The feared Tren de Aragua gang, which was born in a Venezuelan prison, has transformed the type of crime in Chile, where it accumulates a long list of crimes. The one that most evidences the power of the organization; the kidnapping and murder of a Venezuelan opponent who was found buried under a layer of cement. Not only because of the cruelty, but because of the diplomatic crisis it opened between countries. Cells of the Mara Salvatrucha, with a historic presence in El Salvador, have sought new alliances in Mexico, causing a serious threat on the southern border. The expansive strategy of the Primeiro Comando da Capital of Brazil is turning the group into the most dangerous in all of South America, like a parallel power within the States. These criminal actors have demonstrated their evident ability to cross borders and corrupt institutions in Latin America. But they aspire to more. To make the definitive leap to Europe, taking advantage of migration routes. And they see in Spain, which perceives the phenomenon with maximum alert, an opportunity to start, although the National Police intends to make it difficult for them.
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A pioneering group of the General Information Commissariat (CGI), working hand in hand with the Judicial Police and Immigration, is focused on the strategy against new destabilizing threats to internal security: a hybrid challenge that transcends conventional crime with the aim of attacking the lifeline of democratic institutions. In the crosshairs are the aforementioned transnational criminal organizations. All of them, as experience in Latin America has shown, have the capacity to generate zones of impunity and institutional destabilization through penetration into the political, economic, and social fabric. Sources from the CGI explain that these mega criminal gangs, like the rest, seek to enrich themselves, but they alter the order of factors to achieve it: “A typical mafia seeks to make as much money as possible, but always with the fear of being dismantled. However, if before enriching themselves they manage to insert themselves into institutions, through corruption or extortion, police operations can mysteriously start to fail. And if they don’t repress you…”
The growth of the Latin population in Spain allows mafias to hide better
The transnational organizations on the CGI’s radar operate as criminal franchises. Not like a traditional mafia, where all criminals are under the command of a single capo. In these cases, the local structures that seek to establish themselves in new countries operate autonomously, although they report their successes to the brand, from which they have adopted the ways of acting. Currently, Tren de Aragua is the highest exponent of this criminal franchise in Spain, where it tries to take root. And that, precisely, is what the CGI group tries to prevent: not only to pursue the crimes they are committing—drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, or document forgery, among others—but to generate intelligence to anticipate their establishment in the country. Here, the success of operations is not measured by the kilos of drugs seized, the number of detainees, or the money found hidden, but by prevention. And the threads to pull.
Operation Intercity is proof of this. It started after the younger brother of Héctor Rustherford Guerrero Flores, alias Niño Guerrero, the group’s top leader who was killed last June by the United States, was detected in Barcelona. The CGI followed all his steps to obtain information about the places he frequented or the people he associated with until an international alert precipitated his arrest in March 2024. The data collected served to connect the dots until confirming that Niño Guerrero‘s relative intended to expand the criminal structure in Spain and allowed the first dismantling in the country of a Tren de Aragua cell with 13 arrests. Then, in November of last year, the Police warned that investigations continued to detect more members of the network. A few months later, the next one fell: a fugitive who was dedicated to hacking ATMs to finance the organization. After another round of five arrests at the end of July, for illegal possession of weapons, violent robberies, injuries, or illegal detention, the number rises to around thirty.
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A group seeks to prevent the establishment of dangerous groups like Tren de Aragua
If there is concern about the establishment of Tren de Aragua in Spain, it is because there is a perfect breeding ground for its germination, unlike other European countries: the Venezuelan diaspora, “which facilitates its concealment,” according to sources consulted. Since 2018, the Government has granted 240,000 residence permits by expedited humanitarian authorizations to Venezuelans. This community has grown in eight years from 255,000 people to almost 700,000 currently. They are potential victims, but also possible executioners. On one hand, they fish within their community for illicit trafficking of people or sexual exploitation, but on the other hand, they recruit new followers, increasingly younger. The CGI acknowledges that Tren de Aragua is not yet in a consolidated establishment phase as in other Latin American countries, but they warn of the recruitment capacity detected and the displacement from Barcelona and Madrid, the main relevant centers due to their Venezuelan community, to more points across the geography. And not necessarily to control other territories where other gangs are established, but to offer their services of hitmen, extortion, or kidnappings.
It is the same pattern that transnational gangs have followed in other countries until achieving large doses of delegitimization of the State by exposing its inability to combat crime. Hence, collaboration between countries, to avoid reaching that point, is key. The Police participate in the International Group against Transnational Organized Crime (GICCOT), sponsored by the U.S. FBI agency. A forum that also played a role in dismantling a substructure of the Mara Salvatrucha MS13 that intended to establish itself on Spanish soil. Following instructions from the American continent, members of a solid and hierarchical structure, based in Barcelona and Madrid, used drug trafficking to obtain firearms with which to seek a place among gangs. The operation ended in April 2025 with 27 detainees, some of them involved in homicides.
