BOGOTA, Colombia — The U.S. military attack in Venezuela Friday that killed the leader of the Tren de Aragua gang reflects a strategic shift by U.S. President Donald Trump toward direct U.S. involvement in the war on drugs that began earlier this year, with a special focus this time on gaining access to Venezuela’s lucrative mining sector, analysts told The Associated Press.
Trump announced Friday the death of gang leader Hector Rusthenford Guerrero in an airstrike on his compound in rural Venezuela. He has long accused Guerrero’s organization, also known as TDA, of terrorizing communities across the United States, where it has been linked to extortion rackets, drug trafficking and illegal immigration.
The group was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department last year, with federal prosecutors accusing Guerrero of shipping drugs to the U.S. and organizing acts of terror across borders, including the murder of a Venezuelan dissident in Chile.
Venezuela’s government said in a statement Friday that it worked with the U.S. to kill the gang leader, also known as El Niño Guerrero, and described the airstrike as part of a “joint operation” to fight organized crime.
Venezuela’s government said the strike occurred in southeastern Bolivar state, an area where various criminal groups, including Colombian rebels, have been running illegal gold mines for more than a decade.
Venezuelan authorities ramped up operations against illegal mining this week, with helicopters shooting at wildcat miners to try to get them to clear the area’s open-pit mines.
Bram Ebus, a consultant for the International Crisis Group who researches organized crime in the Amazon basin, said that the recent operations, including the attack on Guerrero’s compound, could be part of a broader push to pave the way for foreign investment in Venezuela’s mining sector, which has long been hampered by the presence of criminal groups.
After the Trump administration arrested Venezuela’s then-President Nicolas Maduro in January during a pre-dawn raid, Venezuela’s interim government has passed laws that facilitate foreign investment in the oil and mining industries.
“We know that Venezuela’s minerals, including gold and critical minerals, are on the menu of Trump,” Ebus said. “This operation cannot be seen apart from Washington’s bigger push to access Venezuela’s natural resources.”
The U.S. has long supported law enforcement agencies in Latin American countries, including Colombia and Mexico, with training, weapons and logistical support to fight drug cartels and organized crime.
“Instead of aiding other militaries to carry out operations, they are now happy to carry out these attacks on their own,” said Adam Isacson, national security expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, a foreign policy think tank based in Washington, referring to the Trump administration.
The U.S. recently launched joint military operations with Ecuador’s government against drug traffickers near the Colombian border, while Trump has repeatedly pressed Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to allow the U.S. to conduct strikes against drug cartels in Mexico. The New York Times reported in May that Guatemala agreed to let the U.S. conduct strikes on its territory, which the Guatemalan president denied.
Trump-aligned Latin American governments could allow direct U.S. strikes against criminal groups in their territory in the following months — if courts in those countries allow it, Isacson said. But this approach poses risks.
“U.S. personnel could be killed or hurt,” he said. “There’s also the risk that the U.S. could get its intelligence wrong and kill innocent citizens of other countries on their soil, or that U.S. personnel could be working hand in glove with militaries that are carrying out human rights abuses in the same operation.”
Isacson explained that while killing Tren de Aragua’s kingpin serves as a victory for the Trump administration, there is no clarity on how the group’s finances or its links to corrupt officials have been affected.
“The kingpin strategy has been questioned for decades now,” Isacson said. “U.S. prisons are full of cartel leaders, from ‘El Chapo’ Guzman to the leaders of the Cali Cartel, and the amount of drugs produced has only increased or stayed the same.”
Tren de Aragua is a minor player in the global cocaine industry involved in drug shipments leaving Venezuela, so analysts don’t expect the killing to drastically change the flow of drugs to the U.S. TDA also takes a cut from illegal gold mining.
Isacson said that outside of Venezuela, the group engages in less profitable crimes, such as extortion and human trafficking.
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