Venezeulan Gang Tren de Aragua Is the Subject of Trump's Latest Deportations

The Trump administration's policy of mass deportation has been controversial to say the least, and it's also meant that some people have been deported to countries that they didn't originally hail from. The most recent wave of deportations was of Venezuelan migrants that the administration claimed were part of the gang Tren de Aragua.

It's worth noting, though, that these migrants were arrested on the suspicion that they were members of the gang, not because they had gone through any sort of criminal proceeding. These migrants were deported not back to Venezuela, but to El Salvador, where they are being imprisoned. Following the news of the deportations, though, many wanted to know what Tren de Aragua is and what the term means in English. Here's what we know.

Tren de Aragua was originally formed in a Venezuelan prison but has since become an international operation with arms spread across North and South America. The term means "the train of Aragua" in Spanish, and many suspect that it's related to a union of railroad workers that were building a train connection between Caracas and Aragua.

The gang was formed in Tocorón prison, and eventually came to take control of the prison, where it installed a zoo and swimming pool, among other features.

The operations of the gang were run out of the prison, where its leaders ordered everything from robberies to assassinations. As Venezuela moved deeper into an economic recession, the gang's operations went international, and they started recruiting Venezuelans who had left the country because of the economy. They eventually began operating in the United States, and the Biden administration labeled them an international criminal organization.

Although most people are opposed to criminal organizations like Tren de Aragua, the Trump administration's decision to deport alleged members of the gang is controversial for several reasons. The first is that these migrants have not yet been convicted of any crime, and are being deported without any sort of due process. The second is that they are being deported to El Salvador, instead of to Venezuela, which is where they are originally from.

It's possible, then, that legitimate asylum seekers or other Venezuelan migrants who aren't affiliated with the gang were also deported to El Salvador, and regardless, the American deportation system is supposed to allow for more due process than that.

Under Trump's immigration policies, though, this kind of deportation without due process is quickly becoming the norm.

The administration has explicit even before they took office about how radical they would be on immigration, and many Americans voted for those very policies. Even some people who have had close relatives detained or deported are sticking by Trump, confident that the choice they made was the right one, no matter what the personal cost for them might be. Time will tell whether they still feel that sacrifice is worth it months or years from now.