Trump Administration Working With Venezuelan Chief Linked to Killing in Chile — ProPublica

When Rafael Enrique Gámez Salas crossed the Mexican border in late 2024, U.S. Border Patrol brokers first thought he was like a whole bunch of hundreds of different Venezuelan migrants fleeing their nation’s devastating financial and political crises.

However in the present day the 40-year-old sits in a federal jail in Los Angeles awaiting extradition to Chile, the place prosecutors accuse him of being a boss of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan avenue gang. Chilean authorities say Gámez organized a kidnapping that resulted within the killing of an exiled Venezuelan dissident there. Much more troubling, they imagine he acted on the behest of Venezuela’s authoritarian authorities.

And for the previous six months, the Trump administration has been working straight with the highly effective Venezuelan official underneath investigation for allegedly ordering the crime: Inside Minister Diosdado Cabello.

The unlikely alliance with Cabello started in January, when U.S. particular operations forces swooped into Caracas, captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and introduced him to New York to face trial on drug trafficking prices. Whereas critics known as the operation a blatant violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, the Trump administration declared it was restoring regulation and order in a strife-torn area and commenced to restructure Venezuela’s ruined financial system and exert management over its huge oil trade.

But the Trump administration has left Cabello in place — regardless of longtime U.S. accusations that he has led the repression of political opponents and enriched himself in illicit partnerships with legal teams. Cabello has had a seat on the desk throughout visits to Caracas by senior U.S. officers, together with Inside Secretary Doug Burgum, for negotiations over points resembling Venezuela’s profitable mining sector. Earlier than Maduro’s seize, U.S. authorities had charged Cabello and a prime chief of Tren de Aragua in the identical drug trafficking indictment as Maduro and supplied a $25 million reward for him.

Cabello and different U.S.-backed Venezuelan leaders have come underneath fireplace in current days for his or her response to the devastating earthquakes on June 24 that killed greater than 3,600 individuals, injured greater than 16,000 and left hundreds extra lacking. In an internationally televised confrontation, Cabello exchanged tense phrases with members of a U.S. search-and-rescue staff en route to help victims in a closely broken space. Critics of the sluggish Venezuelan response to the catastrophe, together with U.S. congressional representatives in Miami, accused Cabello of interfering with rescue operations and repeated their requires his arrest on the pending U.S. prices. However a State Division spokesperson downplayed the incident as “an unlucky misunderstanding.”

Early this week, Cabello participated in a gathering with Gen. Francis Donovan, the top of U.S. Southern Command, which leads U.S. army operations in Latin America. Donovan visited Venezuela to debate reduction operations, based on press stories and Venezuelan officers.

In Chile, authorities are investigating Cabello because the alleged mastermind behind the killing of a former Venezuelan army officer, Lt. Ronald Ojeda, who had unsuccessfully tried an rebellion towards Maduro. Chile’s legal professional basic and different senior officers have mentioned that Cabello turned an investigative goal primarily based on testimony of captured suspects.

The 32-year-old Ojeda had been granted asylum in Chile. Authorities say they believe that Cabello paid Tren de Aragua’s prime management and that they, in flip, commissioned gang members in Chile, led by Gámez, to kidnap the previous soldier. Chilean prosecutors imagine Ojeda died whereas his captors have been torturing him to get details about the Venezuelan political opposition.

After President Donald Trump returned to workplace final yr, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and different officers asserted that the killing in Chile demonstrated Tren de Aragua’s ties to the very best ranges of the Venezuelan authorities and the gang’s attain throughout the Americas. The president designated the gang as a terrorist group and mentioned Maduro had despatched it to invade the US, though some regulation enforcement officers say the administration exaggerated the risk to justify mass deportations.

As Chile seeks the return of Gámez and prosecutors put together to convey 20 suspects to trial, the Trump administration has been silent on the alleged position of the regime and Cabello in Ojeda’s dying. U.S officers have aided Chilean counterparts with the extradition course of, however they haven’t used the case to press Venezuelan authorities to oust, arrest or hand over Cabello, present and former U.S. officers mentioned.

Requested at a press convention in Might if the U.S. nonetheless considers Cabello a narcoterrorist, Rubio gave a quick reply. “The coverage of the US on that matter has not modified, and when it modifications we are going to let ,” he mentioned.

Todd Robinson, a retired senior U.S. diplomat who served as ambassador in Caracas, mentioned Cabello’s persevering with energy raises questions on whether or not the acknowledged U.S. commitments to advancing the rule of regulation within the hemisphere are actual or a canopy for its pursuits in exploiting Venezuela’s oil.

“It’s only a horrible, horrible concept to go away him in place,” mentioned Robinson, who was expelled from Venezuela in 2018 after criticizing human rights abuses. “I don’t know what their intention is in doing that, until it truly is about oil, not democratic transition.”

One other retired U.S. diplomat, Brian Naranjo, who served three excursions in Venezuela, mentioned the administration appears extra curious about appeasing corrupt actors than uprooting them. Along with controlling the safety forces as minister of the inside and justice, Cabello maintains alliances with guerrillas in neighboring Colombia and different legal teams that make him a hazard to political stability, based on Naranjo, different officers, dissidents, and U.S. and Chilean court docket paperwork. Consequently, critics say, Washington sees Cabello as a needed evil.

“So long as he figures out a technique to maintain handing over issues the Trump administration needs, I believe he endures,” Naranjo mentioned.

In response to an inventory of questions from ProPublica, a spokesperson for the Division of Justice declined to touch upon any ongoing investigations. The White Home referred inquiries to the Division of Justice. The State Division and Venezuelan authorities officers didn’t reply to requests for remark. 

Though Cabello couldn’t be reached for remark, he has publicly denied allegations of involvement within the killing of Ojeda. Responding on his tv present in 2024, he mentioned: “Venezuela has nothing to do with this kidnapping. Nothing. Resolve your issues there, in Chile.”

As for Gámez, ProPublica discovered no info indicating that the Venezuelan ex-convict had been charged with a violent offense throughout the almost two years he lived in the US. Interviewed by phone and electronic mail from the federal jail in Los Angeles, he mentioned he labored exhausting at a restaurant and as a deliveryman to help his household in Utah. He denied any position in Ojeda’s dying or being a member of Tren de Aragua. He additionally mentioned he has no connections to Cabello.

Gámez mentioned that, just like the dissident whose kidnapping he’s accused of organizing, he left Venezuela partly as a result of he was an opponent of the previous regime. He mentioned the governments of Chile and the US are making him a scapegoat.

“If solely I used to be every thing they are saying I’m,” he mentioned. “Clearly any chief boss has cash to burn and I don’t have a penny to my title.”

A whole lot of pages of Chilean and U.S. court docket information paint a a lot darker portrait of his actions and element his alleged position within the Ojeda case and different crimes. Interviews with present and former officers from the US, Chile, Venezuela and Spain; Ojeda’s family and friends; Gámez; and others, together with the court docket information, present one of many fullest accounts of the case.

The Crime

On Feb. 21, 2024, a stolen Nissan sedan arrived at an residence tower in Santiago, the capital of Chile, one of many most secure and most affluent nations in Latin America. It was 3:05 a.m.

4 masked males disguised as Chilean law enforcement officials bought out. On the 14th ground, three of them broke into Ojeda’s residence, handcuffed him in entrance of his terrified spouse and son, and dragged him out, based on court docket paperwork and safety video. He was barefoot and sporting solely underpants.

The abductors rushed Ojeda to a slum hideout, the place they tortured him to dying, court docket paperwork say. Then they buried his partially dismembered stays in a suitcase beneath a newly laid cement ground, paperwork say.

Weeks earlier, the Maduro regime had publicly declared Ojeda a traitor.

In 2017, Ojeda and different younger dissident officers had been jailed and tortured in Venezuela. Ojeda alleged in a posthumously printed memoir that his ordeal had been ordered by Cabello.

Ojeda took refuge in Chile. However in late 2023, he went to Colombia’s border with Venezuela to attempt to instigate a army revolt and narrowly escaped seize. Throughout his remaining days, Ojeda feared the regime was coming for him, based on his family and friends.

“Ronald and his spouse had thought of what would occur if there was a knock on the door,” mentioned his household’s lawyer, Juan Carlos Manríquez. “They’d even rehearsed for it. They’d agreed to guard their son in any respect prices by not providing any resistance.”

A tip led Chilean police to Ojeda’s buried stays 9 days after his abduction. Fingerprints recovered from the deserted Nissan had already been traced to a member of Tren de Aragua, authorities say.

Along with the proof of the gang’s involvement, Chilean investigators shortly got here to suspect a political crime orchestrated by the Maduro regime, which had overtly declared the sufferer an enemy of the state.

“Ojeda had already escaped from them no less than as soon as earlier than,” mentioned Héctor Barros, the chief prosecutor within the case. “The regime took that personally. He was a high-priority goal.”

Delivering for DoorDash

Earlier than his odyssey throughout the Americas, Gámez grew up within the Caribbean port metropolis of Maracaibo, Venezuela.

After highschool, he fell into petty crime and was sentenced to 4 years and three months in jail for theft and different prices in a house invasion, based on Venezuelan court docket information and his personal account.

Nonetheless, there is no such thing as a indication that he turned a member of Tren de Aragua till years later, based on court docket paperwork and regulation enforcement officers. It isn’t clear when and the way he joined the gang, Chilean investigators say.

A couple of decade in the past, Gámez left Venezuela as a part of what has grow to be the most important mass exodus within the hemisphere. Maduro had been elected after the dying of populist President Hugo Chávez. In 2014, the worth of oil had plummeted, inflicting inflation, unemployment and meals shortages. Along with financial necessity, Gámez mentioned he migrated as a result of he belonged to a political get together that opposed the more and more repressive regime.

Gámez spent years in Chile, the place he labored in bread and clothes factories and as a barber. There aren’t any indications that he had a legal document throughout that interval, based on interviews and court docket paperwork.

In 2021, Gámez and his household joined a document variety of immigrants who headed north to the US throughout the Biden administration. They surrendered to U.S. border brokers in Arizona and have been launched pending the end result of immigration proceedings.

“All of the individuals who got here right here mentioned there was extra work and higher high quality of life,” Gámez mentioned. “I additionally thought of the way forward for my kids and their safety as a result of I assumed this was a protected nation.”

The household settled in Salt Lake Metropolis. Gámez mentioned he discovered jobs in a restaurant kitchen and delivering for DoorDash, typically working as many as 15 hours a day.

“The entire time I used to be right here I labored,” he mentioned. “I by no means had an issue.”

Till December 2022, when a Texas state trooper patrolling close to the Mexican border pulled him over for driving with expired plates and found that his Venezuelan passengers have been undocumented. Gámez admitted that he had agreed to take the household of three to Utah, court docket information say. He advised ProPublica he was doing a favor for a buddy who is said to the household. However state prosecutors charged him with smuggling of individuals and smuggling of a minor, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported him again to Venezuela in August 2023.

It’s from that interval when Chilean police say they recovered an early clue about Gámez’s hyperlinks to Tren de Aragua. The Venezuelan authorities despatched some 11,000 troops to Aragua state to take again management of the infamous Tocorón jail, the heart of operations of Tren de Aragua. Gang bosses had loved surreal luxuries inside — a zoo, a discotheque, a cockfight enviornment — whereas directing rackets that had unfold throughout the hemisphere as Tren de Aragua took management of smuggling routes and victimized Venezuelan immigrants.

Though the federal government declared victory, critics mentioned the authorities had tipped off the highest gang bosses, together with Hector Rusthenford “Niño” Guerrero, who managed to flee the raid.

Gámez was not concerned, and Chilean authorities imagine he had already left Venezuela en route again to Chile. However investigators say their later search of his communications discovered a publish after the raid during which he appeared to have a good time Guerrero’s escape.

“They toppled the citadel, however not the king,” learn his WhatsApp standing, based on court docket paperwork. “So the sport continues.”

Authorities mentioned the message means that Gámez might have had contact with the gang throughout his first keep in Chile or in Utah.

Citing communications and witness testimony, investigators say he was again in Chile about two months after the raid on the jail. The Venezuelan gang quickly put him in command of its offshoot in Santiago, known as the Pirates of Aragua, based on court docket paperwork and interviews.

“There is no such thing as a manner he strikes up that shortly when he returns to Chile until he’s already linked,” mentioned a former U.S. federal regulation enforcement official.

In early 2024, Chilean investigators say they began listening to chatter a few new gang boss, often known as el Turko, who was overseeing a wave of extortion and kidnappings of immigrants.

Angered by public consideration to the Ojeda case, senior Tren de Aragua leaders ordered the abductors to go away Chile, based on court docket paperwork and interviews. Investigators say Gámez additionally left, spending time in Peru and Colombia as he used his cellphone to supervise crimes by members of the crew nonetheless in Santiago, based on court docket paperwork and interviews.

Six weeks after Ojeda’s killing, Gámez was speaking by textual content with them after they tried a carjacking that led to a gunfight with an off-duty Chilean police officer, court docket paperwork say. The officer and one of many suspected gang members have been killed. Recovered textual content exchanges reveal that an agitated Gámez gave real-time directions to the accused killers as they fled the scene, based on court docket information and interviews.

“The garments you had,” he wrote, based on court docket information. “Dump them…straight away the sneakers…every thing.”

Police arrested three suspects for killing the police officer and located information of their telephones that recognized Gámez as el Turko, based on paperwork. It included a trove of telltale communications during which Gámez, appearing on directions from senior gang bosses exterior Chile, allegedly directed the plot to kidnap Ojeda, based on interviews and court docket paperwork.

“The order comes from above and they’re placing their belief in me,” Gámez advised his crew in a textual content, based on court docket paperwork.

By mid-2024, the police knew who they have been searching for. However they didn’t know the place he was.

Finish of an Odyssey

On Dec. 30, 2024, U.S. Border Patrol brokers arrested Gámez after he crossed close to Brownsville, Texas.

He was carrying a Colombian passport with an alias to cover his earlier deportation and hoping to rejoin his spouse and youngsters in Utah, based on officers and his account. However fingerprint checks revealed his true id.

Gámez pleaded responsible to a cost of being illegally within the nation after deportation and acquired a sentence of 13 months in jail. He additionally pleaded responsible to a diminished cost within the 2022 smuggling case and was sentenced to 120 days, based on court docket information.

In Chile, the sprawling investigation had gathered momentum. Chilean police tracked down different fugitives overseas with assistance from U.S. and Latin American regulation enforcement businesses. And plenty of witnesses, together with accused kidnappers, implicated Gámez and the Venezuelan regime, court docket paperwork present. Three of them pointed the finger at Cabello, based on sources near the case.

“Diosdado Cabello, who’s a Venezuelan politician, gave the instruction to do the kidnapping,” mentioned an admitted kidnapper. Cabello allegedly paid Guerrero, the highest boss of Tren de Aragua, based on that testimony.

One other alleged gang member testified that certainly one of Ojeda’s kidnappers advised him the crime was “ordered by the Authorities of Venezuela, deliberate by the leaders of Tren de Aragua, and executed by the members of the gang who have been in Chile,” court docket paperwork say.

“The cash was paid by the federal government,” the alleged gang member mentioned.

Up to now, authorities mentioned they don’t have different proof that straight connects Cabello to the crime — like communications between the Venezuelan chief and gang bosses. However final yr, Chile took the extraordinary step of going to the Worldwide Prison Courtroom to accuse the Maduro regime of being concerned in Ojeda’s dying. That case is within the preliminary investigation stage as a part of the court docket’s probe of human rights abuses in Venezuela.

Gabriel Boric, who was Chile’s president on the time, mentioned, “Dictatorships and authoritarian leaders cross borders to impose worry after they assume they’ll do it with impunity.”

The Venezuelan authorities responded to Chile’s prices with an announcement that the case “doesn’t simply lack a authorized foundation, however is sustained by a vicious hate in the direction of Venezuela, displaying the desperation to please the agendas ordered by the US.”

The U.S. agenda in Venezuela has come underneath rising scrutiny. Venezuela’s opposition, which has lengthy counted on the US for help, continues to name for Cabello’s ouster and democratic reforms. However an unstated cut price between Cabello and the Trump administration prevails, based on dissidents and present and former U.S. officers. The administration exploits the leverage of the U.S. indictment to make sure Cabello’s cooperation, whereas Cabello shields himself along with his energy to upend Venezuela’s stability, critics mentioned.

Naranjo, the previous diplomat, mentioned Cabello’s willingness to accommodate Washington suggests that he’s “going to be round far longer than anyone needs. He’s all the time demonstrated his means to react and adapt, operationally and tactically, to the circumstances in entrance of him.”

In a current and dramatic signal of the evolving partnership with the US, Trump introduced June 13 {that a} U.S. missile strike had killed Guerrero, Tren de Aragua’s chief, in Venezuela’s lawless mining area. Trump mentioned the strike had been “coordinated carefully with our mates in Venezuela, with whom we’re working very effectively.” 

Guerrero’s dying will make it tougher for Chilean investigators to pursue the allegations that Cabello employed the gang to focus on Ojeda, former officers mentioned. However Ojeda’s household and different dissidents hope that the trial in Santiago will present that the Venezuelan regime, like different authoritarian governments, enlisted organized crime to ship a terroristic message to its foes at dwelling and overseas.

“Diosdado Cabello is the individual we would like punished,” mentioned Javier Ojeda, the sufferer’s brother.

Chilean authorities say Gámez and different suspected gang chiefs who’ve been captured might present additional proof concerning the alleged hyperlinks to Cabello. Gámez has consented to extradition, based on court docket paperwork, however the course of might nonetheless take weeks. Gámez advised ProPublica he determined to return voluntarily to Chile as a result of he needs to battle the fees towards him within the Chilean courts. 

Gámez questioned the credibility of witnesses towards him, saying one of many admitted gang members “is searching for an escape … by any means, like mendacity and inventing issues.” He didn’t reply to some questions concerning the voluminous court docket file towards him, together with his alleged communications.

Gámez asserted that he’s being arrange as a fall man for political causes. Each the Chilean and U.S. governments, he mentioned, have exploited the Ojeda case of their persecution of Venezuelans.

Chilean authorities have arrested many Venezuelans “to make use of that as a technique so that they go away Chile,” he mentioned. “The identical because the president right here did…everybody they caught they linked to Tren de Aragua to arrest them and throw them overseas.”