The U.S. military killed Héctor "Niño" Guerrero, the leader of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, in a strike that both Washington and Caracas described as a joint operation, marking a major escalation of President Trump's campaign against a group he has placed at the center of his immigration agenda.
In a post on Truth Social on Friday night, Trump said the U.S. Southern Command "delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike" to execute Guerrero, whom he called the infamous leader of one of the world's most bloodthirsty terrorist organizations. He said the operation was "coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well." The post included unclassified video, shot from overhead, that Trump said showed the attack — footage of a small, green-roofed building erupting in an explosion.
Venezuela's communications ministry confirmed the killing, saying Guerrero died during a "combined operation" between U.S. forces and Venezuelan security services targeting organized crime in the country's Bolívar state. The ministry said the operation involved intelligence sharing and specialized technical support, and that clashes broke out with members of the criminal group during the raid.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the strike was carried out earlier in the week on a Tren de Aragua compound in Venezuela and that Guerrero was confirmed killed, describing the operation as a sign of a shared U.S. and Venezuelan commitment to deny narco-terrorists any safe haven in the hemisphere. The Southern Command chief, Gen. Francis Donovan, said the target was a Tren de Aragua compound.
The cooperation with Caracas reflects a sharp realignment over the past year. U.S. forces removed President Nicolás Maduro from power in a January raid, flying him to New York, where prosecutors accused him of conspiring to traffic cocaine into the United States in part through Tren de Aragua; Maduro has pleaded not guilty. Venezuela has since been led by his former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, and the Trump administration has moved to work with her government, lifting sanctions on her and pursuing cooperation on oil.
Guerrero, whose full name is Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, was charged in a New York federal court in December with racketeering conspiracy and lending support to terrorists, among other crimes spanning more than a decade. The State Department had offered up to $5 million for information leading to his arrest or conviction. He had been sentenced to 17 years in a Venezuelan prison in 2018 on charges including murder and drug trafficking before escaping in 2023. The United States designated Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organization in February 2025.
The gang, founded inside the Tocorón prison in Venezuela's Aragua state, became a central target of Trump's immigration crackdown after he returned to office in 2025, figuring prominently in his deportation push — including the transfer of migrants the administration alleged were members to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, a move that drew scrutiny after officials offered scant evidence of gang ties for many of the deportees.
This is a developing story.
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