Criminals posing as asylum seekers are turning American cities into war zones.
The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, feared for how it tortures its victims, is setting up business in New York City, police sources reveal.
Gang members recruit migrants from shelters and as they come off buses from Texas, putting then to work in retail theft rings or on mopeds, grabbing phones and handbags and roughing up pedestrians.
“This is organized crime. It’s just like the Mafia,” says Paul DiGiacomo, president of the NYC Detectives’ Endowment Association.
NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban warns of a “wave of migrant crime.” Democratic pols deny it. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says migrants “are looking for a better life.” True for many, not all.
NYC Comptroller Brad Lander accuses Caban of “fear mongering” and using a “Republican talking point.”
Believe the cops, not the pols.
Migrants in moped gangs and retail theft rings, some carrying guns, are terrorizing the Big Apple, Yonkers and New Jersey.
Two-man teams snatch pedestrians’ phones and deliver them to Tren de Aragua stash houses, where professional hackers make fraudulent banking transactions and drain cash from all accounts. Then the phones are wiped clean and shipped to South America for resale.
A 62-year-old woman was brutally dragged down a Brooklyn street by one of these moped thieves who made off with her purse. When you see mopeds, step back from the curb and hug the building — advice usually needed in a third-world city, not New York.
A shopper at JD Sports near Times Square was shot in the leg by baby-faced, 15-year-old migrant Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa when a security guard tried to stop him from robbing the store on Feb. 8. Figueroa whipped out a .45-caliber handgun and shot into the crowd. He has since been apprehended by police.
The next job is to track down the ringleaders who armed him and sent him into the store. The teen had been living in the Stratford Hotel, a city shelter, with his mother and attending school. He is also a suspect in a Jan. 25 incident in Midtown and a Jan. 27 robbery in the Bronx. After his first run-in with cops, the shelter system should have been notified and Figueroa should have been evicted.
Chicago is also being terrorized. There, professional criminals enlist migrants from the shelters to raid luxury stores at the suburban Oakbrook Center shopping mall, 5 miles west of the city. These migrants wouldn’t have a clue where Oak Brook, an upscale suburb, is, or how to get there without the criminal masterminds.
South American gangs are turning suburban malls into danger zones, explains retired Riverside, Illinois, Police Chief Tom Weitzel. “You’re at one of the suburban malls … pushing your kids in a stroller” and you can get caught in the violence, he said in an interview with Fox News.
“A lot more crossing the border are criminals or have criminal intent than is being publicly said,” Weitzel added.
Paul Mauro, a retired inspector of the NYPD, agrees. The claim that Venezuela is emptying its prisons is accurate, he suggested in a separate interview with Fox News.
Blame President Joe Biden’s open borders, but also the soft-on-crime Democrats in New York and Illinois, whose policies almost guarantee that migrant criminals can rob and assault without ever going to jail.
Hochul sweetens the attraction by guaranteeing asylum seekers cash welfare benefits — something the federal government bars so state and local taxpayers have to foot the entire bill.
On top of that, New York City is court-mandated to guarantee shelter to all, something Mayor Eric Adams should seek to overturn. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny observed that “the network of thieves” lives mostly in the shelter system.
That includes the migrants who beat up two cops at Times Square on Jan. 27. They had a string of previous arrests but were still living in shelters, courtesy of N.Y. taxpayers.
Adams is imposing an 11 p.m. curfew at some shelters. That’s window dressing.
Providing room and board to the same people who rob and threaten us makes no sense. Once migrants get in trouble with the law, the shelter system should be notified and they should be evicted. The only shelter they get should be at Rikers.
The Statue of Liberty says, “Give me your tired, your poor.” It doesn’t say your lawbreakers, brutes and gang leaders.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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“Criminals posing as asylum seekers are turning American cities into war zones.”
DAAAA…… What would anyone expect by the Democrat Party importing 10 Million unvetted, unvaccinated, homeless illegal immigrants and then forcing the U.S. taxpayers to provide food, clothing, housing, medical, transportation and even entertainment at $2000.00 plus per month, every month and costing the U.S. taxpayer 20 BILLION dollars every month.
I know many U.S. veterans and citizen taxpayers who can’t afford to live like these U.S. taxpayer supported illegal immigrants that the treasonous Democrat Party has forced upon us.
If I illegally enter a bank, does that bank owe me support???
What gets me is when they DO arrest these KNOWN GANG members, they often let them free, RIGHT THE SAME DAY?
What ever happened to RICO LAWS, and things like “GUilt by association” laws? ARE Not every member of gang Z, guilty of ANY CRIME that gang performs? Especially when so many have rules like “you must shoot someone to get in”?/
Forget being a minority, gay or a woman as the voting segment edge winning, over the top way to win/steal a divisive election. Joe and his crime family have identified the crowd of gang tattooed illegal criminals as their next prime segment of identified vote getting destined to put him over the top this year, particularly those who bear the common tattoo democrat party insignia “666” mark of the beast, whose tattoos, which if Trump gets elected, should be changed to “ILLEGAL ALIEN” tattooed across their forehead for all to see before getting released at the border into the law-abiding general population. Given a choice to take the tattoo or go back home, most would abandon their marks of the beast and willingly take the mark of the new American treasury emptying, democrat social dependent, where now it is the law-abiding taxpayer that currently gets internationally handcuffed to prevent them from living a united, safe, wholesome, drug-free, sexually fecund, sane American life. Life force sucking Democrats are to sane Americans, what a Succubus is to a sleeping American Atlas shrugged Giant, who upon awakening is somnambulantly unable to understand just how many ways he got screwed by those from their Democrat self-created Chicago, New York City housed Helter Skelter illegal alien shelters, paid for by Obama type socially redefined redistributed honest American wealth they use, of which they have turned honest taxpayer money into society destroying filthy lucre.
Why for years, do you think leftists have been trying everything to ‘normalize’ criminals, AND GET CRIMINALS ‘rights to vote’ back??
Tommy the Pinball Wizard cound see this happening from 100 miles away.
Which is exactly why the brain-dead dem-rats never saw anything but future votes. Destroyed the country to win elections.
they have declared war on the american people so when does it become open season on these criminals?
I agree. WE NEED TO declare wanted dead or alive, bounties on EVERY GANG MEMBERS HEAD.
A 62-year-old woman was brutally dragged down a Brooklyn street by one of these moped thieves who made off with her purse.
Coming to a city near you…. and brought to you by the Brandon Admin.
AND even IF The criminal scumbag is even found and arrested, GOOD LUCK getting all those Soros funded liberal DA’s to charge a SINGLE one of them.