The Department of Justice added terrorism-related charges to the criminal case against an alleged high-ranking member of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang on April 23.
In a newly unsealed indictment against Jose Enrique Martinez Flores, the Justice Department is pursuing terrorism charges against an alleged member of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang for the first time.
The State Department designated the Venezuelan gang as a foreign terrorist organization in February, and President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act in March, proclaiming members of the gang as “liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies” and “chargeable with actual hostility against the United States.”
Martinez Flores, 24, also known as “Chuqui,” was charged with conspiring to provide and providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, according to his indictment, filed in federal court in the Southern District of Texas. He was also charged with conspiracy and distribution of cocaine in Colombia, intended for distribution in the United States.
Colombian authorities arrested Martinez Flores in Colombia on March 31 after the United States requested a provisional warrant for his arrest. He is still in Colombian custody “pending further proceedings.”
A federal grand jury in Houston returned Martinez Flores’s superseding indictment on April 8. Federal authorities accuse him of being a “high-ranking” leader of Tren de Aragua in Bogota, Colombia, and also “part of the inner circle of senior [gang] leadership.”