Chilean investigators shut in on Venezuelan gang focused by Trump

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BY ISABEL DEBRE and NAYARA BATSCHKE

ARICA, Chile (AP) — The Venezuelan gang members wrote out even their most minute purchases in blue pen: $15 for a drug trafficker’s Uber; $9 for immediate espresso throughout a lookout shift; $34 for provides to scrub what investigators discovered had been torture chambers.

The meticulous spreadsheets seized throughout police raids in Chile’s northern city of Arica, and shared with The Related Press, counsel the accounting construction of a multinational.

They quantity to probably the most complete documentation thus far of the internal workings of Tren de Aragua, Latin America’s infamous felony group designated by President Donald Trump as a international terrorist group.

An investigation constructed over years by Chilean prosecutors in Arica, which resulted in hefty sentences for 34 individuals in March — and impressed different circumstances which, earlier this month, despatched a dozen Tren de Aragua leaders to jail for a complete of 300 years — contrasts with Trump’s mass deportations of suspected gang members.

Whereas Trump’s supporters cheer the expulsions, investigators see missed alternatives to assemble proof aimed toward uprooting the felony community that has gained momentum throughout the area as migration from Venezuela surges and world cocaine demand spreads.

“With the U.S. snatching guys off the streets, they’re taking out the tip of the iceberg,” stated Daniel Brunner, president of Brunner Sierra Group safety agency and a former FBI agent. “They’re not how the group operates.”

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Alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang attend a preliminary listening to dealing with murder expenses, in Santiago, Chile, July 9, 2025. (AP Picture/Esteban Felix)

Increase

Transnational mafias have fueled a unprecedented crime wave in once-peaceful nations like Chile and consolidated energy in nations like Honduras and Peru, infiltrating state bureaucracies, crippling the capacities of legislation enforcement and jeopardizing regional stability.

The brand new developments are testing democracies throughout Latin America.

“This isn’t your typical corruption involving money in envelopes,” stated former Peruvian Inside Minister Ruben Vargas of the impunity in his nation. “It’s having felony operators wield energy within the political system.”

Chile, lengthy thought of one among Latin America’s most secure and wealthiest nations, can be amongst its least corrupt, in response to watchdog Transparency Worldwide, giving authorities an edge in warding off this type of organized crime.

However with no expertise, the nation was caught unprepared as abductions, dismemberments and different grisly crimes reshaped society.

Now, three years later, specialists maintain out Arica as a case research in wider efforts to fight the gang.

Whereas some see El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’scrackdown on felony gangs as a mannequin, critics see an authoritarian police state that has run roughshod over due course of.

“Prison prosecution, monetary intelligence, witness safety and cooperation with different nations, that’s what it takes to disrupt felony networks,” stated Pablo Zeballos, a Chilean safety marketing consultant and former intelligence officer.

Utilizing Tren de Aragua paperwork first recovered in 2022, Chilean prosecutor Bruno Hernández and his unit introduced an unprecedented variety of gang members to trial final 12 months, dismantling the gang’s northern Chile offshoot, generally known as Los Gallegos.

“It marked a milestone,” prosecutor Mario Carrera stated final month from Arica’s shantytown of Cerro Chuño, a Los Gallegos stronghold. “Till then, they had been performing with impunity.”

Following migrants to ‘virgin territory’

Tren de Aragua slipped into northern Chile in 2021, after the pandemic shut borders and inspired Venezuelans to show to smugglers as they fled their nations’ crises and headed to Peru, Colombia and Chile.

Héctor Guerrero Flores — a Tren de Aragua chief nicknamed “Niño Guerrero” — dispatched managers to take over networks of “coyotes” shepherding human cargo throughout Chile’s desert borders.

“It was virgin territory from their perspective,” stated Ronna Rísquez, the creator of a e-book in regards to the group.

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