When Rafael Enrique Gámez Salas crossed the Mexican border in late 2024, U. S. Border Patrol agents initially thought he was like hundreds of thousands of other Venezuelan refugees fleeing their country’s damaging economic and political problems.
The 40-year-old is currently imprisoned in a federal prison in Los Angeles and is awaiting extradition to Chile where he is accused of being the head of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan road gang, in a national jail. Peruvian authorities say Gámez organized a kidnapping that resulted in the shooting of an exiled Venezuelan rebel it. They think he acted at the autocratic government’s will, which is even more troubling.
And for the past six months, the Trump administration has been working directly with the strong Cuban recognized under investigation for allegedly ordering the murder: Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello.
The doubtful ally with Cabello began in January, when U. S. special operations forces swooped into Caracas, captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and brought him to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges. The Trump administration announced it was restoring law and order to a troubled region, started reorganizing Venezuela’s crumbling economy, and assumed control of its huge oil industry, while critics called the operation a flagrant violation of Colombian sovereignty.
Yet the Trump administration has left Cabello in place — despite longstanding U. S. accusations that he has led the persecution of political opponents and enriched himself in illegal partnerships with criminal groups. Cabello has a seat at the table during discussions with senior U.S. leaders in Caracas, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, regarding issues like Venezuela’s lucrative mining industry. Before Maduro’s capture, U. S. authorities had charged Cabello and a top leader of Tren de Aragua in the same drug trafficking indictment as Maduro and offered a$ 25 million reward for him.
Cabello and other U. S. backed Cuban officials have come under fire in recent days for their response to the destructive disasters on June 24 that killed more than 3, 600 people, injured more than 16, 000 and left thousands more lost. Cabello and members of a U.S. search-and-rescue team exchanged tense words in a confrontation that was being watched worldwide. Critics of the slow Cuban response to the disaster, including U. S. congressional representatives in Miami, accused Cabello of interfering with evacuation procedures and repeated their calls for his arrest on the pending U. S. costs. However, a State Department spokesman downplayed the incident as an “unforgiveable misunderstanding.”
Early this week, Cabello participated in a meeting with Gen. Francis Donovan, the head of U. S. Southern Command, which leads U. S. military operations in Latin America. Donovan visited Venezuela to discuss relief operations, according to press reports and Venezuelan officials.
Authorities in Chile are looking into Cabello as the alleged mastermind behind Lt. Ronald Ojeda’s alleged murder in an unsuccessful attempt to upend Maduro. Chile’s attorney general and other senior officials have said that Cabello became an investigative target based on testimony of captured suspects.
The 32-year-old Ojeda had been granted asylum in Chile. Authorities claim that Cabello paid Tren de Aragua’s top officials and that they then hired gang members from Chile under the leadership of Gámez to kidnap the former soldier. Chilean prosecutors believe Ojeda died while his captors were torturing him to get information about the Venezuelan political opposition.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials claimed that Tren de Aragua’s ties to the most powerful members of the Venezuelan government and the gang’s spread across the Americas were demonstrated by the killing in Chile after President Donald Trump’s election last year. The president designated the gang as a terrorist group and said Maduro had sent it to invade the United States, although some law enforcement officials say the administration exaggerated the threat to justify mass deportations.
As Chile seeks the return of Gámez and prosecutors prepare to bring 20 suspects to trial, the Trump administration has been silent on the alleged role of the regime and Cabello in Ojeda’s death. U…. S officials have aided Chilean counterparts with the extradition process, but they have not used the case to press Venezuelan authorities to oust, arrest or hand over Cabello, current and former U. S. officials said.
Rubio responded briefly at a press conference in May when asked whether Cabello is still viewed as a narcoterrorist. ” The policy of the United States on that topic has not changed, and when it changes we will let you know”, he said.
Todd Robinson, a retired senior U. S. diplomat who served as ambassador in Caracas, said Cabello’s continuing power raises questions about whether the stated U. S.commitments to advancing the rule of law in the hemisphere are real or a cover for its interests in exploiting Venezuela’s oil.
Robinson, who was kicked out of Venezuela in 2018 after criticizing human rights abuses, said,” It’s just a horrible, horrible idea to leave him in place.” ” I don’t know what their aim is in doing that, unless it really is about oil, not democratic transition”.
Brian Naranjo, a retired U.S. diplomat who served three tours in Venezuela, claimed that the administration appears to be more interested in appeasing corrupt actors than bringing them under control. In addition to controlling the security forces as minister of the interior and justice, Cabello maintains alliances with guerrillas in neighboring Colombia and other criminal groups that make him a danger to political stability, according to Naranjo, other officials, dissidents, and U. S. and Chilean court documents. As a result, critics say, Washington sees Cabello as a necessary evil.
I believe he will endure as long as he finds a way to continue handing over things the Trump administration wants, Naranjo said.
In response to a list of questions from ProPublica, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice declined to comment on any ongoing investigations. Questions were referred to the Department of Justice by the White House. The State Department and Venezuelan government officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Although Cabello could not be reached for comment, he has publicly denied allegations of involvement in the killing of Ojeda. He responded on his television show in 2024 by saying,” Venezuela has nothing to do with this kidnapping. Nothing. Resolve your issues in Chile.
Regarding Gámez, ProPublica found no details that suggested the ex-convict from Venezuela had been charged with a violent offense while he lived in the US for almost two years. Interviewed by telephone and email from the federal jail in Los Angeles, he said he worked hard at a restaurant and as a deliveryman to support his family in Utah. He denied playing any part in the death of Ojeda or being a Tren de Aragua member. He also said he has no connections to Cabello.
Gámez said that, like the dissident whose kidnapping he’s accused of organizing, he left Venezuela in part because he was an opponent of the former regime. He claimed that Chile and the United States ‘ governments are using him as a scapegoat.
” If only I was everything they say I am”, he said. I don’t have a penny to sell, and any leader boss obviously has money to burn.
Hundreds of pages of Chilean and U. S. court records paint a much darker portrait of his activities and detail his alleged role in the Ojeda case and other crimes. Interviews with current and former officials from the United States, Chile, Venezuela and Spain, Ojeda’s friends and family, Gámez, and others, along with the court records, provide one of the fullest accounts of the case.
The crime
On Feb. 21, 2024, a stolen Nissan sedan arrived at an apartment tower in Santiago, the capital of Chile, one of the safest and most prosperous nations in Latin America. It was 3:05 a.m.
Four masked men disguised as Chilean police officers got out. On the 14th floor, three of them broke into Ojeda’s apartment, handcuffed him in front of his terrified wife and son, and dragged him out, according to court documents and security video. He was only wearing underpants and was barefoot.
The kidnappers rushed Ojeda to a slum hideout, where they tortured him to death, court documents say. Then, according to documents, they dumped his partially dismembered remains in a suitcase beneath a newly laid cement floor.
Weeks earlier, the Maduro regime had publicly declared Ojeda a traitor.
In 2017, Ojeda and other young dissident officers had been jailed and tortured in Venezuela. Ojeda claimed in a posthumously published memoir that Cabello had ordered his ordeal.
Ojeda took refuge in Chile. However, he escaped capture when he attempted to start a military uprising on Colombia’s border with Venezuela in the late 2023. During his final days, Ojeda feared the regime was coming for him, according to his friends and family.
” Ronald and his wife had thought about what would happen if there was a knock on the door”, said his family’s lawyer, Juan Carlos Manríquez. They even practiced for it during rehearsals. They had agreed to protect their son at all costs by not offering any resistance”.
Nine days after Ojeda’s abduction, a tip led Chilean police to his buried remains. Fingerprints recovered from the abandoned Nissan had already been traced to a member of Tren de Aragua, authorities say.
In addition to the evidence of the gang’s involvement, Chilean investigators quickly came to suspect a political crime orchestrated by the Maduro regime, which had openly declared the victim an enemy of the state.
According to Héctor Barros, the chief prosecutor in the case,” Ojeda had already escaped from them at least once before.” ” The regime took that personally. He was a high-priority target.
Delivering for DoorDash
Before his odyssey across the Americas, Gámez grew up in the Caribbean port city of Maracaibo, Venezuela.
According to Venezuelan court records and his own account, he fell into petty crime and was given a four-year and three-month sentence for robbery and other charges in a home invasion after graduating from high school.
Nonetheless, there is no indication that he became a member of Tren de Aragua until years later, according to court documents and law enforcement officials. When and how he joined the gang are unknown, according to Chilean investigators.
About a decade ago, Gámez left Venezuela as part of what has become the largest mass exodus in the hemisphere. Maduro had been elected after the death of populist President Hugo Chávez. Oil prices dropped in 2014, leading to inflation, unemployment, and food shortages. In addition to economic necessity, Gámez said he migrated because he belonged to a political party that opposed the increasingly repressive regime.
Gámez worked as a barber in Chile for many years as well as in factories for bread and clothing. There are no indications that he had a criminal record during that period, according to interviews and court documents.
Gámez and his family were one of a record number of immigrants who traveled north to the United States during the Biden administration in 2021. They surrendered to U. S. border agents in Arizona and were released pending the outcome of immigration proceedings.
” All the people who came here said there was more work and better quality of life”, Gámez said. Because I believed this was a safe nation, I also considered the security of my children.
The family settled in Salt Lake City. González claimed to have found employment in a restaurant kitchen and DoorDash, working up to 15 hours per day.
” The whole time I was here I worked”, he said. ” I never had a problem”.
until December 2022, when a Texas state trooper who was border crossing the Mexican border pulled him over for driving while his Venezuelan passengers were undocumented. Gámez admitted that he had agreed to take the family of three to Utah, court records say. He claimed to be doing the same for a friend who is close to the family and that he was doing it for ProPublica. But state prosecutors charged him with smuggling of persons and smuggling of a minor, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported him back to Venezuela in August 2023.
It’s from that period when Chilean police say they recovered an early clue about Gámez’s links to Tren de Aragua. The notorious Tocorón prison, which is the heart of Tren de Aragua’s operations, has been under the control of the Venezuelan government’s government, sending about 11, 000 troops to Aragua state. Gang bosses had enjoyed surreal luxuries inside — a zoo, a discotheque, a cockfight arena — while directing rackets that had spread across the hemisphere as Tren de Aragua took control of smuggling routes and victimized Venezuelan immigrants.
Although the government won, Hector Rusthenford” Niño” Guerrero, one of the top gang bosses, was later identified as the victim of the tip-off, according to critics.
Gámez was not involved, and Chilean authorities believe he had already left Venezuela en route back to Chile. But investigators say their later search of his communications found a post after the raid in which he appeared to celebrate Guerrero’s escape.
According to court documents,” They toppled the castle, but not the king,” read his WhatsApp status. ” So the game continues”.
Authorities said the message suggests that Gámez might have interacted with the gang while he was on his first trip to Chile or Utah.
Citing communications and witness testimony, investigators say he was back in Chile about two months after the raid on the prison. The Venezuelan gang rapidly put him in charge of its offshoot in Santiago, called the Pirates of Aragua, according to court documents and interviews.
A former U.S. federal law enforcement official said,” There is no way he moves up that quickly when he’s he’s he’s already connected.”
In early 2024, Chilean investigators say they started hearing chatter about a new gang boss, known as el Turko, who was overseeing a wave of extortion and kidnappings of immigrants.
Senior Tren de Aragua leaders reportedly ordered the kidnappers to leave Chile in response to the public’s concern over the Ojeda case, according to court documents and interviews. Investigators say Gámez also left, spending time in Peru and Colombia as he used his phone to oversee crimes by members of the crew still in Santiago, according to court documents and interviews.
Six weeks after Ojeda’s killing, Gámez was communicating by text with them when they attempted a carjacking that led to a gunfight with an off-duty Chilean police officer, court documents say. One of the suspected gang members and the officer were killed. Recovered text exchanges reveal that an agitated Gámez gave real-time instructions to the accused killers as they fled the scene, according to court records and interviews.
According to court records, he wrote,” The clothes you had.” ” Dump them…right away the shoes…everything”.
Police arrested three suspects for killing the police officer and found data in their phones that identified Gámez as el Turko, according to documents. According to interviews and court records, Gámez allegedly directed the plot to kidnap Ojeda after acting on orders from senior gang bosses outside Chile, in a trove of telltale communications.
” The order comes from above and they are putting their trust in me”, Gámez told his crew in a text, according to court documents.
By the middle of 2024, the police were aware of their target. But they didn’t know where he was.
End of an Odyssey
After he crossed the border near Brownsville, Texas, U.S. Border Patrol agents detained him on December 30, 2024.
He was carrying a Colombian passport with an alias to hide his previous deportation and hoping to rejoin his wife and children in Utah, according to officials and his account. However, his real identity was revealed through fingerprint verification.
Gámez pleaded guilty to a charge of being illegally in the country after deportation and received a sentence of 13 months in prison. He also pleaded guilty to a reduced charge in the 2022 smuggling case and was sentenced to 120 days, according to court records.
The sprawling investigation had gained momentum in Chile. Chilean police tracked down other fugitives abroad with the aid of U. S. and Latin American law enforcement agencies. Additionally, according to court documents, a number of witnesses, including accused kidnappers, implicated Gámez and the Venezuelan regime. Three of them pointed the finger at Cabello, according to sources close to the case.
” Diosdado Cabello, who is a Venezuelan politician, gave the instruction to do the kidnapping”, said an admitted kidnapper. According to that testimony, Cabello allegedly paid Guerrero, Tren de Aragua’s top boss, money.
Another alleged gang member testified that one of Ojeda’s kidnappers told him the crime was “ordered by the Government of Venezuela, planned by the leaders of Tren de Aragua, and executed by the members of the gang who were in Chile”, court documents say.
” The money was paid by the government”, the alleged gang member said.
Authorities said they do not currently have any other tangible proof linking Cabello to the crime, such as conversations between the Venezuelan leader and gang leaders. But last year, Chile took the extraordinary step of going to the International Criminal Court to accuse the Maduro regime of being involved in Ojeda’s death. As part of the court’s investigation into Venezuelan human rights violations, the case is currently in its preliminary stages.
Gabriel Boric, who was Chile’s president at the time, said,” Dictatorships and authoritarian leaders cross borders to impose fear when they think they can do it with impunity”.
The Venezuelan government responded to Chile’s charges with a statement that the case “doesn’t just lack a legal basis, but is sustained by a vicious hate towards Venezuela, showing the desperation to please the agendas ordered by the United States”.
Venezuela’s U.S. agenda is now receiving more and more scrutiny. Venezuela’s opposition, which has long counted on the United States for support, continues to call for Cabello’s ouster and democratic reforms. Dissidents and current and former U.S. officials claim that there is still a sealed deal between Cabello and the Trump administration. The administration exploits the leverage of the U. S. indictment to ensure Cabello’s cooperation, while Cabello shields himself with his power to upend Venezuela’s stability, critics said.
Naranjo, the former diplomat, said Cabello’s willingness to accommodate Washington suggests that he is “going to be around far longer than anybody wants. He has consistently demonstrated his ability to adapt and react to the circumstances in front of him, both tactically and tactically.
In a recent and dramatic sign of the evolving partnership with the United States, Trump announced June 13 that a U. S. missile strike had killed Guerrero, Tren de Aragua’s leader, in Venezuela’s lawless mining region. Trump claimed that the strike had been” coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well.”
Guerrero’s death will make it more difficult for Chilean investigators to pursue the allegations that Cabello hired the gang to target Ojeda, former officials said. But Ojeda’s family and other dissidents hope that the trial in Santiago will show that the Venezuelan regime, like other authoritarian governments, enlisted organized crime to send a terroristic message to its foes at home and abroad.
Javier Ojeda, the victim’s brother, said,” Diosdado Cabello is the person we want punished.”
Chilean authorities say Gámez and other suspected gang chiefs who have been captured could provide further evidence about the alleged links to Cabello. Despite court records, González has indicated his consent to extradition, but the procedure may still take weeks. Gámez told ProPublica he decided to return voluntarily to Chile because he wants to fight the charges against him in the Chilean courts.
Gámez questioned the credibility of witnesses against him, saying one of the admitted gang members “is looking for an escape … by any means, like lying and inventing things”. He neglected to respond to some inquiries regarding the extensive court record that was filed against him, including his alleged communications.
Gámez asserted that he’s being set up as a fall guy for political reasons. He claimed that both the Chilean and American governments have used the Ojeda case to justify their persecution of Venezuelans.
Chilean authorities have arrested many Venezuelans” to use that as a strategy so they leave Chile”, he said. ” The same as the president here did…everyone they caught they connected to Tren de Aragua to arrest them and throw them out of the country”.
The article He’s alleged to have hired a Venezuelan gang for political killing. Trump Officials Still Work With Him. first appeared on ProPublica.
