Tren de Aragua member arrested for torturing Oregon woman lived in drug rehab facility funded by Medicaid

A member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua who was arrested for attempted murder was also living in a drug den in a Portland suburb that received millions in state Medicaid funds.

Alexander Moises Arnaez-Gutierrez, who has alleged ties to the gang, was arrested last year along with Kevin Daniel Sanabria-Ojeda. Prosecutors charged the two in April with kidnapping, robbery, and attempted murder.

Charging documents said that the pair kidnapped a woman from an apartment complex, forced her into a car, and fired a gun during a struggle. Investigators said the suspects also “used a power drill to drill into (the victim’s) hand to get access to her cell phone and bank accounts.”

Authorities said the suspects then took the woman to Kittitas County in Washington, where she was shot and left on the side of the road to die. The victim survived by climbing over a retaining wall and flagging down help.

The Post Millennial's Katie Daviscourt previously reported that that house was listed as a halfway house that received $2.3 million in state funds from April 2024 to March 2025, but was being used to harbor illegal immigrants. 

According to Real Clear Investigations, law enforcement later tracked the suspects to a Portland-area suburb, where they were staying at the same residence, which was described as a drug den with “residents possibly using drugs in the back yard, large numbers of people coming and going at night, possibly entire vans full of people, and people being dazed or drugged… and on a few occasions groups of young women or girls being present at the address.”

Jeff Eager, the former mayor of Bend, Oregon, told the outlet that the owners of Uplifting Journey LLC, the recovery provider, had ties to men indicted in Arizona for setting up a $60 million Medicare fraud ring. The men were accused of laundering money by sending it to Rwanda.

“I feel like I've seen the tip of the iceberg in Oregon,” Eager said. “It's a huge scandal, and I'm the only one that's covered it so far… The state government here couldn’t care less.”