By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-10-30 10:18:24 | Updated at 2024-10-30 17:29:18
7 hours ago
Members of the vicious Tren de Aragua gang, its associates and suspected co-conspirators have been arrested 517 times citywide this year – with a whopping 295 busts coming near Midtown Manhattan’s popular tourist spots, crime stats reviewed by The Post reveal.
The NYPD has identified 41 migrant gangbangers in the Venezuelan crew — not including an affiliated youth crew and other associates — who alone amassed 143 arrests, with almost half the bookings in Midtown’s busiest retail neighborhoods since January, according to the data.
But the network’s reach goes much farther, with affiliated gang Los Diablos de la 42 and other co-defendants — and cops believe there are more than 200 members of TDA still to be documented.
“If you go back two years — that’s about when we think they first started arriving — we’ve made 45% more arrests than we did two years ago,” a law enforcement source said. “This is a gang that conspires to make money off of committing crimes.”
Some 48% of the arrests for the 41 identified TDA members were in eight central Manhattan precincts, which include landmarks like Times Square, Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall.
In addition to the 41 gang members identified by the NYPD, TDA’s criminal web extends even beyond their ranks, sources said.
The gang has also given birth to a baby-faced offshoot with members as young as 11-years old calling itself “Diablos de la 42” — which translate to “devils of 42nd Street.”
TDA, Diablos — and other “associates” and co-defendants — were arrested 517 times citywide through the start of October, with 57% of those busts, or 295 arrests, coming in Midtown, the stats show.
“When you add associates and co-defendants that aren’t in the [NYPD gang] database, there’s 80 more individuals who are candidates for the database, and possibly hundreds as arrest associates in other crimes,” the law enforcement source said.
“When you factor in those associates it’s 295 out of 517 total arrests we took in Midtown and neighboring precincts,” the source said. “That’s TDA, [Diablos] and their associates. That’s 57% impacting crime in the 14th, 18th, 17th, 19th precincts. It’s not just one area.”
Most of the migrant arrests have been on felony charges of robbery and grand larceny, but also include assault and car theft raps, the data shows.
Among the most notorious TDA gangbangers busted in the city is Bernardo Raul Castro Mata, 19, who allegedly admitted in a hospital-bed confession that he was part of a Tren robbery crew that posed as food delivery workers to pull off armed heists.
Castro Mata is now jailed on attempted murder charges for allegedly shooting two NYPD cops.
Also on the NYPD Tren gang list are Kelvin Servita Arocha, 20, and Wilson Juarez, 22, part of a mob of cowardly migrants who jumped two cops in Times Square in January and ran off.
Both were identified as gang members amid the outrage over the caught-on-video attack on the officers.
One troublesome member of the junior gang, dubbed “Little Devil,” was busted 11 times in under five months before he was finally locked up by a judge after The Post revealed his exploits.
The teen terror, whose name is being withheld because of his age, crossed the US border in Texas in May 2023 and ended up living at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown with his mom before he allegedly went on his robbery and larceny crime spree, according to sources and court records.
The NYPD has ID’d 41 Tren de Aragua members in nearly 150 arrests in 2024 and believes there could have been 200 more. Three suspects on its list:
Kelvin Servita Arocha
Age: 20
Alleged crime: Part of a Times Square migrant mob that jumped two cops in a shocking caught-on-camera brawl in January.
Bernardo Raul Castro Mata
Age: 19
Alleged crime: Shot at two cops during a routine traffic stop in June.
Wilson Juarez
Age: 22
Alleged crime: Charged alongside others in the January Times Square melee where the attackers ran off, only to be arrested later.
The pint-sized thug is one of five teens identified as Diablo members, sources said.
“As an agency, we’re not throwing just anyone in a database,” NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said. “We are disciplined with who we put in the database. We are aware of co-defendants with our TdA members and LDDL42 members, and we are vetting through our process. We just don’t throw anyone in there.”
The underaged Diablos have posed a particular problem for law enforcement because of New York State’s lenient treatment of younger criminal defendants.
The state’s “Raise the Age” law, passed in 2017, increased the age of criminal responsibility to 18. Previously, youngsters as young as 16 could be automatically tried in adult court.
In a scathing report last week, the city Department of Investigation revealed that the Big Apple’s two juvenile detention facilities are overwhelmed with more violent residents as old as 21.
Also handcuffing cops are the state’s 2019 criminal justice reforms, which, among other things, barred judges from setting bail for most crimes, including the non-violent larceny and robbery charges that many of the migrant gang members are busted for.
Meanwhile, Tren has established a criminal foothold in the five boroughs, including gun and drug sales, primarily a lethal fentanyl mix called Tussi, or “pink cocaine.”
Authorities have also linked the gang to sex trafficking, including a long a stretch of Roosevelt Avenue in Queens known as the “Market of Sweethearts,” by forcing migrant women into prostitution to pay off excessive smuggling fees.
