Authorities have indicted 27 members of Anti-Tren, a “splinter faction” of Tren de Aragua, on 38 counts, including murder in aid of racketeering in connection with an April 15, 2024, double murder in New York, and sex trafficking, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a Feb. 13 statement.
The defendants “planned and carried out a series of horrific crimes, including gunpoint robberies, murders, and the exploitation of vulnerable young women through sex trafficking,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York.
The double murder from April 2024 involved two defendants who allegedly shot and killed two individuals in the New York borough of the Bronx, according to the DOJ. In another charge, an Anti-Tren member is accused of sex trafficking a young woman from Venezuela in or around 2024, who was threatened with a gun and kidnapped. The victim’s immigration documents were seized by the perpetrator, the DOJ said.
Anti-Tren, almost exclusively made up of former associates and members of Tren de Aragua, operated throughout New York City, New Jersey, and other parts of the United States, including Washington and Illinois.
The faction allegedly engaged in acts of murder, assault, threats of violence, and other acts of violence to preserve and protect its power, the DOJ said. The group is accused of taking part in human smuggling, sex trafficking, armed robberies, and trafficking of controlled substances. They kept victims and potential victims in fear through threats and violence, according to prosecutors.
Young women were trafficked into the United States and forced into sex work to pay off their debts, prosecutors said. Anti-Tren ensured compliance among these women by assaulting them, threatening to kill their families, and kidnapping the women who attempted to run away, the DOJ said.
Twenty-one of the 27 defendants were previously charged in another 12-count indictment. Five of the six new defendants are in federal custody.
The case is part of Operation Take Back America, first announced in March 2025 by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche via a memo, according to which the initiative targets illegal immigration, human and drug trafficking, and criminal groups, including cartels mentioned in a Jan. 20, 2025, executive order from President Donald Trump.
Trump’s order created a process by which international cartels and other groups could be designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
Tren de Aragua’s “campaigns of violence and terror in the United States and internationally are extraordinarily violent, vicious, and similarly threaten the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere,” Trump wrote in the order.
Operation Take Back America seeks to implement Trump’s objectives via a single, sweeping initiative using resources from the DOJ’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces and Project Safe Neighborhoods.
Cracking Down on Tren de Aragua
The DOJ has launched a nationwide crackdown on Tren de Aragua. On Dec. 18, the department announced the unsealing of multiple indictments against more than 70 individuals linked to Tren de Aragua, associated with crimes such as murder, kidnapping, trafficking of controlled substances, and extortion.
According to the DOJ, the department has indicted more than 260 Tren de Aragua members since Jan. 20, 2025, when the Trump administration came to power.
“Immediately upon taking office, I directed the Department of Justice to fiercely pursue the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
“This latest multi-state series of charges underscores the Trump Administration’s unwavering commitment to restoring public safety, dismantling violent trafficking networks, and ridding our country of Tren de Aragua terrorists.”
Tren de Aragua is linked to former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who was captured by U.S. forces last month.
On Jan. 5, Maduro was charged with narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, with one of the co-accused being Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, a founder of Tren de Aragua.
“Tren de Aragua was highly dependent on Maduro’s existence for its proliferation. That’s not debatable at this stage,” Pedro Rojas Arroyo, a Venezuelan-born entrepreneur and founder of Vivy Tech, told The Epoch Times.
“That being said, with the current power order in Venezuela … and the actual field of play is not changing, corruption still there, I think Tren de Aragua has a good chance of surviving.”
Chris Summers contributed to this report.
AIr mail them back home. From 20,000 feet up in the air!
Are these the ‘immigrants’ the anti-ICE protesters are trying to protect ?!?
In a nutshell, YES IT IS.