The Chilean Investigative Police (PDI) announced this Thursday the fall of the arm Chilean member of the Tren de Aragua, one of the most dangerous criminal gangs in Venezuela, and reported the arrest of five people for migrant smuggling.
The PDI explained that the leader of the gang contacted known criminal organizations in Venezuela to recruit women, who were taken to Chile through unauthorized border crossings on the northern border and then transferred to the south to be exploited.
“We have captured the five leaders of this gang, one woman and four men,” explained the deputy director of Intelligence, Organized Crime and Immigration Security of the PDI, José Ortiz.
On Wednesday night, raids were carried out in five cities in the country (Iquique, Alto Hospicio, Santiago, Quillota and Quilpué) in an operation in which the authorities also seized a kilogram of cocaine, small caliber weapons and cash.
Ortiz indicated that four women were rescued from human trafficking, but that “many more victims are being related to the gang.”
“Many of them are deceived, but mostly they are forced,” he added.
The dismantling of the dangerous gang occurs when Chile has been experiencing an unparalleled migration and humanitarian crisis for a year on the northern border with Bolivia.
In the last year, more than 50,000 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, have entered the Colchane border crossing, which has led to the collapse of the small community, where xenophobic episodes have also been recorded.
In Chile there are 1.4 million migrants, equivalent to more than 7% of the population, and Venezuelans are the most numerous, followed by Peruvians, Haitians and Colombians.
