Tren de Aragua, the criminal gang financed by Maduro's regime

The notorious criminal network known as Tren de Aragua has made the front pages of the media in recent weeks in the United States. Unfortunately, it has become the hallmark of Venezuelan migration across borders. Trump's campaign on illegal immigration revolved, in large part, around the Tren de Aragua; but what is this organization really all about?

Venezuelan security expert and former lieutenant colonel, José Gustavo Arocha, explains in several interviews that the Tren de Aragua was created by the Chavista regime, then nurtured and finally exported.

"The real boss of the Tren de Aragua is in Caracas. It is the Maduro regime. They created the Train and they use it as a tool for blackmail," Arocha told Fox News.

According to Arocha, the Tren de Aragua "'is a state-sponsored organization of the Maduro regime, formed and trained by the Venezuelan government to sow chaos, violence and discord throughout the Western Hemisphere,'" Fox News reads.

This is key. You have to understand where the Tren de Aragua comes from. This criminal gang, like many others, was born as a political shock group, organized by the then Government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, to serve as a para-state force.

The regime armed them, allowed them control of the prisons and then they got out of hand. TheTren de Aragua, from the central region of Aragua state, where Chavista Tareck El Aissami governed, went from a small para-state political organization to a serious criminal organization, protected by the State.

With the waves of migration from Venezuela, as a result of the severe humanitarian crisis, the members of the Tren de Aragua left the country and dispersed throughout the continent. Today they are a heavily armed organization, coordinated and linked to the Maduro regime.

Nicolas Maduro has tried to distance himself from the Tren de Aragua. In fact, his foreign minister, Yvan Gil, said in a press conference together with Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo that "the Tren de Aragua is a fiction created by the international media to try to create a non-existent label."

However, since Trump began to mention the Tren de Aragua as a priority problem in the United States and, above all, after he won the Presidency, Maduro began to acknowledge the existence of the criminal gang, but, not only without acknowledging his responsibility in its creation and expansion, but shifting the responsibility to his adversaries.

In December last year, Maduro accused Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López and another group of opposition leaders of being behind the Tren de Aragua without any proof. On several occasions Maduro made himself available to the U.S. government to assist in the fight against the criminal gang.

It is clear that Maduro wants to avoid association with the Tren de Aragua and, moreover, he hopes that the existence of the criminal gang in the United States will give him resources to approach the future administration of Donald Trump. However, considering Maduro as an ally in the fight against the Tren de Aragua would be like seeing Ali Khamenei as an ally in the fight against Hamas or Hezbollah.