A bipartisan group of legislators in New York City is demanding that embattled Mayor Eric Adams launch an effort to remove gang members from the city’s migrant shelters “as a matter of urgent public safety.”
Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island) published a letter Thursday to the mayor, co-signed by five Republicans and four Democrats citing the growing influence of the Venezuelan street gang Tren de Argua.
“It has become evident that foreign-based criminal organizations like Tren de Aragua have been using taxpayer-funded shelters across the city as a base for their illicit activities, which include organized theft, robbery, assaults, sex trafficking, and in some cases, murder,” the council member wrote, according to the New York Post.
“This is supported by numerous news reports, victim and witness accounts and NYPD data that shows spikes in these criminal patterns in neighborhoods near migrant shelters,” Borelli continued.
“Unfortunately, due to the confluence of recent criminal justice reforms and the sanctuary city laws in this city and state, these foreign national criminals have been operating with impunity,” he wrote.
Arrests have skyrocketed inside city shelters. Each year since 2020, the arrest rates have risen, with 924 arrests in 2020; 1,045 in 2021; and 1,600 in 2022.
The numbers are rising again this year, the paper added, with arrests likely to be on track to hit around 2,336 by the end of this year. It would be a 64 percent rise compared to last year. It is also a 91 percent hike over 2021.
“We believe it is a reasonable standard to require that residents of taxpayer-funded housing do not commit crimes or associate with those who do — which is a standard also applied in federal public housing,” Borelli’s letter added.
“While we do not all agree as to how to fix our country’s broken immigration system or whether the city should be required to shelter non-citizens, we do agree that New York taxpayers should not have to subsidize criminal activity that puts us all in danger,” they continued.
“And there is nothing — no law, no court mandate, no policy — to stop you from putting an end to this injustice other than the political will to do so,” the politicians continued.
The letter was signed by Democrats Mercedes Narcisse, Susan Zhuang, Kalman Yeger, and Robert Holden, and Republicans Joann Ariola, Vickie Paladino, Inna Vernikov, Kristy Marmorato, and David Carr.
In reply, Adams agreed that the city has a responsibility to keep the shelters safe from gang violence and insisted that he and the council members “want the same thing.”
“No one should come here to our city and inflict violence on everyday New Yorkers,” the mayor added as he pledged to “find out what [they are] talking about.”
Adams also noted that city migrant officials do not “run criminal background checks on our guests” when they are admitted to city shelters. But he said that violations of the code of conduct could lead to any particular migrant to lose their spot in a shelter, mayoral spokesperson Amaris Cockfield explained.
The dangerous Venezuelan street gang has become a growing threat in the U.S. and has spread to a dozen states, according to the Center for a Secure Free Society.
Last week, the New York Post reported on the gang’s recruitment of young teens who they have dubbed their “Devils of 42nd Street,” who have been engaging in robberies and violent crimes all across the city. This “Los Diablos de la 42” consists of up to 20 teens and young boys, several of who have been arrested over and over again.
Officers of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also reported the arrest of a man accused of second-degree assault on NYPD police officers in a story that was at the top of every news cast early this year.
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