Bernardo Raul Castro Mata, a 19-year-old Venezuelan illegal immigrant accused of shooting two New York police officers, told police that a member of the Tren de Aragua transnational criminal organization recruited him, the New York Post reported on Wednesday.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) arrested Castro Mata on Monday after a shootout with NYPD police officers that resulted in officers Richard Yarusso and Christopher Abreu being shot and wounded. The 19-year-old Venezuelan, who was also wounded in the shootout, was arraigned from a Queens hospital bed on 17 counts — including two counts of attempted murder for having allegedly opened fire at the two NYPD officers — and potentially faces 80 years to life in prison.
The Post claimed in its report that Castro Mata told police he was recruited by a Tren de Aragua “coordinator” in New York to join a crew of “snatch and grab” moped thieves and was “encouraged” to get tattoos that showed his allegiance to the transnational criminal organization.
In his statement, the 19-year-old Venezuelan allegedly claimed that the “coordinator” provided the crew’s members with mopeds used to steal mobile phones, a criminal tactic commonly employed by gang members in Venezuela.
The Post cited anonymous sources who said Castro Mata was already believed to be part of the Tren de Aragua due to a tattoo of a clock attached to an anchor on one of his arms and social media posts he published.
According to statements from NYPD officials, Castro Mata illegally entered the United States in July 2023 through Eagle Pass, Texas, and engaged in criminal activities before Monday’s shooting, such as alleged phone snatching and attacking a woman, stealing her credit card and eventually using it in a smoke shop in Queens.
Less than a month before the shootout, a federal immigration judge reportedly had Castro Mata’s deportation case dismissed. As such, Castro Mata, while not granted asylum in the United States, was not a priority for deportation and was no longer monitored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), effectively rendering him an undocumented immigrant.
The Tren de Aragua transnational criminal organization, whose criminal activities have spread across several U.S. states and Latin American countries, first began as a local trade union gang in the eponymous Venezuelan state of Aragua in 2012. It is largely believed that the criminal organization has deep ties to Venezuela’s socialist regime, which allegedly allowed the gang to expand its criminal activities to its current transnational status. The Tren de Aragua’s crimes are believed to range from theft, homicide, extortion, contraband, and kidnapping to drug, human, and arms trafficking.
In May, law enforcement officials in Louisiana dismantled a sex trafficking network linked to the Tren de Aragua. The trafficking network was reportedly able to smuggle its victims to the United States and taught them how to request asylum before forcing the victims into prostitution to pay for the “debt” from having been smuggled into the United States.
Reports published in February indicate that FBI officials suspect that Tren de Aragua members in New York have brokered an alliance with the Salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang.
Venezuela’s socialist regime has repeatedly insisted that the Tren de Aragua “does not exist” and that the gang is part of an international smear campaign against the rogue regime, which is led by dictator Nicolás Maduro. Venezuelan officials publicly stated that the Maduro regime “dismantled” the Tren de Aragua after it “raided” the Tocorón prison in September 2023, which served as the gang’s main headquarters in Venezuela.
Special forces take position outside the Tocorón prison a day after authorities seized control in Tocorón, Aragua State, Venezuela, on September 21, 2023. (YURI CORTEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
The whereabouts of Tren de Aragua’s leader, Héctor “the Child” Guerrero, remained unknown following the raid. Numerous reports have asserted that Guerrero, who, at the time of the raid, was serving a 17-year sentence on multiple criminal charges, negotiated to hand over control of the prison and escaped long before the raid began.
According to reports published in April, the Maduro regime has enlisted the aid of the Tren de Aragua to persecute Venezuelan dissidents abroad. The most notorious suspected case of such persecution is that of Venezuelan dissident Ronald Ojeda, a former member of the Venezuelan military who lived in exile in Chile. In late February, three men linked to the Tren de Aragua allegedly abducted and murdered Ojeda, whose body was found ten days later, buried inside a suitcase under a concrete structure in Chile’s Santiago metropolitan region.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
