The Trump administration last month deported scores of Venezuelan men to El Salvador, sending them to a maximum-security prison for gang members. The administration claimed that most of the men were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, a group that, according to the executive order decreeing the deportations, is “conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States.”
Tren de Aragua is not invading America. While the research organization InSight Crime, which has tracked the gang for years, has found that it does have a limited presence in the United States, researchers have seen no evidence that it has organized cells in the country that cooperate with one another, much less receive directions from abroad. The exaggerated government claims and ensuing public concern about the group’s activities in the United States amount to a classic moral panic, in which a handful of crimes are cited by politicians as evidence of an urgent threat to society.
To be sure, Tren de Aragua is a dangerous group, responsible for horrendous crimes in Venezuela and elsewhere in South America. The three of us have spent decades studying violence in Venezuela precisely because we understand its ability to destroy lives, families and neighborhoods. But central to creating a more secure world is getting the facts, causes and solutions right. So far, many American politicians, police officers and journalists have failed to do so, and instead have perpetuated significant misconceptions about Tren de Aragua.
The biggest misconception concerns the group’s organizational capacity. Tren de Aragua was recently designated a terrorist organization by the United States, alongside much more established groups like the Mara Salvatrucha in El Salvador and cartels in Mexico. Calling criminal groups terrorist is always a stretch since they usually do not aim at changing government policy.
But this is particularly the case with Tren de Aragua. Compared to these others it is a relatively young organization with relatively limited capacity and no historic political aspirations. Indeed, since the Venezuelan military in 2023 stormed the prison that Tren de Aragua controlled and was headquartered, the gang has been increasingly dispersed, not centrally organized and with no declarations of political goals.
Tren de Aragua emerged in the penitentiary in the town of Tocorón around 2014. Its expansion in South America is closely tied to the mass migration of Venezuelans that accelerated shortly thereafter. Its criminal operations primarily involve not international drug trafficking or transnational extortion rackets but migrant smuggling and the sexual exploitation of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, Chile and Peru. None of the group’s primary economic activities suggest significant expansion outside of South America.
