A US intelligence team revealed that the Venezuelan dictatorship trained and sent 1,800 members of Tren de Aragua into the country

The Miami Herald revealed in a report that a team made up of intelligence experts and former members of different U.S. intelligence agencies identified, thanks to numerous sources within Venezuela, that 1,800 members of  the Tren de Aragua terrorist group have been not only trained and financed by the socialist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, but also sent to the United States by it. According to the newspaper, the sources within the South American country are members of the Venezuelan intelligence and police agencies. Likewise, the Herald detailed that the team presented all the information on the links between the criminal group and the Venezuelan regime to President Donald Trump before his inauguration on January 20.

According to the newspaper, the former CIA chief in Afghanistan during the elimination of Osama Bin Laden, Gary Berntsen, who is one of the team's senior members, showed official documents from Venezuelan police agencies identifying the 1,800 members of the Tren de Aragua sent to the U.S., detailing that 300 of these had paramilitary training. Berntsen highlighted that "They have given them all like a four- to six-week course. They put these 300 guys through that course and that they were deploying them into the United States to 20 locations," noting that their training was mainly focused on the use of cryptocurrencies, weapons and sabotage.

"Asymmetric warfare" against the United States

In its report, the Herald also mentioned that another member of the team, who chose to remain anonymous for security reasons, revealed that it was Maduro's intelligence services that came up with the plan to send Tren de Aragua to the United States and executed the plan by providing financing and logistics, adding that the main reason behind this operation was to destabilize the country's security agencies through what he called an "asymmetric war" by the socialist dictatorship.

Berntsen added that, according to all the information he has been able to gather on the Tren de Aragua's links with the Maduro regime, the main plan in Caracas was to infiltrate up to 5,000 members of the terrorist group in different cities and localities in 20 U.S. states. "This is the equivalent of an oversized combat brigade dispersed through 20 different locations, but with thousands of people that would be able to communicate, move drugs, and do whatever they needed, and be able on hand to put pressure on the U.S. with violence in cities, and build out a massive criminal infrastructure in America," Berntsen stressed.

The Herald also explained that, according to information provided by the team, some members of the Tren de Aragua were assigned by the Venezuelan dictatorship to establish several drug distribution networks in some of the most important cities of the country to occupy the space left by the Salvadoran criminal group Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), after the onslaught of U.S. security agencies weakened it.

Those sent to El Salvador

When asked about the deportations carried out by the Trump administration of alleged members of Tren de Aragua to El Salvador after the president invoked the Alien Enemies Act, some members of the team who chose not to reveal their identity explained that while it is impossible to confirm that all those who have been sent to the Central American country are criminals, the vast majority are. On this point, these team members commented to the newspaper that, even though many of these do not have criminal records in the United States, they have them both in Venezuela and the other countries where they lived before entering U.S. soil.

"Most of those that were sent to El Salvador had criminal records, not necessarily from crimes committed in the United States but from the others countries from which they came. Among these was a group of gang members that had killed a lot of people in Peru before they were sent into the United States," the person explained.

Tren de Aragua and Cartel de los Soles

As reported by the Herald, the team also revealed that the faction within the regime that directly controls the Tren de Aragua is the Cártel de los Soles, the notorious narco-terrorist organization led by members of the Venezuelan military high command and powerful politicians within the regime, responsible for shipping more than 300 tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe each year.

The team mentioned that one of the main figures behind the development of the terrorist group was ex-oil minister Tarek El Aissami, who was described as a high-ranking figure within the Cartel de los Soles before the regime decided to arrest him over a corruption scandal.