On a busy Saturday night, on January 27, a mob of illegal Venezuelan immigrants viciously beat two New York City policemen in Time Square. The police were there to maintain law and order, which illegal immigrants in the neighborhood were disrupting. Several of the alleged attackers were caught and arrested but were quickly released with no bail because of New York’s bail “reform” law. Nor were they handed over to ICE for immediate deportation. New York City is a sanctuary city, and New York law bars local law enforcement officers from handing over suspected illegal immigrants to ICE for detention and prompt removal from the country.
The New York Post reported that these alleged cop beaters “were part of a wolf-pack of violent shoplifters who just moments before had snatched handbags in a nearby store and attacked an employee who tried to stop them.”
A police source quoted by the New York Post described the new normal in New York City this way:
“The quality of life in Times Square has gone in the toilet, especially right in front of the migrant center on 42nd. Basically, it got so bad with them harassing tourists and pick-pocketing them that the grand larcenies have shot up like 125% since these migrant shelters opened. Tourists, large crowds and a lot of businesses create an environment of easy prey.”
All the while, New York taxpayers are paying for the freebies that illegal immigrants such as the accused cop beaters receive, most notably free shelter under New York City’s right-to-shelter law. And New Yorkers are enduring steep cuts in their government services to boot.
One of the accused assailants showed his utter contempt for the police and the law-abiding residents of New York City by giving them the finger on camera as he left the courthouse following his release. Several of the accused have reportedly departed New York for the even greener pastures of California, a sanctuary state, using fake names to get on a bus provided by a charity organization.
“You have eight people attacking a lieutenant and a cop,” said NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell, adding that those “arrested should be sitting in Rikers [Island] right now on bail.”
Sadly, there is no way that the illegal immigrants who are accused of pummeling the policemen will have to answer for their crimes with any serious punishment, much less deportation. They are benefiting from a disgraceful trifecta: President Biden’s open border policies, the Manhattan leftwing district attorney office’s own version of catch-and-release, and New York City’s sanctuary city policies that shield illegal immigrants from ICE.
Last year, a Venezuelan illegal immigrant, Daniel Hernandez Martinez, was arrested six times for a string of fourteen crimes during his first two months in New York City. He committed his first crime the day after he arrived. Instead of jail or deportation, he remained free to steal and attack at least three strangers and two police officers. Finally, as his crime wave escalated and became increasingly violent, Martinez was detained on a measly bail of $5000.
“This is not an isolated incident,” said one longtime NYPD officer. “These migrants are getting arrested quite often here, and we really don’t know who they are. They really don’t have ID. They’re not being vetted properly, but some of them are committing some of the most violent crimes here.”
New York City is not alone, of course, in dealing with the fallout of President Biden’s reckless open border policies. These policies have allowed millions of unvetted illegal immigrants to stream across the border into the United States, eighty-five percent of whom have been released. They are overrunning cities and towns across the country and endangering Americans everywhere.
But New York City and other sanctuary cities such as Chicago have made matters even worse for their own residents with insane leniency policies towards illegal immigrants and towards criminals in general.
Venezuelans topped the list of nationalities apprehended for illegally crossing the border into the United States during fiscal year 2023. In many instances, they made phony claims for asylum and were not vetted before being released and allowed to remain in the country. An illegal immigrant who was convicted of murder in Venezuela, for example, managed to make his way to Cape Cod, Massachusetts where he was later found living in state-funded migrant housing. Who knows how many crimes he might have committed in the meantime?
Venezuelan illegal immigrants for whom crime is a way of life include members of the vicious Tren de Aragua gang, who have managed to infiltrate the United States since President Biden instituted his open border and catch-and-release policies.
The Tren de Aragua gang began in a Venezuelan prison and has grown into a transnational criminal enterprise engaged in such major crimes as murder, kidnapping, robbery, drug dealing, and sex trafficking.
“The Aragua Train [Tren de Aragua] is in the United States,” said Britton Boyd, FBI deputy special agent in charge of El Paso. “We already have evidence that they crossed the border and we were able to confirm that through interviews with gang members after the crossing. They are crossing and there is a presence.”
Tren de Aragua gang members have blended in with the flood of asylum-seekers entering the United States. The FBI and other federal agencies are concerned that Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, who leads Tren de Aragua and is wanted by Interpol, is planning to sneak into the United States, if he is not here already.
FBI deputy special agent Boyd warned, “Our main concern is that they can organize cells in the United States, cells like the ones they already have in South America.”
Members of the Tren de Aragua gang are reportedly in the Chicago area already. All told, as of the middle of last November, 686 Venezuelans have been arrested in Chicago, representing a whopping 11,333% increase compared to 2021.
A Tren de Aragua gang member was just recently arrested in Florida for murdering a retired Venezuelan police officer who was living in the Sunshine State.
Circling back to New York, law enforcement investigators are looking into whether any of the Venezuelan illegal immigrants accused of viciously beating the two policemen in Times Square have ties with Tren de Aragua. More broadly, according to the New York Post, police have identified “citywide grand-larceny and robbery patterns linked to migrants” who may include Tren de Aragua gang members.
President Biden created this catastrophe, which he is now demanding that Congress fix with new legislation. The president does not need any new legislation to clean up his own mess. He has all the executive authority he needs to reverse course, enforce existing immigration laws, and finally close the border.
But despite Biden’s sudden tough-sounding talk about containing illegal immigration for political purposes, the open border president will do nothing to really solve the crisis, whether Congress passes enhanced security legislation or not. It will take a changing of the guard at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to build a border wall or razor wire fencing as Texas is doing, end catch-and-release, restore the Remain in Mexico program, and enforce the laws already on the books.