Tren de Aragua migrant gangbangers taken down in NYPD sweep as officials warn of new breed of ‘ghost criminal’
It’s “the beginning of the end” for a vicious migrant gang holed up in the Big Apple.
Ten high-ranking members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua — the “absolute worst of the worst” of the migrant gangbangers — were knocked out of commission this week in a bold nationwide sweep by led by the NYPD, The Post has learned.
Cops seized a cache of more than 30 illegal guns — including AR-15 assault rifles and a Glock 9mm with a trigger modification making it an automatic — and nabbed four of the illegal immigrant goons in the city.
Four others are now in custody elsewhere including in Florida and Texas, and two are in the wind.
“[TDA] was quite possibly as big of a challenge as law enforcement has ever faced, where we dealt, quite possibly, for the first time, with what I referred to as ‘ghost criminals,’” NYPD Assistant Chief Jason Savino told The Post. “A ghost criminal is an individual that is unbeknown to us, may have misrepresented their name and really is not on our radar. So that’s challenging in and of itself.
“This team is taking 10 of the absolute worst of the worst gang members, criminals in the entire city down today, and I am proud,” Savino said. “Be proud.”
The NYPD gun bust operation — dubbed “Operation Train Derailment” — came on the heels of an unrelated federal sweep that took down 25-year-old Anderson Zambrano-Pacheco, a leader of the gang sought on a warrant out of Colorado.
The vicious Venezuelan street gang established a foothold in the five boroughs after sneaking into the US amid a flood of migrants from the border with Mexico.
New York’s Finest has already taken more than 60 TdA guns off the streets, officials said.
Among the gang members busted by the NYPD in the Big Apple was Eduardo Garcia, who got into a scuffle with cops in the lobby of his Morris Heights apartment building in the Bronx.
His girlfriend, Rosemary Sanchez was arrested inside the couple’s apartment, police said.
Brian Aguilar, 21, who has prior busts on robbery and gun possession, was picked up at 242nd Street and White Plains Road in the Bronx as part of the sweep.
Finally, TdA member Alejandro Moises Randon Serano, 19, who has prior robbery and gun arrests, was taken into custody at a local hospital, where he was being treated for an unrelated injury. .
Four others are in custody out of state, including two in Texas and Florida, with two in the wind.
The gang members rounded up by the NYPD were being arraigned in court in Queens, where the operation originated, on Wednesday, with a press conference scheduled for later in the day.
“We’ve had long term investigations in the past,” NYPD Capt. Jeff Heilig told The Post.
“The message gets sent around the country. It resonates,” he said. “We had the message come back to us on the street that criminals hear what happens in New York City and the arrests involved, and they’re afraid to do business in New York City.
“I think this takedown, this investigation, signifies the beginning of the end of TdA.”
Law enforcement sources said the gang recruited aggressively from within tax-funded city shelters for asylum seekers, including out of a massive tent city erected at Manhattan’s Randall’s Island to handle the influx of migrants.
According to sources, private guards at the facilities, who are barred from working hand in hand with the NYPD, have allowed guns and drugs to filter into the shelters because food deliveries in which the items are stashed are not searched or put through metal detectors before being allowed in.
The gang itself is named after the Venezuelan state of Aragua, where the gang grew out of a local labor union and formed into a crew of inmates who took control of a local prison and slowly expanded to neighboring Colombia and Chile starting around 2018.
Once the US border opened to a flood of asylum seekers, they branched out across the country – including in the Big Apple, where migrant gangbangers, many working out of Bronx apartment buildings, peddled drugs, guns and women as part of a sordid human trafficking operation.
TdA gang members also sport trademark tattoos that, bizarrely, include images of bulls and the number “23” once worn by Chicago Bulls basketball legend Michael Jordan — perhaps in homage to the gang’s early grip on the Windy City.
However, law enforcement agencies, including the NYPD, set their sights on the gang pretty quickly.
One pint-sized offshoot of the gang, calling itself Diablos de 42, or devils of 42nd Street, wreaked havoc in Times Square, with marauding mobs of underaged migrants pulling off strong-arm robberies targeting tourists and defenseless New Yorkers alike.
Following a series of reports about the young thugs by The Post, the NYPD targeted the group and essentially put the out of commission, sources said.
One 15-year-old Venezuelan punk became the poster child for the gang, which benefitted from the Empire State’s soft juvenile justice laws to remain free despite a string of violent crimes in Midtown – until prosecutors had enough and had the teen locked up.
Cops then set their sights on the big guns – the TdA hoods who set up a criminal enterprise in the five boroughs.
“The vast majority of our newest arrivals come here to New York with the absolute best intentions in mind, the same intentions that all our family members did,” said Savino. “They come here to essentially look for a life to better themselves and their families. They come here for all the right intentions.
“With that being said, we do have a core group, a small core group of individuals that come here with ill intentions,” the chief added. ” They come here almost exclusively to commit and engage in criminality, and it’s no different than any other criminals we deal with.”
