New York police link string of robberies to Venezuelan gang

Assistant Chief of Detectives Jason Savino on Tuesday said police believe a group of nearly two dozen young migrants are behind a spate of robberies in Times Square. Savino told WNYW, the Fox affiliate in New York, that some of the suspects are as young as 11 years old and that the suspects are members of a subset of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. The group is allegedly operating out of the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan and includes unaccompanied minors who arrived in the city during the recent migrant surge, Savino said.

What other crimes has the gang been connected to recently? Texas police earlier this month arrested a Tren de Aragua gang member in Houston after he allegedly tried to recruit middle school students, according to media reports. The 32-year-old is an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Does the group pose a threat to the rest of the country? The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center on Tuesday released a report about the gang’s increasing presence in the United States. The report claims hundreds of gang members have entered the country in recent years among the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants who have come into the country both legally and illegally.

Dig deeper: Read Addie Offereins’ report about the gang’s terror among migrant communities.