8 alleged Tren de Aragua members charged in Texas, Illinois murders

Federal prosecutors charged eight alleged members of Tren de Aragua in two murder cases spanning Texas and Illinois, placing a North Texas family killing and a Chicago homicide into the same federal case file. The defendants entered the United States between December 2021 and April 2024, and one Texas defendant is in custody in Colombia on unrelated charges.

In the North Texas case, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced charges against four men for murdering a father and kidnapping his daughter and nephew just outside Dallas in 2024. The victims were zip-tied after the suspects demanded money, and the father was executed in front of the children before the two minors were later released in another city. The victim was identified as Nilzuly Petit, and the case was in Farmers Branch.

The Illinois case centered on a killing in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. The victim was kidnapped near a park, held for hours, shot multiple times and left in a bathtub in an abandoned building at 6829 S. Perry. Someone later called the victim’s mother and told her where to find his body. Three alleged members were charged in the Chicago case.

The charges were filed in the Northern Districts of Illinois and Texas and include murders, kidnappings and firearms offenses. Tren de Aragua began as a prison gang in Venezuela in the mid-2000s and spread across the Western Hemisphere, with U.S. cells organized by geography. Its criminal activity includes drug trafficking, firearms trafficking, commercial sex trafficking, kidnapping, robbery, theft, fraud, extortion, murder and assault.

The cases were brought through Homeland Security Task Force investigations and folded into Joint Task Force Vulcan, a federal effort that began in 2019 targeting MS-13 before being expanded to Tren de Aragua. Since the gang was designated a foreign terrorist organization, nearly 350 members and associates have been charged, including more than 70 defendants announced in December 2025 and more than 25 more in May 2026.