Tren de Aragua leader known as “The Unspeakable” charged in U.S. federal court
(CBS NEWS) – CBS reports Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment Thursday against Tren de Aragua leader Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores in the Southern District of New York. Up to a $5 million reward was offered for his arrest and/or conviction by the U.S. State Department.
Guerrero Flores, 42, known by the nickname “The Unspeakable,” or “The Big Eyebrow,” ran the multinational crime syndicate for more than a decade, growing the organization from a prison-based gang, prosecutors allege, into a terrorist organization responsible for drug trafficking and violence worldwide. He is charged with participating in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and cocaine importation conspiracy, among other charges.
“Guerrero Flores operated Tren de Aragua like a multinational crime syndicate—laundering money through cryptocurrency, trafficking drugs by the ton, selling weapons of war, and orchestrating acts of terror across borders,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Louis A. D’Ambrosio said in a statement. “He ran this empire from prison, shielded by corruption, and in collaboration with a narco-state cartel intent on flooding the United States with cocaine.”
Prosecutors allege Guerrero Flores operated from Tocorón Prison, where he directed members to commit a wide array of crimes, including murders, sex trafficking and money laundering. Alongside other top leaders, he collected “causa” or income fees from these crimes. HSI Special Agent in Charge Ricky J. Patel said a statement that the leader “grew TdA from a Venezuela-based prison gang to the vile, vicious organization it has become.”
Gang members and associates left Venezuela and spread throughout North, South, and Central America and Spain, prosecutors allege. In recent years, the gang has expanded, recruiting from among the more than 7.7 million Venezuelans who have fled economic turmoil in their homeland and migrated to other Latin American countries or the U.S.
In January, President Trump labeled Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organization, alongside other gangs and cartels and his administration has since ratcheted up pressure on Venezuela and its president, Nicolás Maduro. In recent months, the U.S. has amassed a large military presence in the Caribbean and carried out multiple strikes on boats it claims are carrying drugs from Venezuela.
Former Director for the FBI’s MS-13 National Gang Taskforce Robert Clifford sees the indictment as an evolution in how U.S. law enforcement “pursues a transnational criminal organization like TdA.” Clifford said that for years local law enforcement investigated MS-13 as a prison gang instead of viewing the members as part of a multi-national criminal organization.
In the years since, the law enforcement approach to investigating transnational criminal organizations has shifted and Thursday’s indictment is “a model of state, local and federal cooperation and that is the only way to defeat a well-entrenched organization like TdA,” Clifford said.
Some lawmakers have questioned whether the strikes are legal, and the first in that string of attacks, a deadly strike in early September, has prompted new concerns from Congress that a follow-on strike, despite there apparently being survivors in the water, which may constitute a war crime.
Mr. Trump called for a “total and complete blockade” Tuesday on all sanctioned oil tankers that enter or depart Venezuela. The Trump administration has also accused Maduro of sending drug shipments to the U.S.
