As noted here January 31, crimes by illegal migrants are spiking in New York City. Some of these crimes are nonviolent — prostitution, street scams, mob shoplifting, pickpocketing, etc. — but increasingly, the city is seeing migrant gangs on stolen mopeds terrorize New Yorkers, snatching purses and cellphones from the hands of the unsuspecting. The New York Post is reporting today that many of the moped gangsters are members of a Venezuelan gang called “Tren de Aragua” [Aragua Train], named for the Venezuelan state in which it was founded in 2012.
According to Wikipedia, the gang now boasts more than 2,700 members in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama, Costa Rica, Chile — and now the U.S. The mob that attacked the NYC cops on January 27 are suspected of being Tren de Aragua members, as is the alleged killer of a retired Venezuelan police official last month in Miami. Tren de Aragua has shocked authorities by their brutality and in particular their willingness to murder women: they are known for shooting prostitutes working for rival gangs.
In New York, many members of the gang are living for free in public shelters, from which they terrorize surrounding neighborhoods. NYPD’s chief of detectives, Joseph Kenny, said last Monday that 62 robberies in the city since November 2023 had been linked to a single group of at least 14 of the gangsters, who used two-man moped crews to grab victims’ phones and purses. Each crew consisted of the moped driver and the “grabber,” who would snatch the phone or purse. That group, according to Kenny, was headed by one Victor Parra, a 30-year-old illegal Venezuelan migrant who arrived last year. Parra would send out orders to the gang using WhatsApp, specifying the type of phone he was looking for. Kenny continued:
Once the messages are received, the crime wave begins, with the scooter operators making $100 a day and the actual phone snatcher making between $300 to $600 per phone that is stolen.
It is important to the thieves that the phones they snatch be in use and thus unlocked. They can then be easily hacked and the victims’ bank accounts drained and installed apps can be used to purchase goods in North and South America. The phones are then shipped to South America to be sold.
On Friday, the NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell admitted that “right now, we see an uptick and we see trends in migrant crime that [are] hurting our city a little bit.” [emphasis added] Thanks to gangs like Tren de Aragua, that “little bit” translates to robberies rising 9 percent so far this year, compared with the same period in 2023, and up 14 percent from the the same period in 2022.
In a feeble attempt to deal with the crime spike, city officials are expanding a 11 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew to cover at least 24 shelters, involving about 3,600 migrants.
Yet the border is still wide open and more criminals come across daily.
For more, see the NY Post.