President Donald Trump has confirmed that the United States killed Niño Guerrero, the leader of the Venezuela-based gang Tren de Aragua, in an airstrike, describing him as the head of “one of the most bloodthirsty terrorist organisations on planet Earth.”
U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the strike was carried out earlier in the week on a Tren de Aragua compound in Venezuela, in full collaboration with Venezuelan security forces.
Venezuela’s communications ministry confirmed in a statement that Guerrero Flores was killed in a “combined operation” between U.S. forces and Venezuelan security services, targeting organised crime in the country’s Bolívar state.
Trump’s post on Truth Social included a video showing a projectile striking a building, which then erupted in flames.
“Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else and, under my leadership, we will find these vicious murderers and drug lords anytime, anyplace, and send them to the depths of hell where they belong,” Trump wrote.
Hegseth added that the operation “underscores the shared U.S. and Venezuelan commitment to take the fight to narco-terrorists and deny them any safe haven in our hemisphere.”
Tren de Aragua became a major target of Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda after he returned to office in 2025, with the State Department designating the gang as a foreign terrorist organisation in February 2025.
The strike comes months after U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s former president, Nicolás Maduro, in a large-scale operation in January, with Maduro currently in U.S. custody facing charges including narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine.
