Tren de Aragua, a dangerous but until recently relatively unknown Venezuelan gang, was catapulted into the spotlight this campaign season.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump called to “hunt down, arrest and deport every last [one].”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott pledged to “defend Texas from the growing threat of the gang” and declared it a foreign terrorist organization at a Houston press conference last month.
Yet, despite the rhetoric from politicians, law enforcement and gang experts in Houston say local numbers of known gang members remain low. And with weeks to go in a tight presidential race, immigration and gang experts worry that the heightened focus on Tren de Aragua is election fear-mongering meant to dehumanize the growing Venezuelan population in Texas.
Here’s what we know about the gang and what it means for Houston residents.
What is Tren de Aragua?
Tren de Aragua is a criminal organization born out of the Venezuelan prison of Tocorón, in the central state of Aragua. Members began running extortion and protection rackets within the Venezuelan prison system. The criminal organization then expanded outside the prison system with small cells popping up in new locations, according to Mitchel Roth, professor at Sam Houston State University and expert on prison gangs.
Tren de Aragua’s ascension came alongside Venezuela’s economic and political collapse, which has led to nearly 8 million Venezuelans fleeing the country. As hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans made their way to the U.S., crossing the lawless jungle between Panama and Colombia known as the Darien Gap, Tren de Aragua began trafficking migrants along this route. Venezuelans are now the fastest growing immigrant population in Houston, with more than 54,000 residents, according to Migration Policy Institute.
Tren de Aragua’s membership is estimated at between 5,000 and 7,000 members, mostly in Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru, according to Roth. Its presence in the U.S. is much newer and smaller, he said.
Roth questioned the size of the gang in Houston and the decision to define Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization, which means it must have an ideology. “This group is just financially oriented,” Roth said. “They have no ideology except making money.”
How big is the problem in Houston?
Houston has not experienced as much Tren de Aragua activity as other major cities in Texas, according to Richard Chacon Jr., a gang unit investigator at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
Law enforcement has eyed incidents around the country that indicate quick growth of the gang, according to Chacon Jr.
“That’s what has the law enforcement side a little [alarmed],” he said.
In Harris County Jail, which currently holds over 9,500 people, Chacon Jr. said there are more than 12 members behind bars.
There are roughly 400 known gangs and 13 cartels operating in the county as of two years ago, according to Chacon Jr. They include a variety of groups such as Southwest Cholos, MS-13, and 52 Hoover Crips, according to the DA’s office.
Roughly 71,000 gang members and over 10,000 gangs were documented in the state of Texas as of 2022, according to a state audit that same year.
There have been few known crimes linked to suspected Tren de Aragua gang members in Harris County.
In September, a search warrant written by the Houston Police Department detailed how investigators were exploring a potential link between the suspects in the murder of Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old murdered in June, and Tren de Aragua membership, according to reporting by The Texan.
A suspected member was also arrested in Houston in October for misdemeanor theft in Brazoria County. Charges have not yet been filed on the alleged suspect, according to the Brazoria County District Attorney’s Office. The Texas Department of Public Safety said the man was taken into custody “without incident” and that they observed tattoos with a “five-point crown and a clock and roses,” which they said are indicative of Tren de Aragua membership.
Chacon Jr. would not confirm any specific cases linked to Tren de Aragua handled by the county DA’s office.
The Houston Police Department declined to comment on the gang’s presence, and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to requests for comments. The Katy Police Department said they have had “no confirmed members that have come through our doors.”
So how much should Houstonians be concerned? Dr. Laura Iesue, a professor at Sam Houston State University and expert in criminology and migration, said there is “next to no threat” for “middle-class, suburban” residents.
Experts like Iesue, as well as Abbott and DPS Director Steve McCraw, said that Venezuelan immigrants tend to be the gang’s victims.
“If anybody’s going to be impacted by these gangs, it’s more likely to be immigrant communities, especially ones that are living in poor neighborhoods where there’s already established gang presence,” Iesue said.
What is law enforcement doing now?
Abbott’s declaration of Tren de Aragua as a Tier 1 gang last month opened up “more resources or more tools to address the problem,” said Iesue, such as funding, cooperation, and sharing intelligence. Abbott pledged to use higher criminal penalties, civil asset forfeiture, and court cases to stop the alleged spread of the gang. He announced hundreds of DPS personnel will contribute to a strike team that collaborates with other law enforcement.
When investigating transnational organizations, the Federal Bureau of Investigations can also share sources, undercover officers and surveillance, and collaborate with local officers deputized to investigate interstate crimes, according to Houston FBI spokesperson Connor Hagan.
Despite the fact that they have not encountered any members, Katy Police Department is “reaching out to our counterparts to get more intel on the gang, how they operate,” said Detective Josh Domer of Katy Police Department. He cited collaboration with the FBI in Harris County, Houston Police Department, and the Texas Department of Public Safety. “And that’s been helpful,” he said.
In order to be labeled as a gang member in Texas, you do not have to have committed a crime.
State criteria requires a person to have either admitted membership to the organization in a legal proceeding or have been convicted of a crime where an element of the crime included gang membership. Otherwise, law enforcement must prove at least two of a list of criteria in order to enter a person into the tens of thousands of names present in the state gang database, accessible only to law enforcement. This includes self-admission, identification by an informant, visiting a gang member in jail or prison, hanging out with gang members, or using gang hand signs, clothing, or tattoos.
In Texas, as in other states, the reliability of the gang database was found to be flawed in the most recent state audit in 2022. The audit found that thousands of records over ten years old had not been reviewed and validated within the last five years as required by law, and that when law enforcement agencies uploaded records in batches, there weren’t sufficient controls on the documentation of those records.
Getting labeled as a gang member can have serious immigration consequences, even though gang membership is notoriously complex to identify. Anyone over age 16 who participated in a gang or transnational criminal group is a priority for ICE enforcement and deportation, along with people convicted of certain aggravated felonies or gang-related offenses.
“We’re using this word gang often about people who are fleeing gang violence, political violence, persecution. We’re giving them a label, and that’s not based on criminality,” said Babe Howell, professor of law at the City University of New York and expert on the pitfalls of gang policing. “And then we’re treating them as criminals.”
For law enforcement officers looking to stymie the growth of Tren de Aragua in Houston, particularly in the immigrant communities vulnerable to the gang, Iesue worried that only using heavy-handed policing tactics might hurt rather than help. What’s important, she said, is to gain trust through community policing.
“There’s already some mistrust [in] the immigrant community with police anyway, and I worry this is just going to exacerbate it,” she said.
‘The Boogeyman’
Linking criminal activity to specific immigrant groups is a common political tactic to justify harsher immigration enforcement in the run-up to elections, experts said. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens, according to a study by The National Bureau of Economic Research tracking incarceration rates over 150 years.
“It all seems so exotic and scary, but they really don’t know anything about [Tren de Aragua],” said Roth, the gang expert from Sam Houston State University. “It’s just the latest in the series of boogeymen in American immigration history, which is as old as our country.”
Abbott and McCraw’s rhetoric at the recent Houston press conference echoed past attempts to demonize Salvadoran gang MS-13 and compared both gangs to animals and insects.
This dehumanizing language is often used by politicians to “other” criminal groups and justify crackdowns. In an election season where Trump has promised the mass deportation of immigrants, it sets the stage for the implementation of these policies, experts say.
“They just found a new ‘monster’ to blame, and to stoke fear in the population, especially during an election time,” said Jose Miguel Cruz, director of research at Florida International University’s Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center and an expert on gangs and public opinion.
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