The Underworld Podcast - Venezuela’s Cop Killing Street Gang Tren de Aragua Takes America - Or Does It?

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

The Tren de Aragua grew out of disastrous regime policies to give gang leaders more power in prisons. Its mysterious leader, Niño Guerrero, soon controlled an entire facility, and installed a prison bar, a nightclub—and even a zoo. More state bungling allowed the Tren to take over entire city neighbourhoods unchallenged. So when Venezuela’s economy plummeted and hundreds of thousands fled the nation, it became a key player in the booming migrant smuggling trade, spreading into neighboring Latin American states. Now the Tren is in the US. But is there really a full-scale invasion, as media are beginning to say? We unpick the fact and fiction of this dangerous new group. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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But as they reach him, the rider grabs his delivery bag, unzipped it, and pulls out a pistol. A 380-caliber high point. The rider shoots once, hitting an officer in the chest. He rounds on the second cop and slugs him too, this time in the thigh. The second cop draws his own weapon and shoots back, hitting the kid in his foot and ankle. The other cop gets up. The kid's bullet hit his bulletproof vest.

He's okay. And they both arrest him. Then he tourniques his colleague's leg with blood pouring onto the tarmac. The kid's name, they later discover, is Bernado Raul Castro Mata. He's 19. He's in the US illegally. And, like so many coming across the country's side, southern border, he's from Venezuela, a country so broken by crime, corruption and economic decay

that a third of its entire population has fled abroad. For some time, officials have feared that members of a notorious prison gang have filtered into U.S. cities along the tired, the poor and the huddle masses. They're called the Trin de Aragua, the train of Aragua, a region of Venezuela. According to tattoos they find on matters body, the NYPD thinks it's just discovered the gang's patient zero. One of the tattoos, they say, is a clock with an anchor, which officers linked to members still holding entire neighbourhoods in Venezuela to ransom. Another is a Nike logo, alongside basketball legend Michael Jordan with his uniform number, 23. It's a reference to January 23rd, the name of a district in the Venezuelan capital city, Caracas, and,

the date of a 1958 revolutionary coup. Matter had been involved in a spate of violent robberies before the shooting, including one just hours before. His asylum case had been dismissed under a White House mass amnesty before being housed in a Queen's migrant shelter. There, he'd fallen into the grip of the Trin, snatching purses and jewels on their behalf, and smuggling weapons in and out of the migrant centre with his door dashed back. It's common to shoot cops back home, he tells a court three weeks later,

because Venezuelan cops shoot, quote, gang members for minor infractions. He says his pistol went off by accident. Nobody's buying it. Not least the 66 uniformed officers who've packed out the building to see justice served. Matter faces a whopping 20 charges, including two of attempted murder. But authorities are already drawing lines. between him and several dozen other cases. There's the brutal slaying of an ex-Venezuelan cop in Miami, for example,

and a Baton Rouge sex ring. But Tren de Aragua goons have committed crimes all over the US. Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, Illinois. The train, the train of Aragua, has well and truly entered the station. But how? And as Venezuela's dictatorship plunges the nation into evil. more chaos, can anything be done to slow it down? This is the Underworld podcast.

Hello and welcome to the show where two seasons reporters tell stories of global black markets, frauds and folks you wouldn't want to mean alone in a dark alley. I'm Sean Williams in New Zealand. I'm joined as always by Danny Gold in New York City. We met during the pandemic and decided to start a podcast and it's been plain sailing since They're kind of like loving the time of cholera epic, don't you think? Yeah, I mean, you know what they say about couples during the pandemic?

You either got married and had a kid, broke up, or started a podcast. And we chose number three. Yeah, well, I chose two of those, actually. Now, if you haven't already, subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple, the socials, and we've got videos and post popping up there. It really helps us keep the lights on over here. And then if you're too hot walking around your northern hemisphere home or too cold down under, because it's still pretty crap here,

Why not call down a warm up with an Underworldpodcast, branded T-shirt or hoodie, underworldpod.com forward slash merch for some cool threads or a mug? Yeah, I think you actually have to go to underworldpod.com and then click on merch. Because, I mean, I just, like, we couldn't figure out the web. Whatever, man. They'll figure it out. You're being kind to me because, as we both know, that was my job. Anyway, first off, huge congratulations to Nicola Maduro, who I think last month as we're doing this, won a third term as president wow

seems like a really close run thing he must be really popular to keep winning all those free and fair elections yeah I hope that Miami Cubans understand sarcasm because I like going down to Florida I don't want to get chased out well Marco Rubio probably doesn't as we'll later learn

anyway I guess we can edit this as appropriate depending on what actually happens in maybe a few weeks time you know maybe maybe I have to come out with something like I can't believe Maduro finally buckled and let the opposition come to power. I'll do one more. I do one more, Dale.

Can you believe Nicola Maduro died in that jet ski accident off the coast of Trinidad? Yeah, you can edit as appropriate, whatever works for the week or two from now. Anyway, yes, this is Venezuela, home of the Bolivarian Revolution. Chavistas, a country of more proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia, but a leadership so awful, it's now got a GDP per capita lower than the Philippines. It's home to just over 28 million people, and it's lost almost eight of them in recent years. This is nuts. We'll get to that later on.

And yeah, U.S. sanctions have crippled these economy, and it's only going to get worse as Maduro retreats into madness. I mean, look, I'd love to blame the U.S. everything, but like that economy was pretty crippled without them because of government mismanagement, terrible, terrible policies and corruption. And I think the majority of the sanctions are, I mean, obviously there's oil stuff, but aren't they on? on like individuals and companies like it's not a like back in the day iraq sort of thing right yeah it's the thing is that they're they're like they're communists basically so when you when you do the individuals you do the state i think is is what the people there are trying to say but yeah i mean i think that that fact that they have more proven oil than saudi arabia is mad like they they they would i mean at one point they were going to be one of the richest countries

on earth and they uh they definitely aren't now but uh there was a part of that with like was it was a chavez or was it maduro who like basically took everyone who knew what they were doing in the industry and replaced them with like cronies and things of that nature yeah that was chavez yeah and then uh maduro well he's just a former bus driver who i think he had the brownest nose in the palace so uh i don't know someone can uh write in and tell me i'm wrong about that but that's what it seems to me but um we are going to look at this issue obviously for from the angle of organized crime coming out of Venezuela on today's show. And specifically something called the Tren de Aragua.

And that is a prison group that has become wildly powerful off the back of a cocktail of corruption, migration, and a strange failed attempt by the Venezuelan state to cordon off so-called peace zones in the capital city, Caracas. And, I mean, if you guys have been paying attention too, they're sort of like the new MS-13 in, I think, American media of this really scary gang that's garnering a lot of headlines. And obviously they are, as we'll learn.

But what the reality is in terms of what their actions are in the States, I guess we'll learn about that too. Yeah, there's some towing and throwing on what they actually are and how powerful they are. But this episode has got a hell of a lot going on, guys. Kadakas has been infamous for crime going back a long, long way, decades, in fact. A pal of mine reported there a few years ago and had all these gears stolen by kids on mopeds at knife point.

Yeah, I've had some friends base there, and it's basically standard to get robbed, like, nonstop. Yeah, it seems pretty insane. To set the scene, this is the New Yorker's John Lee Anderson, who, well, to pull back the curtain a little bit, I actually just got on the phone with, before we were recording this show, to do something about his recent reporting in Ecuador,

which is going to be coming out soon, really interesting stuff. But this is him writing way back in 2013, quote, crime or the threat of it is probably Karakis' defining feature, as inescapable as the weather, which is generally glorious, and the traffic, which is awful, with cars clogging the streets for hours every day. Benders waved through the gridlock, hawking toys, insecticides and bootleg DVDs, while drug addicts wash windshields or juggle for change. Spray-painted graffiti

covers facades, trash is piled up on roadsides. The Guide River, which runs through the heart of the city is a gray torrent of foul-smelling water. Along its banks live hundreds of homeless indigence, mostly drug addicts and the mentally ill. The wealthier districts of Caracas are fortified enclaves protected by security walls topped with electrified wire. A gated entrance is armed guards stand watch behind one-way glass. I mean that makes me genuinely want to go there more. I mean the key signifier there is the DVDs. Anyone remember those? Let's do a stand-up routine. Of course, the symbol for this incredible urban decay in popular culture is the Tori Davies, or Tori David, the Tower of David, which is a 45-floor abandoned skyscraper in downtown Krakas, which was taken over entirely by squatters and gangs, kind of the most perfect visual metaphor for a nation in distress. Homeland fans, remember Homeland? Hey, I should definitely do a routine.

Mike recognize it as the place where Brody is taken to. And this place was actually a vacuum. evacuated in 2018 after an earthquake. So the idea for a story of mine, which everyone else has done, is out the window. But by that point, the Tren de Aragua was well on its way to building a transnational criminal empire. Yeah, I mean, it's actually really interesting. Like, I never, I'm not super well-versed on Venezuelan organized crime, but I'd never really heard of this gang until a year or two ago. But what's familiar with the cartel of the sun, just have we ever talked about them? They're the kind of like the cartel.

that has a high, has a lot of high level government officials in it. I think they're even said to be a part of the government in the military. I might have told the story, I think, about how I became pen pals with a guy who worked as, like, Maduro's wife's bodyguard, and he flew, like, Coke Shipments after teaching. I taught a prison class he was in. I think he got arrested in Colombia and then extradited. But I'm pretty sure he turned witness within, like, the past year to testify against them and disappeared into the system.

We were trading letters like every few months for a while. So if you're out there, bud, you know, I hope you're doing great. Give me a call. Let's hang out. But you haven't told that story. That's nuts. When were you doing a prison class? I got when I was doing, I got a Pulitzer Center grants for working in El Salvador on the,

the MS-13 guys in the church and all that. One of the stipulations there is that, you know, occasionally they'll contact you to go speak at a university or a panel. And there was a panel down there. And one of the guys on the panel does a lot of programs. with prisoners in D.C. I think it's a federal prison there. So I went to teach a class.

This is a crazy story, actually. I went to teach a class, and there was a guy in there who looked Latin, and he was wearing a Kipa, a Yamaka. So I was, like, intrigued right away. And, you know, I spoke to the, and, you know, if you know about D.C. prisons,

like, you got to be a pretty badass dude to wear a Kipa in a D.C. prison And, like, not be intimidated. So right away, I was like, all right, who is this dude? What does he do? I taught the class. And afterwards, he came up and started talking to me. His English wasn't great, so we communicated back and forth.

But it turned out that he was this like super heavy Venezuelan dude who had got arrested in Colombia, I think, in the wake of like a big shipment. Maybe it was a helicopter, maybe it was a plane of cocaine and then been extradited to the U.S. And he was just kind of like languishing in this D.C. prison while they figured out what to do with him. I think they were building a case against Maduro, against Maduro associates, against Maduro's wife. And there's actually an article, I think Reuters eventually spoke to him years later. He was upset about that. And we started trading letters.

You know, he would actually write in Spanish. I would get it translated because my Spanish is not good enough to communicate on that level. And just send him stuff. And we talked about, you know, he was asking me to help him, uh, communicate with like a rabbi. He wanted to do some holiday stuff, all this sort of stuff. And he was a fascinating guy. And he was always like, I, you know, I'm going to tell my real story and everything like that. And then I just kind of lost contact with him. And he sort of disappeared from the system. So I assume he was used. I don't know if they file the charges. I haven't

kept up with it since like the letters stopped. But we traded probably like 10 letters each. And I always wanted to do something big with him, but it just didn't work out. Well, if you're out there and somehow listening to this podcast, then get in touch. The Underwall Podcast at J-Whorral.com. There you go. This sounds incredibly similar to the only time I ever taught a class, which was at Southwestern Oklahoma University because of a mother-in-law at the time was there. And everyone was pretty much silent after I finished talking.

No one wanted to ask a question except for one girl was a really big girl who was dressed in a full wizard's outfit with a twisty wooden stick. and she said, do you know David Remnick? And I said, no, not really. And she just walked out. So, yeah, that was the only time I took a class. And it sounds like it went really well, doesn't it? But anyway, yes, back to 2018.

This is the time in case you're still listening, guys, that the Tren de Aragua is on its way to building a big national, or transnational even criminal empire. So before this, we're going to take it back to the history of the group and care how they got to this point, right? So I'm going to go back to 2005. That year, a 22-year-old named Hector Rustenford Guerrero Flores, aka, thank God, because this is way easier,

Niño Guerrero, murders a police officer in Aragua, which is a small, spleen-shaped state around 60 miles west of Caracas, which hugs the Caribbean Sea. Now, Guerrero is bumped around prison facilities, but in 2010 he has moved to a place called Tokoron, which is one of the largest in the country and close to the Aragua state capital of Maracaay. He escapes two years later,

but he's re-arrested and sent back to Tokoron, which sounds like a good idea. So in 2013, Guerrero decides, okay, I'm just going to set up a gang right here. Now, Tokoron is no ordinary prison as we're going to find out soon. But not only has Guerrero stumbled on the perfect criminal petri dish, He's done it at the perfect time too. In 2013, crime is so out of control in Caracas, especially,

that the Venezuelan regime under Hugo Chavez, now dead of course, sets up a system of so-called peace zones. Remember Hampstadam from the Wire? Imagine that, but this is way more bonkers, basically just legalising all crime for hundreds of gangs. Neighborhoods designated as peace zones by authorities, they effectively suspend police operation altogether. so long as rampant gangs lay down their weapons, help maintain peace and end activities such as drug dealing.

They even give the gangs cash to start up legit businesses. The gangs are like, hell yes, Signor Chavez, we'll be good if your cops stay out of our hoods, but the thing about gangs is they're pretty bad at keeping their word. So pretty soon, peace zones just become shorthand for absolute lawless insanity. The gangs recruit even more members, they sling more gear, and add to their state handouts by making banks shaking down anybody in their path. Here's the always great insight crime, quote. Remarkably, the gangs managed to get away with crimes committed outside the peace zones,

since police chasing them would often turn back as soon as they got near the border. If security forces did venture inside the peace zones in search of suspects, they were frequently called back by their superiors. The most powerful gang leader in Venezuela by this point is not Niño Guerrero, however. It is a guy named Carlos Luis Rivetti, a.kéa. El Koki, and the El Koki gang has control of whole swathes of the capital city, banking Venezuela's special form of criminal communism. Koki, I mean, imagine a cross between Patrick Fisler and Ninja from De Antwerp, he has connections in the notoriously corrupt Venezuelan military. Actually, I thought the Venezuelan armed forces would be packed to the guilds like most socialist states, but it's only got around 120,000 active personnel. which is fewer than Cambodia or Greece.

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Now available on Disney Plus rated PG. Anyway, Kocki's stronghold is a small district in southwest Karakas called Kota 905. And he kills off rivals to basically take over the city altogether. Unlike every other major crook in Caracas, he's never served time behind bars, and despite the average career for a Venezuelan gangster being about as long as the average NFL linebacker, by 2018, Koki has made it to the ripe old age of 40. He is basically the king of Caracas.

That same year, though, Tren de Aragua is making its own moves. Tren, by the way, the Aragua train. Nobody's entirely sure where the name came from, but inside crime thinks it might have come from a Labour Union working on a never-finished railroad in the state. Niño, by 2018, he's orchestrated territory grabs from other gangs from his prison cell, and he's turned Tokoran prison into his own personal fiefdom. This is thanks to another massive government misstep, something called a prane system, P-R-A-N-E.

That might sound funny to Brits of a certain age. I remember you couldn't go an hour without calling someone a prani in school. It's basically a moron, but you wouldn't be calling a prani, a pran. Pranee. No, sir. I mean, British slang is like the gift that keeps on giving. That sounds like a pretty pran-y thing to say. These are crime bosses, the authorities of ceded control of prisons to. Yes, you heard that.

And they've done it officially. Here's another insight crime article from a couple years back. I promise I did not just copy-paste the entire episode from their website. Quote, prisoners must pay the pranis a weekly or monthly fee to guarantee their safety. They must also pay for water, food, and transport to court hearings, as well as any family or conjugal visits. At Tokoron, Guerrero Flores charges causes or casas from other prisoners to allow them to live there.

This three was set at $8 per week per prisoner as early as 2022, multiplying this amount by the number of inmates at Tokoron, 2007, would mean that Niño Guerrero's operation potentially brings in up to 86,000 $400 per month, or over a million dollars a year. I mean, this is a piss, poor country, remember? A million bucks is a hell of lot of money. Which, it shouldn't be. I should remind you again, Venezuela is the largest proven crude oil reserves on the planet.

In 1999, the year Hugo Chavez came to power. It produced 3.6 million barrels a day, making it one of the world's largest producers. Today, it's down to 85,000. But Niño Guerrero is doing pretty well and he decks out Tokaron with a zoo, swimming pool, playground, restaurant and a nightclub. And if you ever partied at that nightclub,

we want to hear from you, The Underworld Podcasts at gmail.com. I don't just want to hear from it. Like, I want to go to there. You want to go there? Yeah. Yeah, so do I. Actually, can someone just fund us? Can someone just give us money, actually?

We won't go there. We won't do anything. Just give us money. At the same time, in 2018, so this is really a pivotal year for this whole story. One of Niño's closest lieutenants in the Trin, a guy named Amara Alvarez, aka Larry Changa, which sounds like an early Seinfeld character,

he bursts out of Tokoron and he escapes to Chile. We'll come back to that soon. The gang expands its portfolio to extortion, kidnapping, drugs, illegal mining, cybercrime, and a bit of boring old theft. But the biggest cash cow in a country leaking people quicker than the Man City game on 85 minutes, so I can do UK references as well, is human trafficking and smuggling. Trafficking, by the way, is against the person's will.

Smuggling is at their will. Very, very important distinction. In 2018, Trind de Agra attempts to establish itself on the poorest border between Venezuela and Colombia, and it clashes with a bunch of Colombian rebel groups along the way. some of them beat up on the train but the gang carves out a niche ferrying folks into the Colombian town of La Parada gang associates then set up cells

across Latin America including Peru Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil they even forge tires with Brazil's largest organized criminal group the first capital control or PCC Yeah we did an episode on them I think a year back or so If you haven't heard it go back and listen

They're all over the place now they really are one of the biggest organized criminal groups in the world, I would imagine. The Tren's first move is usually to found loan sharking enterprises called Gota a Gota, or drop by drop. Wherever the group tries to get into narco trafficking in a big way, it seems to get its backside handed to it by bigger cartels, but nobody is prepared for the gigantic exodus of Venezuelans from their homeland, and the Tren steps in to claim massive profits off the back of it. It's also benefiting hugely from the Peace Zone Plan too,

carving out a stronghold in the Maracaille district of San Vicente. The trend then uses its state cash to start a foundation called Somos El Barrio J.K., which I think translates to We Are the Hood, only joking. This thing begins as a charity, but pretty soon it's just a vehicle for Niño's personal despotism. It hands out food only to those who follow gang rules, which can be as petty as having particular lights or plants outside their homes. Tren members can dictate the colours homes will be painted in or which decorations folk can put up with for Navidas, for example.

But it's not just the home decor the Tren are interested in. When a police officer stands up to the gang, for example, they shoot in 50 times, then tie his body to a motorcycle and drag it through the streets. 2019 sees an even bigger coup for the group, and it comes by way of a police scrub, even cum. Caracas hasn't seen by this point. In July that year, a group of police officers break the Peace Zone Pact not to enter Cotton 905, which is Cocky's turf, and they're on orders to find stolen vehicles.

By this point, the entire neighbourhood has become a junkyard slum. It's pandemonium. Very quickly upon entering, these officers are surrounded by Cocky's men who are stationed on higher ground and armed with high-powered weapons like AR-15s and AK-40s. It's a shooting gallery, and the police have to scatter for their lives, taking with them stories of how the peace zone plan has turned entire sections of the cities into smouldering mad-max-style killing fields, with groups like cockies resembling less street gangs than paramilitary outfits. Even the miserable regime of Nicola Maduro can't ignore this level of misrule, and arguments to dismantle the peace zones gather pace. This standoff crescendos until early 2021. And that's when Koki, getting well, Koki, expands out of Kota-905 to take the nearby district of Lavega, prompting an outcry.

The regime fights back, pushing Koki not only out of Lavega, but Kota too. Suddenly, Koki is on the run, and his turf is in tatters. That's great news for the Tren der Agua, which has consolidated its own power from Tokoron to Venezuela, and out across the whole region. That September, the mayor of Bogota, Colombia's capital city, comes out against the group, asking the Venezuela ambassador to, quote, effectively isolate these two criminals from any possibility of continuing to coordinate criminal activities from the Tokoran prison.

That's a pretty big deal. You've got the mayor of a major city home to over 7 million people, which of course has seen its own fair share of narco violence going back to the 1980s, name dropping the train and Niño as forces to be reckoned with. And to call out Tokoron in particular reflects just how disastrously the Venezuelan system of Praez has been. A state prison watchdog at this point analyzes 31 of 52 prisons in Venezuela and finds that eight are entirely controlled by organized crime bosses, while another 15 are at least partially mob controlled.

Only eight are controlled by the government, madness. writes Insight crime, quote, Niño Guerrero has ordered inmates to carry out work at Tokaron, according to the investigator. Some are giving cleaning assignments, while others are charged with feeding the animals at the prison zoo. Inmates who have financial knowledge or information technology skills, run accounts, or teach others how to conduct extortion scams

via social media and other platforms. Like the prison zoo, do we know what they're talking about here? Like, is it a couple of goats and chickens, Or is it like tigers and monkeys and stuff? I'm pretty sure I went looking online to see if they had tigers because as we both know, that's my obsession for some reason. And they said, no. I don't think anything came back about tigers.

But I don't know. Yeah, if you've just got goats and chickens, can you call yourself a zoo? When does a farm become a zoo? I want to know that. That's a really important distinction. But they call it a zoo. I'm going to call it a zoo. realize now I'm talking like Donald Trump, so I'm going to leave it there. Anyway, you think prison

gangs are bad in the States? This one is off the hook. I mean, you might have guessed that already by the existence of a zoo and a nightclub. But remember Niño's capo, Larry Changa, who busted out of Tokor in 2015 and migrated to Chile? In 2022, Chilean cops finally catch up with him, and he flees to Colombia, working with and against rebels like the FARC to commandeer more and more of the Venezuelan migrant trafficking market, which soars as the country's economy continues to tank. Remember, though, those big narco bucks, they're well out of reach of the train. It takes more than a handful of Cohenes to go after the cartels in Colombia, Peru, and Central America, and so much of the jungle routes for blow attacks by non-state actors, again like the FARC.

So the trend's big money is in migrants, then extortion, cybercrime, and then you're more domestic drug work in that order. On February 6th, 2022, security forces spot El Coki, who's been on the lamb since the breakdown of his gang the previous year, while they're in a shootout with a different gang on an Alaguay highway, which is insane. And they open fire on him, popping him in the arm. Turns out, despite offering a half-million dollar reward and claiming Cocky's been sheltered by the Colombian government, he's just been hiding in a provincial town in Venezuela with this other

gang, Los Connejos, which I think is the rabbits. Anyway, for months he's been doing this. Cocky flees into the forest, but not before he drops his cell phone, on which is a picture of him with long hair and a beard. He then legs it with the forces in close pursuit. The resulting manhunt continues until February 8th, three days later, when they finally get the better of him shooting him dead. It's at the tail end of this year, 2022, that you've been.

first start to hear about the train de Aragua coming north to the US. The American Border Patrol claims to CNN-Spanol that it's arrested 38 possible train members between October 2022 and October 2020 for example. But we're going to

get on to some of these law enforcement and media claims about the gang because some of them are fissier than your mum's the chowder that she makes on weekends. Lots of fishing that child are very generous woman. Oh my God, dude. That is bad even for you. But But yeah, I mean, it's interesting, right?

I referenced the MS-13 stuff, and it's kind of like, you know, it's tough to parse because it's kind of nuance, you know, like with MS, they're very bad people. Like, they were very dangerous. They were extremely violent and definite cause for concern. But it was also portrayed like this massive invasion, this group that was coming to take your kids. When the reality is, you know, they're definitely coming, right? But it's in smaller numbers. And they almost always only prey on their own, right? MS was preying on Salvadoran and other Central American immigrant communities, which, you know, it doesn't make it better or less concerning.

But like, you know what I'm saying? Like, they make it out to be something about this thing that it's going to terrorize, you know, every suburb and all that sort of stuff. But I guess maybe it is a good thing, you know, that they're highlighting the fact that these groups are coming here and that they are terrorizing these immigrant communities who a lot of people don't care about. So I don't know, but it's an interesting thing to parse media-wise, and I'm assuming it's very similar with this gang now garnering the same MS-13-type headlines. Yeah, it's really similar, actually. And I think like every time there's been an individual case where this group has popped up, I think there's a, I think there's always the attraction to writing a bit of the story,

which is like a little bit of backstory that makes it seem like they're fully invading the place, which, yeah, doesn't seem like. It's fully, I'm not really fully on board with it having read a bunch of stuff. But yeah, you can parse your own thoughts about this because I'm going to go into a few of these cases. And some of them are really interesting. One big change, though, which doesn't help the train, is actually that Venezuelans are coming to the US in greater numbers. Until 2022, the trend has done well fighting off competition for popular migrant routes into neighboring countries like Colombia. But when caravans switch direction and head north, these are the routes, like the drugs, that are already commanded by far bigger and deadlier gangs.

And this is even still the case today, not to say today members aren't arriving in the US themselves in these groups. Yeah, I mean, those routes that come up from Central America into Mexico into the US. I mean, those are controlled by, you know, Zetas or Sinola, like cartels that are not to be trifled with. Yeah, and it's like I said, like whenever they've tried to get into the narco trafficking in a big way, it seems like they've been battered down by these groups. And they've carved out this little niche on the Colombian border, which is where the majority of people were going to. But now people are going north.

It's not so good for them, although we'll hear that they're still definitely up and operating. Even more spectacularly, on September 20, 2023, Maduro's regime decides it's had enough of Niño and his Tokoron prison, come zoo, come cyber scamming centre, come nightclub, whatever it is. Early that morning, 11,000 members of the Venezuelan Security Services storm the prison. 11,000. And there are only 7,000 inmates. An official statement reads, quote,

The Bori-Bari and government informs that the Kassi Kauai Kapuro, I'm surely not saying that right, liberation operation has been underway since the early hours of the morning. Its objective is to dismantle and put an end to organised crime gangs and other criminal networks operating from the Tokaron Penitentiary to the detriment of the tranquility of the Venezuelan people. That name, by the way, in case you missed it, Kasi Kui Kappuro, is a 16th century native chief, which is why I pronounced it so well. Niño and the train lose Tokoron. Job done, right? Wrong. Niño and these top boys escape without harm. Apparently they've been given a day. advance warning of the raid. So that's kind of where we are with the train in their home country.

Scattered but not broken, shaken but not stirred. Niño is nowhere to be found. And his lieutenants have found out across the Americas. Incredible numbers of Venezuelans are now coming across the US border at this point. 800,000 have tried crossing since 2021, with a mammoth, 330,000 Venezuelans trying it last year alone. That is unlikely to subside given Maduro's recent election still, with some estimates saying that another 40% of the country could flee in the coming couple of years. Of course, the vast, vast majority of these people are not gangsters or criminals. According to the Biden administration, just over 1% of migrants have arrived since he took office have criminal records.

But Venezuela, likewise China, Cuba and a handful of other countries with name you can probably guess, they don't release law enforcement data to the US, nor do they take their nationals back on deportation flights, which makes things a lot tougher for US authorities. And look, I'm not going to get into like Day of the Soldado type stuff here, but this just objectively is not good stuff for America. And on November 27, 2023, something happens in Miami, that ignites the American media consciousness about the train de Aragua.

However deep its connections in the States may truly be. That night, two women seduce a man named Jose Luis Sanchez Barrera, a 43-year-old former Venezuelan cop. The pair takes Sanchez to a Lakinta Inn Hotel and Suites in Miami, where they engage in, I guess, fun. When the fun is over, though, Sanchez is jumped by three men outside the hotel, who drag him to the back of his own truck, tie his hands and feet, and torture him, trying to get details about where he hides his valuables and cash.

Sanchez tells them his address and the combination to a safe. They then drive there, where they threatened to kill Sanchez's niece so she'll hand over anything of value to them. The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened.

And that's just one of thousands of thousands of. of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. Meesterfer, and every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history, from Killer Cannibal Brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult, and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500, episodes and a brand new story each and every single day,

morning cup of murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled, then sit back and start your day with a morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. Speaking to Univision, the niece says, quote, they pointed a gun at my head and told me that if I didn't cooperate, they would kill me.

They made me nil while they searched the reverse. room. They searched everything. They took all my things. They also stripped me in my clothes. They took his. They took his safe. Minutes later, the gang speeds off, with Sanchez still in the back of his truck. His cousin tracks his phone to a nearby street where, the following morning, cops find the truck covered in blood. Sanchez is inside, dead. His hands are still bound, his body covered in bruises, and his head is covered in a shirt. This is how he'd been killed, suffocated. a pretty horrible death. Detectives arrest one of the men

and tell media he's a member of the Tren de Aragua. A few months later, on April 17 this year, 2024, an El Paso Border Patrol Intel unit alerts homeland security about a sex ring involving the Tren. A young woman has reached out to them, claiming to have been trafficked across the Texas border and onto Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she's been sexually exploited by criminals

threatened to kill her kids back home in Venice. Venezuela. The young woman claims she'd been held at this brothel to pay off a $30,000 debt to a human trafficker who'd brought her into the US. Cops then raid a property in Baton Rouge and find sex toys over a grand in cash and a ledger of debts, arresting a group of Venezuelan men, including an alleged ringleader of the train in the US. They then discover that this one guy has been operating so-called human trafficking stash houses across the country, including across Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, and Florida. This is all getting a bit true detective, eh?

The gang has, quote, followed the migration paths across South America to other countries and have set up criminal groups throughout South America as they follow these paths. And that they appear to follow the migration north to the United States. That's according to an El Paso FBI special agent. Yeah, I mean, the sex trafficking stuff, I think, from Venezuela is like a huge problem. Even seven or eight years ago, it was becoming a thing. thing in Trinidad, which is right off the coast of Venezuela, I think. I'm not sure if it was specifically sex trafficking or just women there were, you know, becoming sex workers. But I assume

it was probably a mix of both. Yeah, how closely are those two countries linked with criminal stuff? Because like, it's pretty amazing if you look at the back of how close Trinidad is to the coast of Venezuela. And is it Kurichow as well? It's like right down there off the coast as well. Yeah, I mean, with Trinidad, it was becoming a big thing in like 2013, 2014, and it was always like a, you know, a sort of midway point or way station for trafficking of cocaine. But, you know, there were gangs there that were getting more involved in Trinidad in, you know, the last parts of the 2010s because there were so many refugees that were flooding in there. Yeah, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty crazy. I mean, Venezuela in history is. just a complete basket case from start to finish really. Anyway, after this, we get to all the stuff going down in New York from the cold open

with our moped attempted killer and stories about gang members camping out in migrant homes, which is all grist for the media mill, of course, but definitely scary too. Over in Denver, cops have released intelligence claiming that regional members of the train have been given a quote, green light to open fire on cops there, given how violently the gang responds to police back home and in Miami of course. Yeah, I just saw, I mean, headline today in the post was wave the gun. Arm crew storms Colorado apartment building overrun by Venezuelan gang spilling out from sanctuary city. And it's basically about Tran.

But I think there's a debate the governor is saying that it is not them. And it's in Aurora, the Denver suburb. And the Aurora Police Department acknowledge it is aware that components of Trent Aragua are operating in Aurora saying that the police force has been increasingly collecting evidence to show the gang is connected to crimes in the area. Interesting. So, yeah, I mean, I did see a few different things from Denver, but again, like some of them seem legit and some of them seemed a bit sort of speculative, but yeah, this seems pretty, pretty out there. I mean, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they're really

well embedded. I mean, there's enough of them. And there's so many people coming into the country that I would not be surprised if there was a significant number of gang members. But, yeah, I mean, this is not just in the US either. It's not just in Denver. It's not just in New York. Remember how Niño's boy Larry Changa fled to Chile to set up shop there? Not uncoincidentally. Chile's murder rate has shot up since 2019 to 4.5 out of 100,000 a day,

which is still pretty low. It's actually below the US. But Changa and his Tremeng, have turned entire historical. buildings in the capital city Santiago into mega brothels for sex trafficking. And the train has even been accused of collaboration with the Maduro regime in the killing of a prominent anti-Madourou activist Ronald Ojeda, who had been living in exile in Santiago since 2018, but whose body was found this march inside a suitcase buried beneath a building on the edge of the city, sprinkle with lime powder to speed up decomposition.

He's dead, by the way, just to get that clear. It's not a pretty sight. and all the hallmarks of a gang hit. Chile has already pointed the finger directly as Venezuelan counterparts. Quote, Venezuela is not collaborating with the countries of the South, and that is according to Chile's interior ministry. I mean, that's pretty wild, right?

I think it reminds me of similar stuff with, you know, I think Iran was contracting out gang members in, like, Sweden to take out dissidents. I think there's stuff with Chechnya, too, right? Something along those lines, but, like, you know, states using gang members in these places, to do, you know, in places where you assume there's a lot more Western Europe, whatever,

is Eastern Europe. I think Poland was one of them too, where they're using gang members to kill dissidents. Yeah, it's nuts, actually, how quickly this story is accelerating, because I think I wrote this episode, what, maybe a week or two ago. And even since the election and all the fallout from that, I mean, election inverted commas, it's definitely true. And I definitely see it reporting the media more that as Maduro sinks into ever more desperate levels of dictator, He's clinging on by a thread, it seems, and his economy worsens and his people continue to flee. He's going to turn to the black market to keep the Bolivarian revolution alive. Illegal gold and oil already make the regime a lot of cash.

But as Venezuela deepens ties with the likes of Iran, North Korea and Russia, why not go to Kim Jong-unwei altogether and try getting some ghost GDP from the drug trade via the Trin? It's not actually that outlandish to suggest so, and they're definitely, definitely involved in this killing in Chile. But I think at this point it's worth pouring little cold water and the idea the Tren de Aragua is invading the United States wholesale. Yes, the stories I've mentioned here are grim and the opportunities for Venezuelan criminals are growing.

In March, a group of Republicans, including Marco Rubio, called for President Biden to designate the Tren an official transnational criminal organization, or TCO, calling it a quote invading criminal army spreading quote brutality and chaos but insight crime

God bless you guys has looked into a lot of the claims and found them unfounded there have been a bunch of arrests where cops have called guys 10 members because they've got a certain tattoo but they don't actually know anything about the gang I mean the criminals that is

the lawmaker's letter accuses the gang of child rape something that hasn't once been substantiated or even mentioned in cases about it. A February murder in Georgia had been attributed to the train before officials backtracked. Again, it seemed to have hinged entirely on one guy's tattoo. The State Department has offered big rewards for Niño and two of his top guys alongside officials in Colombia, of all places, but these men are believed to be hiding out in Venezuela. And actually, if you go through the stories, including the New York Post, they seem confused as to whether the train actually has its

own tattoos or not. In some cases they say they're similar to MS-13 in the fact they have these like really identifiable tats, but in other cases they actually come out and say they don't do that so they can blend in. So it's quite confusing. I mean, these guys are big and they're scary and they're violent and they have come out of an extraordinary crucible of lawlessness and decay in Venezuela. But MS-13 or Barrio de Tiocho, I mean, they are not there yet. I guess the TLDR of this entire episode is Venezuela, broken, getting brokener. And the Tren Daragua, not nice, watch this space. That is the kind of top level analysis we are here for. Yeah. For more, I think what, Sean, you spoke to John Le Anderson, who's done some amazing

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