These are criminals, many, many criminals, murderers, drug dealers at the highest level, drug lords, people from mental institutions. That's an invasion. They invaded our country. So this isn't, in that sense, this is war.

In many respects, it's more dangerous than war because, you know, in war, they have uniforms. You know who you're shooting at. You know who you're going after.

While a federal district and then appellate court blocked Trump's actions, the issue has also gone before the Supreme Court twice. Most recently, on April 19th, the court issued an unsigned order blocking the administration from deporting Venezuelans from a Texas facility, quote, until further order of this court, end quote. Well, today we are going to take a detailed look at the history of Tren de Aragua in order to better understand the

the true threat or what the true threat is that this gang poses to Americans. And then with that basis of knowledge, we're going to scrutinize whether the Trump administration's actions have done anything realistically to reduce that threat.

So joining us to help us with this is Rebecca Hansen. She's an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Criminology and Law and at the Center of Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. She has researched crime and policing from within Venezuela and is author of a number of books on this issue, including Policing the Revolution, the Transformation of Coercive Power and Venezuela's Security Landscape During Chavismo.

Professor Hansen, welcome to On Point. Thank you so much for the invitation, Magna. So I would really like to start by going through in detail with you as much as possible the story of Tren de Aragua in Venezuela. Can you tell me a little bit about, you know, the Tocoron prison where the gang was supposedly founded? Sure.

Yeah, so I mean, I think first it's important to recognize when we're talking about Tren de Aragua, how little we actually know about the gang. I mean, I think one of the issues here is that a lot of information is being put forward without strong empirical basis. There has been a little bit of scholarship and research that has been done within Venezuela on Tren de Aragua, but not very much, even less so outside of Venezuela itself.

So, yeah, TDA or Tren de Aragua, as far as we know from the empirical research that we do have, was formed in the Tocorin prison, which is in the state of Aragua in Venezuela, which is why the gang is known as Tren de Aragua because of the state that the prison is located in.

So important to really understanding the formation of this gang is that there is a broader kind of transformation that's happening among criminal organizations in Venezuela at the time. So Trenera was not the only organization that undergoes this kind of transformation, which is interesting.

So Venezuela is not Mexico. It's not Colombia. The country historically has not had for decades these really large, well-organized criminal gangs. It's really only beginning in 2013 and 2014 that we see anything like Tren del Agua and other criminal organizations that kind of start to organize within the country. And this happens for a couple of different reasons, one being that the government of Nicolas Maduro starts to engage in negotiations and pacts with some of these better organized gangs.

It's important to note that these PACs are very fragile. They do not constitute any kind of collaboration really between the government of Nicolás Maduro and these gangs, but they do help these criminal organizations to spread and kind of consolidate their control, which is what happens with Tren del Agua. Can we pause for just a second? I want to go back a little bit.

I'll be frank, your depth of knowledge really is outstripped mine. So I'm going to ask some more basic questions here. The background, by the way, is important to understand. And I just want to reiterate what you said. So you were saying that before 2013, 2014, the kind of...

international narco-criminal organizations, as you said, that we are familiar with from Mexico and Colombia, they weren't well-established in Venezuela or not? So there's still nothing like a narco-criminal organization in Venezuela like we know of in Mexico and Colombia. So this is a really important, I think, conflation that's taking place.

Tren de Aragua is not like a Mexican cartel. It's not like a Colombian cartel. None of the empirical data we have substantiates that. It is a more organized criminal organization than what has been seen in Venezuela in the past. So I'll give you a really quick example of this. When I was doing research for my early years of research for the book, for my new book, I was speaking to police officers. And when they would refer to large gangs in Venezuela, they were talking about gangs that had about 20 men.

And that's a very small gang in comparison to other countries if you think about other contexts.

And it's really only after 2013 and 2014 that we start to see larger criminal organizations, but these really only reach 200, maybe 300 men at most. There is nothing really in comparison. So I clarify that to say that even now we're not looking at an organization like a Mexican cartel or a Colombian cartel. Okay. See, this is why I want to go more slowly because all these details really matter in helping us understand sort of how this is being talked about in the United States. Absolutely.

So I actually want to then, before we get to 2014 in the state of Aragua, was there anything about how Hugo Chavez was leading Venezuela that contributed to whatever the political situation, economic situation was in 2014 that led to a group like TDA to be formed? Yeah.

Absolutely. So this is where we can actually make some comparisons with other countries like Brazil. So the reason that Trindade Aragua and other groups like them become more organized in the country is because

The government of Hugo Chavez implemented a number of contradictory policing policies. One of those was a very progressive police reform that did not make it for very long, but it also continued with and really exacerbated and increased militarized police raids in the country. And what this led to was a massive rounding up of young men from poor and working class sectors.

and a very notable increase in mass incarceration in the country. And this is the same thing that you see in Brazil with their now better organized gangs as well. When you have, and in El Salvador, when you have a lot of men who are placed inside of a prison where there's really very little kind of internal control, they're existing in very extreme and brutal conditions.

That kind of lays the groundwork for the creation of these better organized groups. Okay. So that then leads me back to Tokoron Prison because – and again, correct me if anything I say is not correct because we want to really nail down the facts here –

I understand that it was built, what, sometime in the 1980s, originally meant to house a couple of hundred people, but ended up housing thousands of imprisoned people? Yes, this is very true in many prisons in the country. And this is because, to say that Socorro is not the only prison like this, in that you have spaces that are really overwhelmed by large numbers of men. These spaces were not designed to control this population.

the number of imprisonment that are sent there. The National Guard, which is the policing organization that is in charge of controlling internal...

the internal prison system kind of withdraws from these spaces and allows some of these gangs to kind of take control. So Tocorona is not the only prison where this happens. There is kind of an implicit agreement that the gangs themselves will start to kind of organize social life, economic life within the prison walls themselves while the National Guard will patrol around the prison itself. Oh, this is so interesting.

So it's – and you used the word implicit agreement between the National Guard and the gangs that are inside the prison. I mean because that's why I've – well, let's just take a quick break because there's so much more I want to understand about what the truth is about this gang. So Rebecca Hansen is joining us today. She's an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Criminology and Law and the Center of Latin American Studies at the University of Florida.

And she is helping us understand in detail the real story of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, so that we can also then understand better what the true threat of this gang is in the United States. So we'll have much more in just a moment. This is On Point. On Point.

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Now, Professor Hansen, just before the break, you talked about how there was this implicit agreement in prisons like Tokoron Prison that were so overcrowded that the gangs would essentially manage, I guess, some of the internal life of the prison and the National Guard would patrol the exterior. I've been reading that in Tokoron, that led to things like Tren de Aragua, they even had a zoo, a swimming pool, a disco, a restaurant. Is that all true?

Yeah, that is true. It sounds like something out of fiction, but yes, it is true. Again, this is not only true at the Tocoron prison, it's true of a couple of other prisons in Venezuela where these better organized criminal gangs have taken over. So yes, and I think this is really important for understanding kind of the economic portfolio of Tren del Agua. I think there is

an incorrect perception that Tren del Agua is, as you mentioned before, something akin to a Colombian or Mexican cartel that's kind of doing a lot of massive drug and gun running. And really, Tren del Agua for a long period of time, its economic basis were these things like parties that were organized within Tocoron prison that people would come into. Their economic basis was extortion within local towns close to the Tocoron prison.

their economic basis was extorting prisoners within the prison system itself. So I think while the point in these discos and the parties sounds very extravagant, and it is, I think it points to something that's really a very important point that we need to understand that Tren de Aragua's economic

basis for a very long period of time was very locally based within Aragua and with the surrounding Tocron prison area. And that's very recent. That's very recent. Okay. And we'll get to what sort of led to its expansion. But that economic activity, as you also just said, included like, you know, ordering crimes.

In the local community, right? Robberies, murder, kidnapping, that kind of thing. Directing, yes. Directing them. Okay. Is there a particular person who is, was the leader of Tenda Aragua that we should know better?

Yeah, so Tren del Agua, again, as far as we know, was organized by three men that were in Tocoron prison at the time. The main leader that people tend to point to is known as Hector Guerrero or El Niño. And so this was the main organizer of the organization in 2013, 2014, and then it began to grow and take off from there. And for a number of years, yes, it is the case that

particularly El Nino Guerrero, directed and organized illicit markets and activities that occurred outside of Tocoron prison as well. And this was similar to other criminal organizations at the time were doing the same thing. I mean, what you see is the basis of a criminal gang that starts within a prison system that again is not specific only to Tren de Aragua. And then it expands its system outside of the prison into neighboring sectors, into neighboring areas.

And it kind of starts to grow from that basis. And so then what happened that triggered its expansion outside of Venezuela?

Yeah, so I think that this is, you know, kind of two, there are two issues here. One, the issue that you already pointed to, which was the mass migration of Venezuelans. They really started in 2014, but really begins to pick up 2015, 2016 and 2017. And so Tren de Aragua takes advantage of that mass migration to begin engaging in human trafficking, in extortion outside of Aragua, as well as prostitution in neighboring countries like Colombia.

The other kind of key factor understanding Tren de Aragua's transformation were the PACs that I mentioned beforehand. And so there was a security policy that was implemented by the government of Nicolas Maduro, really between 2013 and 2015. And again, from 2017 to about 2021 or 2023, depending on the gang that we're talking about. And basically what these PACs do is they, the government says we will withdraw from the territory that your gang controls. Well,

allow for certain illicit activities to take place as long as you, the gang members, will kind of keep control of these territories, reduce certain types of illicit activities and reduce homicide rates. And so what this does is it really allows certain gangs, again, very particular gangs, to really consolidate their control and expand their illicit economic basis

because there's an understanding between the government and between these gangs that we'll take care of our neighborhoods, our territories, as long as the police and the government don't mess with our economic activities. And that really allows for this consolidation and expansion. Okay. But Professor Hansen, explain to me why the government would even enter into these agreements.

With criminal gangs.

tried with prisons, we've tried with the police, we've tried with state repression. It's not working. And so there's kind of an acknowledgement that gangs themselves are doing a better job of regulating social life, of regulating local economic practices, of regulating criminal activities. And so it's this very practical...

recognition that these gangs are better at doing that than state actors themselves are. And so there is an awareness of that and a practical decision that's made that in order to be able to get a handle on crime, because these PACs, they take place in parts of Venezuela that have some of the highest homicide rates.

And so it's a very intentional decision on the part of the government to say we have to do something about these high homicide rates. What's the best way to attack this issue? And they decide that kind of outsourcing policing functions to gangs within those territories is a better way to go about it than kind of the failed policing initiatives they've relied on in the past. But were these gangs the ones performing – doing the homicides? Yeah.

In some cases, yes. In other cases, this goes back to the very...

I would say somewhat unique history of Venezuelan gangs. Again, for very, very long, up until 2013, 2014, we're talking about very small groups that are fighting against each other constantly. And so part of it is that you have gangs, yes, that are engaging in intentional homicides, intentional killings. But then you also just have small gangs that are fighting against each other consistently. And so once you allow a gang to kind of take control over a territory and tell gangs we're not doing that anymore,

And we're not engaging in these, what are referred to as culebras in Venezuela, which are kind of just like, we kill one person, cure a gang. You know, you kill someone from our gang and just keep going on and on in this very violent cycle. So, yes, that's to say there are a couple of different ways that gangs were able to kind of get control over homicide rates. One was by kind of consolidating and no longer fighting amongst each other. And yes, a conscious decision that we are going to reduce our use of violence.

in order to maintain these pacts with the governments that are benefiting us as well. Okay. So I draw two conclusions of many, but two conclusions from this really important moment that you're describing. One is that

So Maduro's government is essentially admitting that the gangs are better at governing than his own government. And two, does it mean that Maduro's government then, we should look at him as being complicit in helping provide the structure that led to gangs like Tender Agua to, as you say, consolidate and then spread its actions internationally? Yeah.

So, yes, absolutely the government of New West Mato was complicit in the consolidation of these gangs. I think it's really important to note that complicity and kind of what I think the government saw as a short-term policy to deal with local problems does not result in collaboration or leadership in any way. And I think this is a really important point for understanding localities.

One of the reasons why the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is so incorrect in this way because it relies on the assumption that the government of Nicolas Maduro is directing, Tender Agua is directing these gangs and sending their members into the United States. None of our evidence suggests any of that. Again, what we're talking about are very fragile and what tend to be somewhat conflictive PACs that exist for a short period of time.

that are for maybe a couple of years at most, that are mutually beneficial to each party. So I mean, the government gets a degree of security and social control. Gangs are allowed to increase their economic profits and to control their territories. But we're not talking about any kind of integration or leadership.

by the Maduro government and the Trump administration knows this, right? And its own security institutions have released reports saying that the government of Nicolas Maduro does not control Tren del Agua. And in fact, for those of us who are aware of the history between Tren del Agua and the government of Nicolas Maduro, most of it's very conflictive and fighting against each other.

But at the same time, essentially having entered these PACs, which is acknowledging the gang's power and influence in Venezuela. Oh, this is so interesting. OK, before we... This is the time to get to, OK, now let's move our focus to the United States. But just before we do that, I do want to ask you about one more thing, because given what you said, I wonder if one of the most notorious cases that's associated with Tranda Ragua is kind of a...

related to Maduro entering in all these pacts with the gangs. Because in 2024, there was a man named Ronald Ojeda, I believe, a former Venezuelan army officer who was murdered because he was conspiring against Maduro. And Tren de Aragua's members were arrested in association with that murder.

So, yes, this is, I think, another case where it's important to realize that it's an ongoing investigation. And I think that's important to know with any of these cases that are, you know, supposedly related to Tren de Aragua. So I think given the information we have right now, what it seems happened is that the government of Negro Esmaduro contracted potentially some Tren de Aragua members.

in Chile to, yes, kill Ojela, who somehow presented a threat. I mean, so he...

I believe, engaged in some resistance actions when he was in Venezuela. It's not clear that he was doing anything while in Chile to continue kind of subverting the Venezuelan government. But I say that to say that at best, this was a short-term contract, it seems, between the Maduro government and Tren de Aragua. It's not...

the government of Nicolas Maduro sending Tren del Agua members to Chile as kind of like its employees or its own kind of, you know, contract killers. Instead, it's again, it's like one kind of one time contract. But forgive me for not really being able to see the difference between the two. You're still saying the government of Nicolas Maduro was at least for a short period of time working with members of Tren del Agua in order to kill someone?

I mean, it depends on what you mean by working with. I mean, it seems, again, and this is all based off very little evidence, which I really want to highlight, but it seems to me from my interpretation of what we can say so far is that I would say working with is a strong term. I think paying a group or at least...

members within a group to murder someone, which is, of course, horrendous, heinous. But that's very different from saying that there was, there were these like, you know, meetings in which the government of Nicolas Maduro helped to plan the killing of Ojeda with Renderagua members and they're kind of collaborating together on this. And we think,

It's important to recognize these are two very different groups that very much so are oftentimes in conflict with each other and every once in a while, again, kind of overlap. And the government outsources certain types of functions to them in the short term. It does seem, though, that they have a relationship of convenience, though. I get your point about they are often in conflict, but there seem to be – we've just talked about three or four times where –

they're convenient partners if, you know, if you just, if indeed Maduro's government did pay Tenderagua whether or not they directed it specifically but paid them to kill somebody. I mean, if that happened in the United States, that's a very, very high criminal offense. But, so let's then

turn to... So that's the time period that allowed groups like Tren del Agua, but we're focusing on them right now, to really spread internationally. Colombia, Peru, Chile, and you talked about drug smuggling, extortion rackets, prostitution rings. Right now, there are some, what, 700,000 Venezuelans in the United States. And as I mentioned earlier...

In the global Venezuelan diaspora, Tren de Agua started recruiting from there. Is there any way to know actually how many members or recruits to the gang are in the United States right now? Yeah, so I mean, I think there are two issues here. One, it's unclear how transnational of an organization Tren de Agua is in this moment. And I don't want to jump too far ahead. But

By that I mean when we say Tren de Aragua is a transnational organization that has spread its tentacles into Chile, Colombia, Peru, these countries, what that actually looks like on the ground is very much so up for debate, right? And so I say that to say if we're not even really clear that there's any direct leadership at this point,

from within Venezuela to Tren del Agua franchises, for example, in Chile, Peru and Colombia, it's even less likely that that is happening in the United States. As of right now, I would ask, what is the data and information that we're using to make claims about Tren del Agua presence in the United States?

We're utilizing, to my knowledge, police reports that are highly questionable, that we have good reason to criticize them. Police departments have a particular way of going about identifying Tenderagua membership that's very problematic, that has come under criticism, even by judges themselves and by some police departments.

So I think before kind of jumping into this question, like how many Tren de la Agua members do we have in the United States or how many cells in the United States, we have to step back and ask where are we even getting our information that Tren de la Agua has a coordinated presence in the United States. And that's not to say that Tren de la Agua members have not migrated to the United States. That is probably the case.

But that's a very separate issue from saying that we have a Tren de Agua problem in the United States. Well, I take your point about it's very hard to really pin down certain numbers or then gauge the extent of a problem. Because we also, in preparing for this hour, we're reading in on the work of –

Venezuelan journalists whom you know very well, like Rona Rizquez. She's an award-winning Venezuelan journalist. And she wrote a book on the group. And in that book estimates that there's maybe some 5,000 members in the U.S. And that Tren de Ragua is making some $10 to $15 million from U.S. activities. It's not clear, though, how she came by that number. Exactly. This is the issue, is that the...

way that I'm aware that someone would be able to make claims about the number of Trinidad and Tobago members in the United States would be by relying on police reporting. And again, I'd be happy to go into further detail about why that can be problematic. But nevertheless, as you had mentioned this earlier, now's the time to talk about the fact that in 2024, the Biden administration through the Treasury Department did name the group Trinidad

Actually, one of three as a transnational criminal organization. And that didn't just come out of nowhere, right? Well, it's unclear what the different sources of data that either the Biden administration or the Trump administration had to make this claim about the NDR being a transnational organization. I mean, I...

I think that the year 2024 is a really important year because the empirical research that we have suggests it's precisely in 2024 that Tren de Aragua starts to become a less powerful, less organized group.

that doesn't really have control over how its name is even being used in Latin America. OK, pause for just a second, because that's really important and interesting. We just have to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about that. Plus, we'll dig just a little bit deeper into the Biden administration's declaration in 2024. So all that in just a moment. This is On Point. You know that feeling when you're about to score 30 percent off, but they want your number?

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I want to just provide a little bit more sort of administrative detail here before we get back to your analysis, because it was in July of 2024, July 11th, that the Biden administration, through the Treasury Department, designated Tendr Aragua as a significant transnational agency.

criminal organization. And the result of that is all property and interests of the gang in the United States were effectively seized by the United States or ostensibly, I should say, seized by the United States. Now, prior to that, a couple of months before that, we see that in March of 2024, the

Then U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Maria Elvira Salazar wrote a letter to the Biden administration specifically requesting that Tren de Aragua be labeled as a transnational criminal organization. So there had been some significant attention being paid to the activities of this gang in the United States throughout 2024, Professor.

Yeah, throughout 2024, I mean, it's, I think we still need some better information about kind of where this concern comes from. I mean, Marco Rubio himself has said that he started to turn his attention to Tren de Aragua after conversations with leaders from the political opposition in Venezuela, which is, you know, one way to kind of gain information about a criminal organization, but there are, I think, better sources of information than

than political leaders to kind of identify and understand the scope of a criminal, a problem of criminal organization. But I just wanted to note that, I mean, it's interesting that it starts to happen in 2024, as you mentioned, I think, before, you know, this is we're talking about an election year. And I don't think that can be separated from this concern over Trender Agua. And that's,

I said that's interesting because in September 2023, and this goes back to this highly conflictual relationship that the government of Nicolas Maduro has had with Tren del Agua. In September 2023, the government of Maduro invaded Tocoron Prison, which is the prison that we've talked about that Tren del Agua has really had its base, its home base since it was first

So the government invades Tocoron prison and kind of takes the space back from Tren de Aragua. And after that time period, the empirical data that we have shows that Tren de Aragua starts to become a much more disorganized and less hierarchical organization after September 2023. And so the last few months of 2023, we actually start to see Tren de Aragua losing control and power.

within Venezuela and in Latin America. That's not to say that there are not groups that claim association with Tren del Agua that continue to engage in illicit activities. But it's interesting that the empirical data that we have suggests that Tren del Agua is becoming a less important kind of criminal presence within Venezuela and probably within Venezuela

surrounding countries at the same time that it starts to kind of gain attention within the United States as a big problem. Okay. That's really interesting because in the United States earlier in 2024, I must note that Lakin Riley was murdered in February of 2024. And of course, her murder really galvanized a lot of people in the United States. We now have the Lakin Riley Act going.

And the person arrested for her murder was Jose Antonio Ibarra. And allegedly he was a member of Tren de Aragua. I mean, her name shows up in this letter from Marco Rubio and I should say 20 other members of Congress. So, I mean, so let's let's just step back for a moment here. And I take your point about 2024. Right.

But nevertheless, if we are to just accept for a second that the presence of members of an international known to be violent gang –

wherever they're from, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, China, you name it, is not necessarily something that the United States wants to turn a blind eye to. That leads us to this question of, OK, is Tanda Aragua's presence significant enough that the invoking the Alien Enemies Act is

is the way to eradicate the problem from the United States. Your thoughts? Yes. So a couple of things there. As far as I understand it, I believe that the man who killed Lakin Riley, it was held that his brother was a member of Tren de Agua. I'm not sure that he was, but in any case, that's an aside. I think the larger issue here is that

That is an absolutely horrendous case and people should be outraged by it and we should absolutely take steps to keep these things from happening in the future, right? But the question is, is that a crime that represents the presence of a transnational criminal organization in the United States? And I think this is a broader question about Tren del Agua in the US. If we look at the crimes

that suspected, and I highly suspect, supposed Tren de la Agua members in the United States have been arrested for. For the most part, we're talking about petty crimes. We're talking about shoplifting for the most part. And even in the case of Lake and Riley,

There's nothing about that murder that indicates a transnational organization involvement. I mean, we're talking about one murder case, one person that's being killed by a Venezuelan immigrant.

But how that's related to Tren de Agua as a transnational criminal organization is not clear. Instead, to me, what it suggests, as I've written with some of my colleagues, most recently in a New York Times op-ed, that this is instead a moral panic issue. So by that, I mean we're taking these –

disconnected or unconnected, very salacious and horrendous crimes that are absolutely terrible. But we're taking them and putting them into a framework that suggests that there is a presence of a transnational organization that if you look through the evidence doesn't necessarily make sense. So again, it's not clear to me how the killing of Lake and Riley or even some of these other crimes that suspected that our members have been arrested for in the United States

suggest the invasion of or even presence of a transnational criminal organization here. Right. Well, so the word invasion, right, that that's very, very critical here because President Trump, as we played in that tape earlier, uses the word a lot. And he's knowingly doing so because the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 requires some kind of either formal declaration of war, which has not happened, has not come from Congress, or some kind of quote unquote invasion of

And that term is so open to interpretation that I can see why President Trump uses it repeatedly. But this gets to the issue of how the United States should police international gangs within U.S. territory, period, right? Because what the Alien Enemies Act allows the administration to do, as we talked about earlier, is –

Arrest people suspected of being associated with the gang, deny them due process and immediately deport them. That's why he invoked that that act. And I guess, you know, I suppose if you you know, if you want to just do a burn the forest down kind of approach, that would be effective. But that would require deporting people.

every Venezuelan immigrant that the DHS comes across. I just don't see how that's actually effective as tamping down the threat of whatever that threat may be of Trenada Aragua. Yeah, I mean, I think it's incredibly ineffective.

I've written about this with one of my colleagues, Veronica Subijaga, and in some other outlets as well. I mean, there's evidence to suggest, not in the case of Venezuela, but at least in the case, for example, with gangs in El Salvador, that it's precisely that, as you meant to kind of like burn the forest down to get to some of the trees approach, that is actually what...

catalyzes the growth of criminal organizations. And so this is precisely where we see like the Mara Salvatrucha gang in El Salvador coming from, are these policies of mass incarceration and indiscriminate policing and arrest policies that actually contribute to the consolidation of these types of organizations. So we haven't seen that yet with Render Agua, but it's certainly an

Well, I just want to play a news clip here that, again, places us directly in the United States. This is from August of 2024.

And again, last year being the critical year of when the gang really entered the public consciousness in the United States. It followed a report out of Aurora, Colorado. So you're going to hear Denver TV station KDVR here where newscasters describe security camera footage of men with guns approaching an apartment inside a larger complex.

The video shows a group of men walking up a stairwell at the edge at Lowry apartment complex in Aurora. All of them appear to be carrying rifles and handguns, and the video shot earlier this month. One of the men can be seen talking on a cell phone. They all then gather around a door and go in.

Another video clip shows men forcing a door open. But what or who they were searching for, not clear. So that's August of 2024. And I want to also note that obviously this issue is still very top of mind for people, many people, including Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, who I mentioned earlier, who signed that letter in 2024 with Senator Rubio requesting the Biden administration to be more careful

aggressive in its policing of Trinidad and Aragua, just last month, she was on Fox News repeating again why she believes the gang is a threat. They're no different than ISIS. They're no different than Hezbollah or Hamas. These are terrorists. And that's the same way we have to treat them. Kick them out of the country with no mercy.

Professor Hansen, I want to just note that the same sort of, perhaps not the same language, but the same depth of concern was, whether it's political or not, was expressed by the Biden administration. Because I'm looking at the Treasury Department's release on the day that it decided to name Trans-National Criminal Threat.

And it says here, quote, the gang leverages its transnational networks to traffic people, especially migrant women and girls, across borders for sex trafficking and debt bondage. When victims seek to exploit this exploitation, Tantaragua members often kill them and publicize their deaths as threats to others. So, I mean, that administration was taking it seriously as well. And I just wonder, I mean, from your understanding of the –

The issues and forces that gave rise to Tenda Aragua, both in Venezuela and then spread across places in Latin America and the U.S., what could be done to further reduce the gangs? You know, let's just even if we just want to stick with the exploitation of women and girls and human trafficking. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's important to note here when we're talking about Tren del Agua's engaging in human trafficking, we're not talking about the U.S.-Mexico border. There is absolutely good evidence in...

that they have been heavily engaged in human trafficking along the Venezuelan-Colombia border as well, you know, trafficking Venezuelans from Venezuela to Peru and Chile. That is absolutely the case. But there's no evidence that they are engaging in that in the U.S.-Mexico border. And I think this is kind of going back to one of my earlier points.

that Tren del Agua does not have the capacity to engage in human, to compete with Mexican cartels on the US-Mexico border. So they don't have the capacity, they don't have the size, they don't have the resources to be able to engage on that along our border. So then the question is, I think, you know, how do countries in Latin America that are bordering Venezuela deal with the Tren del Agua human trafficking problem? But I'm

That's a separate question from, I think, what the United States should be doing to deal with Tren de Agua. And honestly, I think given the evidence that we have so far, both from the Biden administration, from the Trump administration, and the evidence that we have from scholars, suggests that the measures that are being taken right now to fight the threat of Tren de Agua are much more dangerous themselves than the supposed coordinated presence of Tren de Agua in the United States.

This is one of those situations where I think there's common agreement that this is not necessarily a gang that we want to allow to flourish in the United States. Let's just put it that way. Absolutely. But how to prevent that from happening, there's significant disagreement on. I should have...

I should have asked you this much earlier, Professor, and I'm sorry that I didn't. But one of the things that we've been seeing reported elsewhere in the media is that DHS is arresting people simply based on tattoos. Yes. Can you help clarify if Trente Arago gang members actually do have specific tattoos or if there's any significance to them or what's going on there?

Yeah. And so this goes back to my original point about we really need to step back and ask ourselves, what is the actual presence of Tenerife in the United States? If our only information about that is based off of police reports from Homeland Security or from ICE, then we have a big problem. Because, yes, many of the arrests that have taken place in recent months and the deportations that have taken place have been based –

In many cases, solely on tattoos that are supposedly associated with Tren de Ragua as well as hand gestures that are supposedly associated with Tren de Ragua. The problem is, and here anyone who's familiar with gang practices in Venezuela will tell you, these are not practices in Venezuela that are associated with gangs.

tattoos and hand gestures are common as forms of association in Central American gangs. This has never been the case in Venezuela. And so I think one of the things that's very problematic to me about the situation is that it seems very clear that security institutions within the United States have not consulted with Venezuelan experts or even, I mean, I spend a lot of time talking with Venezuelan police officers and Venezuelan police officers will tell you we do not use tattoos

as a way to identify gang members in Venezuela. So if Venezuelan police do not even do that within their own country, why are we using that as a form of identification of people

gang members outside of Venezuela, if that's not even a practice. This has never been a practice of any gangs in Venezuela of tattooing to identify membership. And another issue with these tattoos that supposedly are linked with Tender Agua is they're tattoos of incredibly popular cultural images in Venezuela. So it is absolutely the case that if you go walk around...

poor and working class neighborhoods, you will see men with these tattoos that supposedly are associated with Tren del Agua. Like a Michael Jordan tattoo? Like the Michael Jordan tattoo, like Rose tattoo, like a crown tattoo.

phrases that are associated with rappers in the country. But these are just incredibly popular, youthful images. Yeah. Well, Rebecca Hansen, assistant professor at the University of Florida and author of Policing the Revolution, The Transformation of Coercive Power and Venezuela's Security Landscape during Chavismo. It's been a really fascinating hour. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for taking the time to look at this issue more in depth. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. This is On Point.

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Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from BU Questrom School of Business. How should companies balance short-term pressures with long-term interests? In the relentless pursuit of profits in the present, are we sacrificing the future? These are questions posed at a recent panel hosted by BU Questrom School of Business. The full conversation is available on the Is Business Broken podcast. Listen on for a preview.

Just in your mind, what is short-termism? If there's a picture in the dictionary, what's the picture? I'll start with one ugly one. When I was still doing activism as global head of activism and defense, so banker defending corporations, I worked with Toshiba in Japan. And those guys had five different activists, each one of which had a very different idea of what they should do right now, like short-term.

very different perspectives. And unfortunately, under pressure from the shareholders, the company had to go through two different rounds of breaking itself up, selling itself and going for shareholder votes. I mean, that company was effectively broken because the leadership had to yield under the pressure of shareholders who couldn't even agree on

on what's needed in the short term. So to me, that is when this behavioral problem, you're under pressure and you can't think long term, becomes a real, real disaster. Tony, you didn't have a board like that. I mean, the obvious ones, I mean, you look at, there's quarterly earnings, we all know that. You have businesses that

will do everything they can to make a quarterly earning, right? And then we'll get into analysts and what causes that. I'm not even gonna go there. But there's also, there's a lot of pressure on businesses to, if you've got a portfolio of businesses, sell off an element of that portfolio. And as a manager, you say, wait, this is a really good business. Might be down this year, might be, but it's a great business.

Another one is R&D spending. You know, you can cut your R&D spend if you want to, and you can make your numbers for a year or two, but we all know where that's going to lead a company. And you can see those decisions every day, and you can see businesses that don't make that sacrifice. And I think in the long term, they win.

Andy, I'm going to turn to you. Maybe you want to give an example of people complaining about short-termism that you think isn't. I don't really believe it exists. I mean, you know, again, I don't really even understand what it is. But what I hear is we take some stories and then we impose on them this idea that had they behaved differently, thought about the long term, they would have behaved differently. That's not really science.

Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.