Costa Rican authorities dismantled a human trafficking network linked to the criminal gang Tren de Aragua, which financed the travel of women from Venezuela for the purpose of sexual exploitation. The Prosecutor’s Office and the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ, police) raided three hotels and four houses in San José and other locations.
“Thirty minutes after the raids began, the arrest of four people was confirmed,” reported the Prosecutor’s Office. The network offered “a type of job in Costa Rica as content creators,” but the women were later held captive and forced into prostitution, the OIJ said in a statement.
The women were “cut off from communication” and were required “to pay for the transfer, food, and lodging through sexual encounters with third parties,” the OIJ explained. The network, which offered services on a website, was “linked to the transnational organization known as Tren de Aragua,” said the Prosecutor’s Office.
Among those suspected of being part of the network are Venezuelans, an Ecuadorian, and a Nicaraguan, according to the OIJ. The Prosecutor’s Office stated that the women “were allegedly subjected to a system of constant fines for minimal actions, which prevented them from freeing themselves.”
It added that the network had a structure “identical to that used by Tren de Aragua in countries such as Chile, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, which reinforces the hypothesis of a transnational criminal operation.” The organization is also linked to the murders of two Venezuelans committed in November 2024, according to authorities.
Founded in 2014 in Venezuela, the Tren de Aragua gang is involved in kidnappings, robberies, drug trafficking, prostitution, extortion, and other crimes in several countries. In February, the Donald Trump administration designated it as a global terrorist organization and a threat to the security of the United States.
