Donald Trump has announced that the U.S. carried out a “swift and deadly” strike to execute the leader of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua crime group.
Trump, the self-styled “President of Peace” who remains embroiled in war with Iran, said that a targeted U.S. strike killed Héctor “El Niño” Guerrero. He said the attack was “coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the strike hit a compound in Venezuela and was conducted in collaboration with local forces.
Trump, who turns 80 on Sunday, called the gang “one of the most bloodthirsty Terrorist Organizations on Planet Earth.” He included a video with his post, which he said showed the attack.
Hegseth specified that Guerrero “was confirmed killed during the strike.”
Tren de Aragua has been labeled a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. for involvement in drug smuggling, human trafficking, and money laundering. The Trump administration claimed innocent migrants were part of the group when they flew them to a notorious El Salvador mega prison last year.
Guerrero was charged in a New York federal court last year with racketeering conspiracy and other crimes, including supporting terrorists. The U.S. Navy has also killed some 200 people in boats off the coast of South America. The Navy has claimed they were drug traffickers, but has not released their identities.
The extrajudicial killings have failed to slow cocaine trafficking, according to experts and researchers quoted last month in The New York Times. The drug is just as “easy to get before the strikes began,” the newspaper reported.
According to another report, by The Intercept, one of the boat attacks by the U.S. military may have killed human trafficking victims because an unusually large number of people were crowded on one of the “drug” vessels.
Trump has been pressed on his trigger-happy tendencies after campaigning on a platform of no new wars.
On the Sunday, June 7, edition of Meet the Press, NBC interviewer Kristen Welker quizzed Trump about his pledge in light of his Special Forces’ seizure of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, launching a war against Iran, establishing a ship blockade off Cuba, and expressing a desire to make Canada a 51st state and take over Greenland. Trump claimed he had made no such promise—and stormed out of the interview.
