Federal agents captured the immigrant Tren de Aragua gang barricaded in a Bronx apartment after tracking one of their ankle monitors to their hideout, sources told the Post. .
Seven gang members were handcuffed during the Dec. 5 attack on an apartment building on the edge of Crotona Park, including a 28-year-old Venezuelan man who was wearing a court-ordered surveillance device to guide police to the gang. Children with interpersonal problems were also included.
Law enforcement officials wondered why Jarwin Valero-Calderon was released despite at least three arrests, a conviction in Nassau County, and a federal deportation order. That’s better,” he quipped.
“What does supervised release actually look like?” the source asked. “The important thing about ankle monitors is that you have to actually monitor them to be effective.”
Still, the attack was a significant blow to TdA, a violent group that has been sneaking into the United States with waves of asylum-seeking migrants since 2022 and gaining a foothold in New York.
Law enforcement officials say the gang recruits from taxpayer-funded immigrant shelters and operates violent theft and robbery rings in the five boroughs while trafficking drugs, guns and women. It is said that there is.
“What we're seeing is an evolution of Torren de Aragua, and they're invading these sanctuary cities,” said former Denver ICE Director John Fabricatore. “They start consolidating themselves and then they throw out their tentacles in multiple other places where they think they can continue to make money.
“I think people are finally starting to realize how bad the situation is.“
Most of the gang members arrested inside the Bronx apartment were searched on multiple warrants after crossing the border with Mexico and then disappeared, law enforcement officials said.
Among them was Jonaikel Alexander Gil Cardozo, 24, who collected at least four busts in two states after crossing the El Paso border in September 2022.
Cardozo was arrested by the New York City Police Department in July on charges of grand larceny and theft, and two more Big Apple arrests were made in June on charges of reckless endangerment and robbery, officials said.
Officials said he was also arrested on June 28 in Greenville, South Carolina, on suspicion of shoplifting.
Another notorious TdA member, Jesús Manuel Quintero Granado, 30, crossed the border in El Paso with his Peruvian wife and child in September 2022 and then headed to Canada, sources said.
However, Canadian authorities rejected the family's asylum request in September 2023 and sent them back to the United States, where northern border officials released them while they awaited immigration processing, the official added.
Granado was arrested four times in New York and New Jersey and quickly proved to be an undesirable character.
Officials said he was first arrested for shoplifting in Paramus on Aug. 18, 2023, and then arrested by the NYPD in July for grand larceny and possession of stolen property.
Officials said he was arrested on new shoplifting charges in Paramus on Oct. 1, and three days later in Walkill, in upstate New York, on separate grand larceny and theft charges.
Angel Gabriel Marquez Rodriguez, 19, was also taken into custody after the Dec. 5 Bronx attack. He was released awaiting a court date after crossing the border in September 2023, only to run afoul of the law in Chicago just two months later. officials said.
Rodriguez was arrested on Nov. 3, 2023, in Chicago on suspicion of shoplifting. Still a free man, he returned to New York City, where he was arrested on March 30 and June 8 on charges of theft.
Another immigrant gangbanger arrested in the raid, 21-year-old Fernández Franco Gleymar de Dios, was arrested at the border in May and was being processed for deportation.
However, sources said he claimed fear of persecution and was released in time for a court date, but then disappeared and was ordered deported in absentia on November 20.
Meanwhile, immigrant fugitive Valero Calderon, who used an ankle monitoring device to lead police to the gang, had evaded the law multiple times before the Bronx attack, sources added.
Mr. Calderon entered the United States in August 2022 in Eagle Pass, Texas, and was released with a court date.
He turned himself in to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Big Apple the following month, but quickly created his own rap sheet, officials said.
Records show he was arrested twice on theft charges in New York and New Jersey and sentenced in June 2023 after being convicted of another petty theft charge in Nassau County on April 24, 2023. .
Sources said Calderon subsequently ignored mandatory check-ins with immigration authorities and was marked as a fugitive before being arrested in Florida on February 17 of this year on charges of fraud, theft and resisting arrest. Despite being arrested, he somehow remained free.
He was ordered deported on April 25, but was still at large as of December 5.
All of the illegal immigrants were identified by federal immigration authorities as members of the TdA.
The gang and its juvenile offshoot, the Diablos de la 42 (Devils of 42nd Street), have been on the New York Police Department's radar in recent months for a string of robberies, including one in Times Square.
A small terrorist group, some as young as 11, takes advantage of the state's lax criminal justice and juvenile detention laws and remains on the streets despite a troubling rap sheet.
