Brazil Arrests 25 in Crackdown on Venezuelan Tren de Aragua Gang

Brazilian police arrested 25 people on Tuesday in a major enforcement operation targeting the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua, which has increasingly partnered with Brazilian organized crime groups. The Justice Ministry said the operation resulted in 18 Venezuelan and 7 Brazilian arrests, conducted by national security forces and police in the state of Roraima. Officers executed 30 search warrants across five states: Amazonas and Roraima in the Amazon region, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais in the southeast, and Paraná in the south.

According to police investigator Wesley Costa and Justice Ministry officials, Tren de Aragua has been supplying high-caliber firearms to Brazilian criminal organizations including the Red Command and the First Command of the Capital (PCC). Roraima, a state in northern Brazil bordering Venezuela, has served as a principal corridor for this illicit weapons trade. The gang's expansion into Brazil has accelerated as economic collapse in Venezuela has driven more than 7.7 million people to flee the country since its founding over a decade ago in a prison in Venezuela's Aragua state.

The crackdown follows U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement on Friday that a military operation killed Hector Rusthenford Guerrero, the leader of Tren de Aragua. The Trump administration has aggressively targeted Latin American criminal organizations, labeling them as foreign terrorist entities and conducting operations including deadly strikes against suspected narcoterrorists in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The State Department designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization last year, accusing Guerrero of drug trafficking to the United States and orchestrating cross-border violence, including the murder of a Venezuelan dissident in Chile. In May, the State Department similarly designated the Red Command and PCC as foreign terrorist organizations.