MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican authorities said Tuesday they had arrested six alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang in Mexico City for crimes related to drug trafficking, extortion and human trafficking, and separately arrested four alleged members of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
The announcements came a day after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and U.S. President Donald Trump spoke of their governments’ ongoing collaboration against drug cartels and as the U.S. continues to pressure Mexico for tangible results.
The Trump administration designated Tren de Aragua and the Jalisco cartel as foreign terrorist organizations last year. The U.S. alleges Tren de Aragua had ties with Venezuela’s now-deposed President Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. government has also targeted some boats in the Caribbean that it alleges were carrying drugs for the gang.
Mexico’s Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch announced the Tren de Aragua arrests on social media but did not provide nationalities.
Later Tuesday, the Attorney General’s Office announced the arrests of the Jalisco members, including the cartel’s boss in charge of its operations in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city, and the man allegedly coordinating the movement of its drug shipments from Central America.
Attorney General’s Office spokesman Ulises Lara said that in the city of Tepic in Nayarit state along Mexico’s Pacific coast, one suspect was arrested who allegedly coordinated flights of small aircraft from Central America to clandestine landing strips in Nayarit, Jalisco and Zacatecas states. In Zapopan, outside Guadalajara, three more suspects were arrested, including the Guadalajara boss. He did not say when the arrests occurred.
Guadalajara is one of the sites for this summer’s World Cup soccer tournament.
The arrests of alleged Tren de Aragua members — one woman and five men — were carried out after surveillance on several buildings in the capital. Drugs, a gun and a notebook recording extortion in the city were seized.
The Tren de Aragua gang started more than a decade ago in a Venezuelan prison. It gained global notoriety after Trump placed it at the center of his anti-immigrant narrative. The gang has expanded in recent years as nearly 8 million Venezuelans fled economic turmoil and migrated to other Latin American countries or the U.S.