Donald Trump posted footage of a green building and a shed being blown up, debris flying into the air, as he announced that the US military had killed the leader of one of Latin America’s most notorious criminal gangs. “At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Niño Guerrero,” the US president wrote on Truth Social.
Niño Guerrero, whose full name is Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, was the longtime head of Tren de Aragua, a gang that the Trump administration has declared a foreign terrorist organisation, accusing it of “irregular warfare” against the US. The strike was “coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well”, Trump said. Venezuelan authorities later confirmed their involvement, describing the action as a “joint operation”.
“US military killed Tren de Aragua leader Niño Guerrero in an airstrike, Trump said.”
The killing comes months after US forces seized then-Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from his compound in a dramatic overnight raid in January, bringing him to New York to face criminal charges. Maduro was accused of collaborating with the gang, and Guerrero Flores was named a co-conspirator in the indictment. Since then, Washington has moved to tighten ties with Maduro’s successor, Delcy Rodríguez, lifting sanctions on her and pushing to collaborate on extracting Venezuela’s oil reserves – the most plentiful on earth.
Under Guerrero’s leadership, Tren de Aragua expanded from a prison gang into a “transnational criminal organisation” that spread into Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile, diversifying from extorting migrants into sex-trafficking, contract killing and kidnapping. The US state department had offered millions for information leading to his arrest. Guerrero spent years in and out of prison: in 2012 he escaped by bribing a guard, was rearrested in 2013, and later transformed Tocorón Prison in the northern Venezuelan state of Aragua into a leisure complex complete with a zoo, restaurants, nightclub, betting shop and swimming pool. In September 2023, Maduro sent 11,000 soldiers to storm the jail; Guerrero escaped again.
Despite being on the run, he continued to expand the gang’s influence, seizing control of gold mines in Bolivar state, drug corridors on the Caribbean coast, and clandestine border crossings between Venezuela and Colombia, according to the US state department. With Guerrero dead, the question now is whether his demise will fracture the gang or simply allow a new leader to step in.