Head of Tren de Aragua gang killed in US strike in Venezuela, Trump says – Task & Purpose
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U.S. Southern Command carried out a “swift and lethal kinetic strike” to kill Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, the head of the Tren de Aragua street gang, President Donald Trump announced Friday evening.
The strike is the apparent first announced military operation inside Venezuela since Operation Absolute Resolve, the Jan. 3 attack on Caracas that saw U.S. forces capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Writing on his Truth Social app, Trump did not specify where specifically the attack took place or how Guerrero Flores was found, but said that “[t]his action was coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well.”
Video shared by Trump in the same post showed aerial footage of a building being blown up in an airstrike.
It is unclear how many people were killed in the attack, or what American units participated in the strike. SOUTHCOM initially directed all questions on the strike to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Friday evening that the strike happened earlier this week. SOUTHCOM leader Gen. Francis Donovan added that it was a joint operation “against a Tren de Aragua compound.”
Guerrero Flores, also known as Niño Guerrero, is the head of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang started inside a prison. The gang is Venezuela’s “most powerful homegrown criminal group,” according to InSight Crime, and has expanded outside of the country’s borders. Venezuelan forces attacked its prison stronghold in 2023, although leadership escaped. Trump has repeatedly focused on Tren de Aragua as a criminal power and in early 2025 the administration labeled the group a designated terrorist organization. In December, the Justice Department indicted Guerrero Flores on charges of supporting terrorist actions
In January U.S. forces launched several airstrikes inside Venezuela including the capital of Caracas while special operations forces captured Maduro. Since then, the United States has maintained its military presence in the Caribbean and continued airstrikes against small boats the government accuses of transporting drugs. Last month the death toll in those strikes surpassed 200.
This is the first strike inside Venezuela going after drug organizations, although not the first one in South America this year. In March, American forces working with Ecuador launched air strikes against Comandos de la Frontera, a drug trafficking group, near the Colombia border.
Update: 6/13/2026; This article has been updated after SOUTHCOM released a statement on the strike.
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Nicholas Slayton is a Contributing Editor for Task & Purpose. In addition to covering breaking news, he writes about history, shipwrecks, and the military’s hunt for unidentified anomalous phenomenon (formerly known as UFOs).
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