Emptied of Its Gang Inmates, Venezuela’s Maduro Plans to Turn Top Prisons into Socialist ‘Re-Education’ Centers

The socialist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, announced on Thursday that his authoritarian regime will turn two maximum security prisons into “re-education” centers for dissidents protesting the July 28 sham presidential election.

Maduro, during a mandatory evening broadcast of his “Productive Economy Council,” said that the Tocorón and Tocuyito prisons have been undergoing renovations that will conclude in the next 15 days and allow them to be used to house the more than 1,200 protesters detained in the aftermath of the fraudulent electoral event. Maduro warned that his repressive forces are on the hunt for “a thousand more.”

“You will not see forgiveness this time, I tell you, you will not see forgiveness. With my heart as a man of peace and a Christian, I say, ‘this time there will be no forgiveness,’” Maduro said.

“I am preparing two prisons that I must have ready, both prisons ready in 15 days, they are already being prepared: Tocorón and Tocuyito, maximum security prisons,” he continued.

Maduro emptied both prisons, once under the control of Venezuelan gangs, in late 2023. The Tocorón prison, located in the state of Aragua, is infamously known for serving as the main headquarters of the Tren de Aragua transnational criminal organization before it was “raided” by Venezuelan security forces in September 2023. The “raid” led to the mass escape of the gang’s members and the disappearance of some of its top brass, including its leader Héctor “the Child” Guerrero, whose whereabouts remain unknown at press time.

The Maduro regime emptied the Tocuyito prison in October. At the time, the prison, located in the state of Carabobo, was considered the most overcrowded in the country, housing over 2,000 inmates at the time of its closure.

Maduro said that his regime will “make a bet” to see if the prisons can “re-educate” the dissidents.

“That is why I have decided to create these two maximum security prisons for all the new generation gangs that are involved in the guarimba [protests] and the criminal attack. There is not going to be forgiveness or contemplation, within the framework of the Constitution and the laws,” Maduro said as officials from his authoritarian socialist regime clapped.

“We are making a bet to see if these maximum security prisons achieve re-education and they become productive farms, that they get to produce and work, as in those days, when they were taken out to build highways,” he continued.

Nationwide protests erupted in Venezuela this week against the Maduro regime following the July 28 sham presidential election, which Venezuela’s socialist-controlled electoral authorities claim Maduro “won.” Maduro is set to begin a six-year presidential term in January.

The Venezuelan opposition has contested the results and claims that it is in possession of more than 80 percent of the electoral documents tallying the votes at local ballot centers. The data the opposition has published online shows that its candidate, Edmundo González, was the actual winner of the sham election.

Several countries and international organizations have called the results into question, leading to Maduro ordering the immediate rupture of diplomatic ties with seven Latin American countries. The United States, Argentina, and Peru have announced that they recognize González as the winner of the election.

The protests have been met with brutal repression leading to roughly a dozen deaths and, according to the Maduro regime, the arrest of more than 1,200 protesters. Maduro has also publicly ordered that regime-operated smartphone applications such as the VenApp social media platform be updated with features that allow individuals to report protesters so that the socialist regime’s forces can “go against them.”

Maduro claimed on his Thursday broadcast that the protesters were allegedly “trained” in Texas, Colombia, Peru, and Chile and that they have allegedly “burned down” more than 300 police modules across the country.

“We have 1,200 captured and we are looking for 1,000 more and we are going to catch them all. They were trained in Texas, Colombia, Peru and Chile, the videos are coming out,” he said, without providing proof that substantiates his accusations.

The Tocorón prison, which will be soon turned into a dissident re-education camp, was “raided” and emptied by the Maduro regime’s security forces in September, who “liberated” the facility from Tren de Aragua’s control. It is largely believed that the ruling socialists negotiated with Héctor Guerrero, allowing him to freely escape from the prison alongside some of the gang’s top leaders before the “raid” on its main headquarters took place.

Since then, officials from the Maduro regime have repeatedly claimed that Tren de Aragua “does not exist” and that it is part of an international smear campaign against the Venezuelan socialists.

Despite the Maduro regime’s claims, Tren de Aragua has seen itself dramatically expand its presence in several U.S. cities and in Latin American countries following the “raid” of its main headquarters — most notably, in the city of New York.

In May, U.S. law enforcement authorities in Louisiana dismantled a sex trafficking network linked to the gang that had exploited U.S. asylum policies to smuggle their victims into U.S. territory before forcing them into prostitution.

A report published by the New York Post indicated that Tren de Aragua has given the “green light” to its members to open fire on police officers in Denver, Colorado, one of the cities that has seen a larger per capita arrival of migrants, most of which are from Venezuela according to the report.

The Maduro regime has been accused of enlisting the aid of Tren de Aragua to assassinate dissidents abroad — leading to the death of Ronald Ojeda, a former Venezuelan lieutenant who lived in exile in Chile.

Ojeda was abducted in late February by Tren de Aragua gang members impersonating Chilean police officers, taking the Venezuelan dissident from his home in Santiago. Ojeda’s body was found buried inside a suitcase under a concrete structure ten days later.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.