Members of Venezuela’s most violent gang, El Tren de Aragua, have arrived in New York City, where they have already unleashed their criminal schemes, according to a new report.
In recent weeks, New Yorkers have been terrorized by brazen thieves on mopeds who have been snatching the phones and wallets of innocent pedestrians. In one of the most brutal incidents yet, a 62-year-old woman was seen being dragged on a Brooklyn street by a thief on a moped, part of a larger crime conspiracy surrounding stolen iPhones.
Last week, officials raided the Bronx home of the operation’s alleged leader, Victor Parra, 30, who officials say placed calls for stolen phones on the app, offering money for migrants to bring him the stolen devices. .
Once he had the devices, a hacker would break into people’s Apple Pays and empty their accounts, before the criminals sent the phones to Colombia to be reprogrammed and sold.
It has since emerged that NYPD detectives believe the organized robbery plot is linked to El Tren de Aragua, which they fear has been sending its gangsters across the US-Mexico border as part of a wave of asylum seekers, the New York Post reported.
In one of the most brutal incidents yet, a 62-year-old woman was seen being dragged on a Brooklyn street by a thief on a moped.
A group of migrants has been working as a ‘ghost’ criminal enterprise in New York City
Parra remains a fugitive and, although police have not yet publicly confirmed the gang’s presence in New York, El Tren de Aragua already had its first murder in Miami, according to authorities.
Former Venezuelan police officer José Luis Sánchez Valera, 43, was brutally murdered by Tren de Aragua gangster Yurwin Salazar, 23, according to Miami officials.
Sánchez was beaten, tortured and forced to hand over the keys to his apartment and his safe, where his life savings in gold bars were hidden. His terrified niece, with whom he lived, cowered under the bed as the killers made their way through the house.
As shocking as this savage murder may seem, it is minor compared to what the gang is capable of, experts say.
The Aragua Train is less known than the Mexican cartels or the Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, which was born in a Los Angeles prison in the 1980s among immigrants from El Salvador.
Mayor Eric Adams was present at the sting operation and later appeared at a news conference with police.
But El Tren de Aragua is no less violent and has been allowed to flourish under the anarchic regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, expanding to Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Chile.
A trans sex worker in the Peruvian capital, Lima, was filmed in February 2023 begging for her life before being shot dead: her killers pumped 31 bullets into her body.
The Aragua Train was moving into the neighborhood and they wanted to replace the local prostitutes with Venezuelan women.
Six were killed in one week, and 18 were shot in the feet as a warning to stop walking the streets.
Two dozen more were killed in 2023. 35 more are missing.
“They enter local economies where there are Venezuelans and take on the climate climate with excessive force,” former Border Patrol agent Ammon Blair told the Post. “They will begin shooting prostitutes controlled by rival gangs and carry out the executions live on social media to establish their presence.”
Former Venezuelan police officer José Luis Sánchez Valera, 43, was brutally murdered by Tren de Aragua gangster Yurwin Salazar, 23 (pictured), according to Miami officials.
In September, Venezuelan authorities, under the direction of dictator Maduro, raided the Tocorón penitentiary, the gang’s de facto headquarters.
Gangsters have used the wave of migration to hide among legitimate asylum seekers: More than 334,000 Venezuelans crossed the US-Mexico border in fiscal 2023, second only to Mexicans.
The Border Patrol detained at least 41 members of Tren de Aragua who were trying to cross the border between October 2022 and September 2023.
The group has become so brazen in Texas that officials with the state’s anti-gang task force recently documented gangsters charging their fellow Venezuelans to use bathrooms at the border.
It is also feared that El Tren de Aragua is actively recruiting members in the city’s shelters.
Emerging in 2012, the name means ‘Aragua train’, a reference to a union of train workers in the state of Aragua in Venezuela.
In September, Venezuelan authorities, under the direction of dictator Maduro, raided the Tocorón penitentiary, the gang’s de facto headquarters. The raid made headlines around the world due to images showing the luxury in which the prisoners had been living.
Within the walls of Tocorón, Tren de Aragua had built a zoo, with ocelots, lions and crocodiles; a pool; a playground; a baseball stadium with bleachers; restaurants; and a nightclub, called Tokyo.
However, experts say the raid was a farce.
It was nothing more than “an organized surrender” of the Aragua Train to the Maduro regime, says Humberto Prado, director of the non-governmental monitoring group Venezuelan Penitentiary Observatory.
The operation freed some 1,000 gang members, as well as their infamous leader, Héctor Guerrero Flores, alias ‘Niño Guerrero’.
His whereabouts remain unknown, although Interpol warned that he may have attempted to flee to the United States, mixing with more than 3.8 million migrants, who have entered the country since President Joe Biden took office.
What is not in doubt is whether other members of Tren de Aragua have infiltrated the United States.
“Law enforcement authorities in Chicago, New York and Miami have already discovered elements of the Aragua Train in their cities,” said Joseph M. Humire, executive director of the Center for a Safe Free Society.
“The same thing that is happening in South America will now begin to happen here in the United States in Venezuelan migrant communities,” Blair told KTSM.
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