Brazilian police arrest 25 people in a crackdown on Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang

SAO PAULO (AP) — Police in Brazil have arrested 25 people in a crackdown on the criminal gang Tren de Aragua from neighboring Venezuela after it developed ties with Brazilian organized crime groups, officials said Tuesday.

Evidence suggests that the Venezuelan group has been supplying weapons to Brazilian crime groups such as Red Command, officials said. The northern Brazilian state of Roraima has been a main corridor for the illicit trade, police investigator Wesley Costa told local news outlet G1.

The Justice Ministry said police arrested 18 Venezuelans and 7 Brazilians in the crackdown, a joint effort of national security forces and police in Roraima.

They also served 30 search warrants across five states: Amazonas and Roraima, in the Amazon; Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, in the southeast; and Parana, in southern Brazil.

Tren de Aragua originated more than a decade ago at a prison with hardened criminals in Venezuela’s central state of Aragua. The gang has expanded in recent years as more than 7.7 million Venezuelans fled economic turmoil and migrated to other Latin American countries or the U.S.

On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that a U.S. military attack killed the leader of the Tren de Aragua gang, Hector Rusthenford Guerrero.

Experts and authorities in Brazil have warned about the Venezuelan group’s expansion into Brazil over the last few years, acting in cooperation with domestic gangs like the First Command of the Capital, or PCC, and the Red Command, or CV.

“The group played a strategic role in supplying high-caliber firearms to criminal organizations operating across several regions of Brazil,” the Justice Ministry said.

The Trump administration has labeled Latin American cartels as foreign terrorist organizations as part of a broader crackdown on drug trafficking, including deadly boat strikes against suspected “narcoterrorists” in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

Tren de Aragua was listed a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department last year, with federal prosecutors accusing Guerrero of shipping drugs to the U.S. and organizing acts of terror across borders, including the murder of a Venezuelan dissident in Chile.

In May, the State Department said it would also designate the Red Command and the PCC as foreign terrorist organizations.