Tigers, swimming pools, a nightclub: The gang drawing Trump’s ire started in a Venezuelan prison

TOCORON, Venezuela (AP) — Tocorón once had it all. A nightclub, swimming pools, tigers, a lavish suite and plenty of food.

This was not a Las Vegas-style resort, but it felt like it for some of the thousands who until recently lived in luxury in this sprawling prison in northern Venezuela.

Here, between parties, concerts and weeks-long visits from wives and children, was the birthplace of the Tren de Aragua, a dangerous gang that has gained global notoriety after U.S. President Donald Trump put it at the center of his anti-immigrant narrative.

Kidnappings, extortion and other crimes were planned, ordered or committed from this prison long before Trump’s rhetoric.

The tiny, impoverished town where the Aragua Penitentiary Center is used to bustle with residents selling food, renting phone chargers and storing bags for prison visitors.

Now, the prison is back under government control, and streets in the town, also called Tocorón, are mostly deserted. The community has a few convenience stores, evangelical and Catholic churches, and an informal liquor store. A few people sit around, drinking beer and playing board games, or gather for a youth baseball game.

Residents still hesitate to speak about the notorious gang that used to control their lives. Some who dare speak lower their voices or look around for anyone listening as they narrate encounters with the gang.

“This, here, Tocorón, was all highly controlled,” Miguel Ponce said pointing to the prison behind him and the town around it. “I couldn’t have talked to you a while back. We weren’t allowed to move around.”

Even now, he said, perhaps he was talking too much.

The beginnings of Tren de Aragua

Tren de Aragua, meaning Train of Aragua, came together in Venezuela just as the South American country came apart.

In 2013, a crisis was taking hold in the country, as corruption, mismanagement and a drop in crude prices wrecked the oil-dependent economy. Hunger became widespread, grocery store shelves emptied, inflation soared, jobs disappeared and millions fell into poverty.

Around the same time, a notorious criminal, Héctor Guerrero, returned to Tocorón to serve time for the murder of a police officer and other convictions.

The prison, like others across Venezuela, was badly run, and serious allegations of torture and government corruption abounded. The criminal, nicknamed “Niño Guerrero,” and a few other inmates saw a profitable opportunity, expanding what had been a budding gang.

“Once these prisoners realized they had more weapons and more power than the military force guarding them, they assumed control and administration,” Ronna Rísquez, author of a book on the Tren de Aragua, said.

Guerrero and others established an organization within the prison that controlled the inmates through force and extortion. Guards looked the other way or colluded with gang members.

The gang’s largest source of revenue was the weekly fee it charged inmates, which Rísquez said added up to $3.5 million a year. Other funds came from crimes committed inside or outside prison.

Over time, Rísquez said, that turned Tocorón into the gang’s recruitment center and “a kind of city” tailored to the group’s needs, with amenities like a zoo, baseball field, casino and restaurants.

Inmates who followed the gang’s rules, paid their weekly fees and had extra money could order a meal from a tin-roof steakhouse or other food-court vendors. Their wives could visit them for weeks at a time. Their children could run around a colorful playground. Those who could not pay fees or crossed the gang suffered. Some even died.

Guerrero had his own lavish suite inside the prison. But the most famous feature at “Casa Grande,” the name the gang gave the prison, was Club Tokyo, where inmates and some members of the public partied to live music and shows of scantily clad dancers.

Prison walls do not contain the gang

Over a decade, Tren de Aragua’s activities extended well beyond Tocorón. By 2023, the gang had about 4,000 members across the country, operating in 11 of the 23 states, according to the independent organization, Venezuelan Observatory of Violence.

The gang extorted businesses, charging owners regular fees, and trafficked drugs. It also carried out kidnappings as some of its members serving time in Tocorón were allowed to leave the prison for several hours a day.

Venezuela’s severe food shortages in the second half of last decade added to the gang’s control. Often, prisoners’ wives would travel to Tocorón from faraway states to do their shopping, said a convenience store manager in Maracay, the state’s capital. The manager, who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation, explained that food was available inside the prison when it could not be found anywhere else.

Much of the coffee, flour, rice and other products sold inside Tocorón came from highway piracy. Thieves scouted a crucial interstate, stopped trucks and took their loot to the prison. That prompted Venezuelans to avoid being outdoors or driving after sundown.

Some gang victims left Venezuela, joining the exodus of more than 7.7 million people who migrated in search of better living conditions. Among them was retiree Manuel Marquez’ son.

“He had a convenience store… and they wanted to charge him a ‘vaccine,’” Marquez, 71, said using the colloquial term in Spanish for a protection fee that criminals charge businesses. “They came in, tied him up, and took everything. Anyone who refuses (to pay), let’s just say it, is looted. That’s how things work here, it’s unfortunate.”

Marquez’s son relocated to Ecuador after the gang emptied his convenience store in Maracay.

The Tren de Aragua also spread terror with phone calls and WhatsApp messages meant to extort hundreds or thousands of dollars from average Venezuelans.

“The first time, thank God, my daughter-in-law was home, and she told me to hang up, but it was hard and I was trembling,” said Maracay dentist Esperanza de Andrade, who received three calls. “They told me my name, my children’s names, where they went to school, and that, of course, alarmed me greatly. They directly threatened my life and the lives of my children.”

De Andrade said the last call happened around Sept. 20, 2023, when 11,000 soldiers stormed the prison to regain control.

The gang hits other countries

After they lost the prison, some members of the gang scattered, and Guerrero got away.

Members of the military used heavy equipment to destroy some of the amenities the gang had built. But the massive operation in Tocorón came too late to prevent the gang from crossing Venezuela’s borders.

Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Chile — all with large populations of Venezuelan migrants — have accused the group of being behind violent crimes.

The gang’s initial work abroad focused on exploiting Venezuelan migrants through loan sharking, human trafficking and the smuggling of contraband goods to and from Venezuela. But as migrants settled in their host countries, Tren de Aragua members joined or clashed with local criminal organizations engaged in drug trafficking, extortion of local businesses and murders for hire.

The gang became known in Colombia in 2022 after authorities found at least at least 19 bodies in the capital, some dismembered, and linked Guerrero associates to the killings. And in Chile last year, authorities blamed the gang for the killing of a Venezuelan officer who had fled there after taking part in a failed plot to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Earlier this month, the U.S. government announced it will extradite three Tren de Aragua members to Chile for their involvement in the case.

As the gang loses influence at home, it becomes a talking point in the U.S.

The Tren de Aragua has been on the radar of U.S. authorities for years. The administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden sanctioned the gang in July 2024, and offered $12 million in rewards for the arrest of three of its leaders, including Guerrero.

But it wasn’t until Trump campaigned for a second White House term that the Tren de Aragua became widely known in the U.S., as he and his allies turned the gang into the face of the alleged threat posed by immigrants living in the country illegally.

Trump has taken the extraordinary steps to designate the group a “foreign terrorist organization,” and earlier this month, an invading force, by invoking an 18th-century wartime law that allows the U.S. to deport noncitizens without any legal recourse, including rights to appear before an immigration or federal court judge.

Under those decisions, the Trump administration has sent Venezuelan immigrants to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. It has alleged that the transferred individuals were Tren de Aragua members, though it has not provided any evidence to back up that claim.

The parents of some of those immigrants categorically rejected the gang-affiliation allegation and said their children do not have criminal records in the U.S. or Venezuela.

A September 2024 slide presentation from the Texas Department of Public Safety showed Tren de Aragua activity in six states and claimed members had identifiable tattoos, including “stars on shoulder to indicate rank” and “trains and dice.”

Some recently deported Venezuelans have said U.S. authorities wrongly judged their tattoos to accuse them of gang activity. Rísquez did not doubt that members of the gang are currently in the U.S., but she said tattoos, which are commonly used by Central American gangs, are not required for those affiliated with the Tren de Aragua.

“The problem is which Tren de Aragua members are in the U.S., where they are, how many there are,” Rísquez said. “That is not clear, and with all the latest events, this is becoming less and less clear.”