Colombia Captures Suspected Tren de Aragua Leader as U.S. Security Cooperation Deepens

AP

U.S. and Colombia flags.

Colombian security forces have captured a suspected senior leader of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, the U.S. Southern Command said on Friday, describing the arrest as a result of strengthened military cooperation between the two traditionally close allies.

Luis Saúl Pérez Nieto was captured on Thursday. Colombian authorities said he was responsible for coordinating the gang’s weapons and drug-trafficking networks across the region.

The arrest is an early indication of how quickly Colombia and the United States have intensified joint efforts to combat organised crime under Colombia’s new conservative president, Abelardo de la Espriella.

De la Espriella, a supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, took office earlier this month after pledging to dismantle Colombia’s powerful drug-trafficking networks with Washington’s support.

His administration has designated Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, as the centre of Trump’s new regional anti-cartel alliance and has welcomed joint operations involving the U.S. military on Colombian soil, marking a significant departure from the approach of his progressive predecessor.

“Narco-terrorists have no safe haven in our hemisphere,” the U.S. Southern Command said in its statement on Friday announcing the capture of Pérez Nieto. “We stand united with our partners to dismantle these criminal networks and protect our homeland.”

Pérez Nieto, known by the aliases “Páez” and “Nairobi,” was captured in an operation that also involved the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Colombian police said, without elaborating.

Colombian police accused Pérez Nieto of leading the expansion of Tren de Aragua in Peru while coordinating drug and arms trafficking across the continent, helping transform what began as a prison gang operating from Venezuela’s Tocorón penitentiary into a transnational criminal syndicate.

In 2023, Pérez Nieto escaped from that prison along with his close confidant, the gang’s leader, Héctor “Niño Guerrero” Guerrero Flores, Colombian police added. Guerrero Flores was killed in a U.S. military strike in a rare collaboration with Venezuela earlier this year.

The Trump administration designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organisation last year, as part of its broader policy of treating Latin American drug cartels and criminal groups as national security threats rather than traditional organised crime.

Earlier this week, US Southern Command chief Gen. Francis Donovan met Colombia’s defence minister and senior military officials in the port city of Tumaco before travelling to Ecuador for regional security talks. The discussions focused on the volatile border between Colombia and Ecuador, an area affected by drug trafficking, illegal mining and human trafficking.

During his visit, Donovan said that U.S., Ecuadorian and Colombian officials had agreed on a strategy to “hunt cartel leadership, shatter their logistics and permanently deny them safe haven.”

“The border between Colombia and Ecuador is a geographic chokepoint that violent cartels have long exploited,” he said. “Today, we are changing the game.”




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