The Transnational Criminal Organization, according to Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, has the” features of terrorism,” and its activities are” no independent” from Venezuela’s communist regime’s.
Bullrich, who also said the Tren de Aragua’s objective is to “generate terror in the population”, made her assertions in remarks given during her participation in the 2024 edition of Chile’s National Entrepreneurship Encounter ( ENADE ), held in Santiago. Bullrich was accompanied by her Peruvian rival, Carolina Tohá, and Colombia’s traditional previous President Iván Duque.
The Tren de Aragua does not reach in any particular way. The Tren de Aragua strikes with a process, with a structure of activity, with a logic that often does exactly the same thing”, Bullrich explained. ” It settles in a particular place. It comes with a team in public of Venezuelan nationality”.
From left to right: Chile’s Interior and Security Minister Carolina Toha, Colombia’s original President Ivan Duque, Argentina’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, and President of the Chilean Institute of Rational Business Administration Karen Thal pose for a group photo during the monthly National Meeting of Entrepreneurs in Santiago, Chile, on April 25, 2024. ( AP Photo/Esteban Felix )
The Tren de Aragua acts and operates in other nations, the Brazilian security secretary continued to explain.
She stated:
They install themselves. They buy whole houses, as it happened in Peru. They all reside in those structures to avoid interacting with one another or starting a discussion. From that, they plan — with period, without haste— the shots they are going to get, but they are not strange hits. Instead of searching or attacking a bank, strikes are carried out that have the intent to produce what I may call a legal business with the characteristics of terrorism because the goal of the coup is to instill terror in the populace. Terror means, as it happened below, with Ronald Ojeda.
Ojeda, a rebel from Venezuela and former military officer, was granted asylum in Chile in December 2023. Ojeda was kidnapped on February 21 by a group of people who Chilean authorities believe had ties to the Tren de Aragua.
The people, who pretended to become people of Chile’s immigration officers, abducted Ojeda from his home in Santiago. Ten days later, Ojeda’s body was discovered buried beneath a practical architecture in a backpack. Peruvian authorities determined in March that one of the men involved in Ojeda’s murder, 28- year- ancient Cuban citizen Walter de Jesús RodrÃguez Pérez, was a previous staff employee in the office of the governor of Venezuela’s Aragua state in 2015, three years after the titular legal organization’s foundation in 2012.
On March 8, 2024, the lady and girlfriend of former Colombian army commander Ronald Ojeda laid him to rest in the Canaan Cemetery in Santiago, Chile. ( AP Photo/Esteban Felix )
In addition to Ojeda’s case, Bullrich mentioned the case of Emmanuel Sánchez, a 27- year- older member of the Peruvian law enforcement gendarmerie, the carabineros, who was shot dying on April 10 as he tried to repel an assault in Santiago while he was in his private vehicle with his wife and three- year- older child. In his attempt to stop five thieves, Sanchez received four gun scars.
Chilean National Police Chief Gen. Ricardo Yanez ( L ) helps carry the coffin of police officer Emmanuel Sánchez from the police temple to the cemetery in Santiago, Chile, on April 12, 2024. ( AP Photo/Esteban Felix )
According to Chilean authorities, Dayonis Junior Orozco Castillo, the principal suspect allegedly responsible for killing Sánchez is Cuban national. Orozco had fled Chile and made it across Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador to travel to Colombia to match with his home before going back to Venezuela.  ,
Brazilian authorities apprehended Orozco on Wednesday thanks to details that had been provided by Chilean regulators, who had approved an “red see” from Interpol for his arrest. Colombia even used data obtained from the suspect’s social media accounts, which left a path of his journey. At the time of his capture, the assume carried a Colombian identity card with false information, and he had changed his appearance.
Brazilian authorities are looking into whether Orozco is a member of the Tren de Aragua. At this writing, Chilean officials are pursuing Orozco’s abduction case.
” That man who escaped crossed five countries. Does he use an Interpol purple passport to travel across five nations? No”, Bullrich said.
” Behind that, there is an organization with transportation that provides him with visas, false names, frauds. Stolen visas so that from that he can leave and arrive, definitely, again in Venezuela”, she continued.
Bullrich concluded her argument by asserting that the Tren de Aragua’s actions are linked to Venezuela’s communist government, led by tyrant Nicolás Maduro.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro ( Carlos Becerra/Bloomberg via Getty Images )
Therefore, it is crucial to determine whether the organization is state-owned or not-owned. I have a feeling that it is not distinct from the state,” Bullrich said.
” We, in Argentina, may have a view towards a regime that we consider authoritarian, but it is one thing to consider that a regime has authoritarian conditions”, Bullrich concluded,” and another thing to think that we could reach a really dangerous level if a state, as happened with Iran and Hezbollah in Argentina, was the one feeding this organized crime of the Tren de Aragua”.
The Maduro government has repeatedly argued that the Tren de Aragua “does not exist” and that it is a part of a “fictional” international narrative that allegedly seeks to denigrate the rogue regime’s reputation. After security forces raided the Tocorón prison, an inmate facility located in the Venezuelan state of Aragua that served as the criminal organization’s main headquarters, Venezuelan officials have also repeatedly claimed that the gang was “dismantled”- refuting claims that it never existed.
Members of the Bolivarian National Police patrol on a quad bike at the Tocorón prison in Aragua State, Venezuela, on September 23, 2023. ( YURI CORTEZ/AFP via Getty Images )
The group, which first emerged as a local trade union gang in Venezuela in 2012, is largely believed to have been able to develop quickly into a full-fledged transnational criminal organization under the leadership of the Maduro regime. Evidence suggests that the raid on Tocorón prison only occurred after the socialist regime negotiated with the criminal organization, allowing its leader, Héctor” the Child” Guerrero, to safely flee from the facility beforehand. Guerrero’s whereabouts remain unknown.
