The United States killed the alleged leader of the criminal organization Tren de Aragua, Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, known as “El Niño Guerrero,” President Donald Trump said Friday.
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“At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Niño Guerrero, the infamous leader of Tren De Aragua, one of the most bloodthirsty Terrorist Organizations on Planet Earth,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“This action was coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well. As a result, Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else,” Trump added.
Who is ‘Niño Guerrero’?
Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, known as “Niño Guerrero,” was a dangerous Venezuelan criminal considered the top leader of the transnational gang Tren de Aragua, one of the largest criminal organizations in Latin America.
Guerrero was born in 1983 in Maracay, in the state of Aragua, and his first criminal records date back to 2000, when he was linked to petty crimes and robberies that landed him in Tocorón prison.
By 2005, Guerrero attacked a police station, killing Corporal Oswaldo González, and five years later, he was captured while trafficking stolen goods and drugs in Maracay, but he escaped from prison in 2012 and was recaptured a year later.
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In February 2018, the Venezuelan was sentenced to 17 years in prison for homicide, drug trafficking, identity theft and hiding military-grade weapons, among other charges. But it is believed that from prison, he directed the operations of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang, driving its expansion and taking advantage of the Venezuelan migrant exodus fueled by the country’s economic crisis.
He escaped from the Aragua Penitentiary Center in 2023 when authorities tried to retake control of the prison where — according to Venezuelan media — there was a swimming pool, nightclub, bars, restaurants, a games area, pig and chicken farms, a baseball stadium and a zoo, built during Guerrero’s years in charge.
Guerrero was charged by the Trump administration in December 2025 in a federal court in Manhattan with racketeering conspiracy, terrorism, drug importation and firearms-related offenses. The Department of Justice was offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to his arrest.
The alleged criminal ringleader is listed as a defendant in the same case facing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a federal court in New York, along with his wife, Cilia Flores, Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s interior minister, and one of Maduro’s sons.
This story was translated from Spanish with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool. An NBC6 editor reviewed the translation.
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