Spanish police arrest suspected members of Venezuelan gang targeted by US

Raids across five Spanish cities result in arrests of 13 people suspected of being in Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang.

Spanish police have detained 13 suspected members of Venezuela’s notorious Tren de Aragua crime gang, which has increasingly come under scrutiny as the United States actively targets and kills what it says are its cadres smuggling drugs on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

The arrests were made across five Spanish cities, police said on Friday. The gang was designated as a global “terrorist organisation” by the US earlier this year.

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Police said the arrests took place in Barcelona, Madrid, Girona, A Coruna and Valencia in an investigation into the group’s alleged efforts to expand its operations into Spain, where Venezuelans make up one of the largest immigrant communities.

Tren de Aragua was originally formed in Venezuelan prisons and has grown into one of Latin America’s most violent transnational criminal networks. The gang is linked to drugs, human trafficking and extortion.

As part of the operation, Spanish police said they seized synthetic drugs and cocaine and also dismantled two laboratories used to make “tusi” – a mixture of cocaine, MDMA and ketamine.

The arrests followed an investigation Spanish police opened last year after the brother of “Nino Guerrero,” the leader of the Tren de Aragua gang, was arrested in Barcelona, police said.

The infamous gang has been in the crosshairs of US President Donald Trump’s domestic immigration crackdown, with more than 200 alleged members deported from the US in March.

Trump has also used Tren de Aragua and other drug cartels to justify continued strikes on boats in South American waters.

More than 60 people have now been killed in the strikes since early September, with the US targeting at least 18 vessels – 17 boats and a semi-submersible – in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.

The latest strike on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea killed three men, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday.

The Trump administration has yet to make public any evidence that its targets were smuggling narcotics or posed any threat to the US.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk has condemned the strikes as “extrajudicial killing”, while US lawmakers – mostly Democrats, but also several senior Republicans – have demanded clarity from the Trump administration on the legal basis for carrying out deadly attacks in international waters.

Turk called for the US to halt its attacks to “prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats”.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused Trump of seeking to destabilise his government through the attacks, as well as through a major military build-up of US naval forces in the region over recent months.

Maduro, whom Trump accuses of being involved in drug trafficking, has said Washington’s “war on drugs” was merely a pretext to topple him from power, as the US builds up its aggressive military presence near the country.