Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

Suddenly, out of nowhere, the United States government agencies began to repeat the name “Tren de Aragu” as if it were the new al-Qaeda. In January 2025, the White House designated Tren de Aragua as a “foreign terrorist organisation”, and in March, the administration of US President Donald Trump evoked the Alien Enemies Act (1789) to warn against the ‘invasion of the United States by Tren de Aragua’. The US State Department, in February 2025, had declared that Tren de Aragua was an international drug cartel on par with such already recognised cartels as the Mexican Las Zetas (now Cártel del Noreste), Sinaloa, and Jalisco cartels as well as the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) that was formed in Los Angeles (US) and has now taken root in El Salvador thanks to a decade-long US deportation policy. Unlike Tren de Aragua, these other cartels are well-known, and their work has been frequently documented by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

The most recent DEA report for 2025 confirms several facts about the drug cartels that traffic vast amounts of drugs (from cocaine to fentanyl) into the United States. It certainly has long sections on the Mexican and Salvadorian gangs, which have deep roots in the drug trade. Since 2019, the DEA and other agencies have tracked the movement of lethal drugs from being carted via the Caribbean and the Central American landline to the Pacific Ocean route. Drugs leave the ports of Guayaquil (Peru), Esmeraldas (Ecuador), and Buenaventura (Colombia) for the ports such as Puerto Escondido (Mexico) before they are carted........

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