Spanish police arrest 13 suspected members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang

Spanish police arrested 13 suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua across five cities, seized a stash of illegal drugs and dismantled two drug laboratories, authorities said Friday.

The arrests followed an investigation Spanish police opened last year after the brother of “Niño Guerrero,” the leader of the Tren de Aragua gang, was arrested in Barcelona under an international arrest warrant issued by Venezuelan authorities, police said. This was Spain’s first operation meant to dismantle a suspect cell of the Venezuelan prison gang, police said in a statement. 

The two laboratories that police dismantled had been used to make tusi, a mixture of cocaine, MDMA and ketamine, police said. Video shows authorities finding packages and a pink substance inside a residence.  The arrests took place in the Spanish cities of Barcelona, Madrid, Girona, A Coruña and Valencia.

The Tren de Aragua gang originated in Venezuela more than a decade ago at an infamously lawless prison with hardened criminals in the central state of Aragua. The gang has expanded in recent years as more than 7.7 million Venezuelans fled economic turmoil and migrated to other Latin American countries, the U.S. and Spain.

The gang has become a key reference in the Trump administration’s crackdown against alleged drug smugglers. The administration announced yet another deadly U.S. strike on a boat officials said was trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean Sea on Friday. At least 18 such strikes have killed at least 70 people. 

The United States began carrying out the strikes — which experts say amount to extrajudicial killings even if they target known traffickers — in early September, taking aim at vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The Trump administration has said in a notice to Congress that the United States is engaged in “armed conflict” with Latin American drug cartels, describing them as terrorist groups as part of its justification for the strikes.

President Trump had previously designated Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization, along with MS-13 and other gangs and cartels. Mr. Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in March to treat suspected gang members like wartime enemies of the U.S. government, an action that has only been taken three other times in United States history.