Juvenile illegal immigrant gang members from New York stay out of prison because of their age

Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan prison gang whose name means “Train of Aragua,” sets the locomotive in motion on a New York City heist that sees its young members repeatedly released from prison.

Teenage illegal immigrants in the gang have attacked people in the Big Apple’s famed Times Square and other landmarks but remain at large because of the Empire State’s lenient laws against juvenile crime, according to Jason Savino, deputy chief of the NYPD’s Bureau of Detectives.

“It’s shocking to say the least, and we’ve seen progress with this group,” Savino told “Fox & Friends” Tuesday morning.

The suspects, some as young as 11, are being housed at the former Roosevelt Hotel, which the city converted into a refugee shelter after an influx of border crossings thousands of miles away, the New York Post reported earlier this week.

The Venezuelan gang TREN DE ARAGUA recruits children from middle schools in Texas

A still from a social media video shows suspected teenage Tren de Aragua members from the Roosevelt Hotel allegedly attacking nearby Times Square in a series of robberies. (Obtained from New York Post)

According to investigators, the suspected gang members posted pictures and videos of their weapons online.

“We know they have access to guns, as evidenced by the fact that they have committed robberies at gunpoint, and they have been bold enough to display pistols in and around their social media,” Savino told the newspaper.

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The Roosevelt Hotel on 45h Street closed its doors in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic before reopening as a refugee shelter. The nearby Row NYC Hotel is in a similar condition. Migrants were photographed loitering outside both locations, using drugs and alcohol, as a migrant-fueled “crime wave” swept the city.

A still from a social media video shows suspected teenage Tren de Aragua members at New York’s Roosevelt Hotel. (Obtained from New York Post)

“This is the first formulated group we have found that is a group of about 20 people who hang out in a pack format every day, posting on social media and bragging about their crew,” Savino added. “You see little pockets in and around Times Square and in and around the shelters.”

Venezuelan gang member TREN DE ARAGUA caught in New York, two years after border patrol released him into the US

The 20 members of a subgroup of the gang, which calls itself “Los Diablos de lat 42” in reference to New York’s 42nd Street, were arrested in connection with 50 different crimes, according to Savino.

“When they first came, they were actually encouraged not to commit crimes, so they stuck with pickpockets, then moved to robberies, shortly after the scooter crime,” Savino told Fox News. “Why? Because their original crime had no consequences.”

He blamed New York’s lenient treatment of juvenile and even adult criminal suspects for failing to deter the gang from getting worse.

“The people who actually engage in this crime will be empowered,” he said.

The worst attacks, he said, were called “wolf pack robberies,” in which five or more suspects surrounded tourists and extorted them for their belongings. Some are weapons, others are knives.

A still from a social media video shows suspected teenage Tren de Aragua members allegedly attacking New York’s Times Square as part of a series of robberies. (Obtained from New York Post)

Despite the uphill battle to lock up juvenile suspects, Savino said his team continues to make arrests and collect evidence.

“We’re called the best detectives in the world for a reason,” he told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade. “They come back with this frustration. What do we do? We regroup. We’re building even better cases.”

According to the city administration, almost 200,000 asylum-seeking migrants arrived in the Big Apple last year. More than half are expected to have their claims rejected, but until then they are technically under legal review in the US.

As migrants continue to pour across the southern border, the Tren de Aragua prison gang has expanded from its base in Venezuela to numerous U.S. cities, including New York and Chicago. The gang has also been linked to crimes in small towns, including Aurora, Colorado, and Athens, Georgia, where the suspect in the murder of nursing student Laken Riley was linked to suspected members.

A group of migrants hang out in the Times Square area of ​​New York City on Wednesday, February 7, 2024. (Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)

The gang was blamed for an explosion in cellphone and wallet thefts in New York City earlier this year.

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Now members are becoming more brazen, committing robberies at gunpoint, bragging on social media and staying out of jail because teenage suspects aren’t being jailed, Savino told the Post.

Tren de Aragua, or TdA, began in a Venezuelan prison and spread to parts of South and Central America before reaching the United States

The criminal organization is known to recruit members from migrant shelters and was recently accused of recruiting children from middle schools in Texas.