A Venezuelan gang reaches New York

Original article here

Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we get details about a Venezuelan gang that has surfaced in New York City. We also find out why the final screenings of the film “La Chimera” were so crowded last week.

The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua—a feared criminal organization focused on sex trafficking, human smuggling, and drug trafficking—emerged in New York City amid an influx of migrants over the past two years. I asked my colleague Luis Ferré-Sadurní, who has written about Tren de Aragua’s arrival in New York with Chelsia Rose Marcius, to explain what officials are doing about the gang’s growing presence.

What do New York officials blame Tren de Aragua for? Have the gang’s activities affected the crime statistics that police collect and release?

Police have said the gang is behind a series of shoplifting incidents, targeting high-end products in department stores. Police have also linked Tren de Aragua to robberies in which gang members ride scooters and steal mobile phones and expensive watches from people on the street.

Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, has said there has been an increase in scooter-related robberies since more migrants arrived in the city two years ago. Police reported 415 incidents in early June. By Sept. 10, that number had doubled, said Joseph Kenny, chief of detectives for the police department.

Not all of those incidents are related to Tren de Aragua, Chief Kenny said. The gang also has been linked to a handful of high-profile crimes. In June, a 19-year-old Venezuelan migrant who police say admitted to being a member of Tren de Aragua was accused of shooting two police officers when they tried to pull him over while he was riding a scooter.

But it’s important to note that overall crime in New York City has fallen, while the number of immigrants in the city has risen. Most major crime categories — including murder and shootings — have fallen over the past year.

Where are the members of Tren de Aragua in New York?

Informants interviewed by police, including gang members jailed on Rikers Island, have told police that gang members live or have lived in the city’s migrant shelters. Some have likely moved out of the migrant shelters, where no one is allowed to stay for more than 30 or 60 days, though extensions are often granted.

How many members of Tren de Aragua are here?

The police are working on it.

So far, they have registered 24 members in the city’s criminal gang database. According to police, the database contains 14,000 identified members of 496 gangs in the city.

However, they believe that the number of members of Tren de Aragua is much higher than 24, partly because the criteria for labeling someone as a gang member are very strict.

Let’s take a step back. When did the members of Tren de Aragua come to New York?

Chief Kenny told us that federal law enforcement officials alerted New York Police Department earlier this year to the gang’s emerging presence in the Northeast.

Criminal cases and arrests across the country show more arrivals in recent years as the number of people crossing the southern border, particularly Venezuelans, surged during the Biden administration.

Why are law enforcement officials—at the local level in places like New York, and at the federal level—concerned about Tren de Aragua?

It is a new threat that did not exist in the United States until recently, and authorities are now hoping to prevent it from spreading further.

The gang gained notoriety in some Latin American countries and alarmed police forces in the region when it expanded its illegal sex and drug trafficking business through extortion, kidnappings and murders. The Biden administration recently designated it a transcontinental criminal organization.

The gang has now become a political flashpoint in the United States and a popular target for Republicans concerned about a so-called wave of migrant crime in the run-up to the presidential election.

What have informants told New York police about the gang’s modus operandi?

According to the police, the gang members were quickly noticed.

The gang is believed to recruit Tren de Aragua members who arrive in the United States from migrant shelters in the city.

According to an internal police document we obtained, informants told police they communicated through invite-only WhatsApp groups and that they also targeted the trafficking of Tusi, a pink, powdery synthetic drug sometimes called “pink cocaine.” It’s often laced with ketamine, MDMA, or fentanyl.

Tren de Aragua members in Latin America are not known to have distinctive tattoos. But informants interviewed by police here said some members of the gang had tattoos of crowns, anchors and bells, among other symbols.

The New York Police Department opened a post in Bogotá last month. What did that have to do with Tren de Aragua?

New York police have been conducting fact-finding missions this year in Colombia, where Tren de Aragua has a presence, to learn more about the gang from Colombian authorities. Police officials say their new liaison post in Bogotá will focus on drug trafficking and migration.