How Tren de Aragua used New York’s migrant shelters to build a criminal empire: “Hiding in plain sight”

In just over a year, a once-unknown South American street gang has gained a foothold in the Big Apple, exploiting the immigration crisis to build a violent criminal enterprise from within the walls of the city’s shelters.

Tren de Aragua, a gang of Venezuelan-bred thugs, now terrorizes Gotham City with armed hoods and moped drivers, sells illegal weapons under the noses of private shelter security guards, and runs seedy prostitution rings in neighborhoods suddenly besieged by marauding migrants.

The gang, which also sells a lethal fentanyl mix called Tussi or “pink cocaine,” has grown so fast that it has so far overwhelmed both average New Yorkers and the city’s elite police force.

“Not all immigrants are here to commit crimes, not all immigrants are gang members,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny. “But these TDA guys are hiding very well in plain sight in the immigrant community.

“We’re not looking to arrest the food delivery person, but these guys go so far as to wear Uber Eats clothing and delivery bags while they’re committing their crimes,” the chief told The Post. “When we arrest them, they’re very eager to talk about the crime they’ve committed.

“They are not willing to talk about ADHD itself.”

The gang, whose name means “train of Aragua” in Spanish (a state in north-central Venezuela), now runs robbery and heist rings across the city that have terrorized neighborhoods.

In Jackson Heights, a stretch of Roosevelt Avenue known as “Lover’s Market” has become a testament to TDA’s strength and influence, with street vendors selling stolen goods and an open-air red-light district where immigrant prostitutes walk the streets day and night.

A 24-hour brothel raided by New York police last week may have ties to the gang, sources said.

Long list of victims

A recent crime wave has seen nearly two dozen robberies carried out by immigrants armed with guns or knives, with the offenders typically aged between 15 and 19, police sources said.

The teams move in groups of half a dozen or more, targeting not just retailers but also ordinary New Yorkers: one victim was accosted by a TDA gang and threatened with a knife, beaten and robbed in June.

In July, another victim was relaxing near a Central Park playground when two thugs forcibly robbed him of $80 and took his phone, forcing him to give up his password before fleeing.

And last month, a woman walking near Rockefeller Center was robbed by another migrant.

The New York Police Department also recently dismantled a major gang-linked robbery ring, with nearly two dozen immigrant teenagers arrested or identified as suspects in 21 separate and often violent robberies.

“They were like, ‘We need your phone, we need your stuff,’ because I had my purse with me, my phone, AirPods, Apple Watch,” one victim told The Post. “They wanted everything, but I couldn’t give them anything because I had some money, I had some stuff in my purse.

“They started hitting me in the face,” he said. “I was stepping back, trying to defend myself, but I couldn’t do anything. And then five more guys came in, in total, at least 10 of them.”

With little respect for law enforcement, TDA gang members are also not shy about attacking police officers.

Gang member Bernardo Castro Mata, 19, was arrested in Queens in June and charged with shooting NYPD officers Richard Yarusso and Christian Abreu after they caught the robbery suspect carrying a gun.

In February, suspected gang member Jesús Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa, just 15, was arrested for allegedly shooting a tourist and a police officer in Times Square.

A month earlier, a cowardly gang of immigrants with alleged ties to the gang assaulted two NYPD officers in the same area, and one of them, identified as 22-year-old Jhoan Boada, was brazen enough to give reporters the middle finger as he left court without bail.

‘Very bad people’

For most asylum seekers, the gang is a stain on their community and an example of the rampant violence and lawlessness that forced them to leave their home countries in the first place.

“I wouldn’t want the violence I grew up with to start here,” one Venezuelan migrant said Sunday at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. “I wouldn’t be here if I saw what I saw in Venezuela. I brought my children here so they wouldn’t have experiences with criminals like there are over there.”

Another migrant simply called the gang “very bad people.”

Ground zero for TDA’s operation in New York City is Randall’s Island, where a massive tent city has been erected to help accommodate the surge of migrants from the U.S. border.

Kenny called it “the main central site.”

“You have the shelter itself and you also have sort of a tent city where people who are not registered to be at the shelter have set up on their own,” the chief said.

He said one immigrant smuggler who was stopped by police “didn’t want to go into Randall’s because it’s too dangerous. There are a lot of people there who shouldn’t be there, it’s a congregation of people.”

But they have infiltrated other shelters: Sources said one TDA bigwig was kicked out of the sprawling Hall Street shelter in Brooklyn for breaking the rules, but returns every other day to collect profits from drug sales at the facility and to smooth over any disputes between gang members.

International dispute

The 4,000-bed shelter is also home to a rival Venezuelan gang called “El Carro De Lost Caragijos 666,” which has a conflict with TDA that dates back to before its arrival in the United States.

Tren began expanding outside its home base in 2018, appearing on the Venezuelan military’s radar when it resorted to murder and bribery to win lucrative rail contracts in the city of Maracay, and soon established chapters elsewhere in South America.

The gang members infiltrated the United States among the millions of immigrants who crossed the border and settled across the country, from cities like El Paso and Chicago to the beaches of Florida and the Central United States.

Members are told to get distinctive tattoos that mark them as members, and body art typically includes anchors, clocks, crowns and phrases including the word “guerrero,” which means warrior in Spanish but also pays homage to Hector “Nino” Guerrero, the leader of the Tren de Aragua in Venezuela.

Gang tattoos also tend to feature the number “23” or NBA stars Michael Jordan and LeBron James, who wear the number on their jerseys, while others include images of bulls — apparently a nod to the Chicago Bulls basketball team, a city where TDA has flourished, sources said.

Last week, an immigration enforcement source told The Post that the gang has also expanded into New Jersey, in part with new recruits drawn from the Big Apple.

Shelters are the focus

In New York, TDA recruiters worked in city shelters to recruit new members, many of whom were forced to join their ranks under threat of having their families attacked by the gang.

Any asylum seeker who refuses to join is labeled “Culebra,” an enemy of TDA.

As many immigrants sought work and took food delivery jobs, TDA exploited the industry by placing armed robbers and even hitmen on mopeds and scooters, often posing as deliverymen.

Guns and drugs were smuggled into shelters like Randall’s Island inside food delivery bags, which are rarely checked or passed through metal detectors by security personnel, sources told The Post.

Migrant hitmen teams also use the scooters to take out rivals or dissident gang members, with a driver and gunman riding the two-wheeled vehicles and gang members keeping an eye on nearby cars, the sources said.

Sources said TDA members are not shy about opening fire on police officers, a common practice in Venezuela, where shooting at police usually means getting away.

When caught in New York, TDA gang members confessed to their crimes, but most refused to admit their affiliation with the cruel and vengeful gang for fear of retaliation.

Additional information from Valentina Jaramillo and Jennie Taer