XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns, sac.politics
XPost: alt.society.liberalism, talk.politics.misc

“Brat summer” may be over, but try telling that to the brats of Tren de
Aragua, the Venezuelan criminal gang which, thanks to the Biden-Harris administration, is now a transnational network of delinquents
terrorising law-abiding Americans in at least ten states. Now active in
New York, the gang thrives on the city’s infamous leniency on crime and generous migrant policies, a volatile combination that has reduced already-struggling Gotham to an ever more helpless state of anarcho-
tyranny.

As recent police investigations and criminal prosecutions have
revealed, Tren de Aragua has no need to subsist in the underground
world of urban blight where previous generations of immigrant crime
gangs flourished. Instead, it appears to operate in the very facilities established to provide assistance to migrants who have illegally
crossed the southern border, which Democratic presidential candidate
and current Vice President Kamala Harris has so disastrously
mismanaged.

Tren de Aragua’s leaders and members – identifiable by particular
tattoos – have been reported to live, recruit new members, and sortie
from migrant shelters, hotels appropriated for migrant use, and other
social welfare institutions. New York City mayor Eric Adams, himself
now under indictment for bribery and campaign finance crimes, estimates
that migrant-related expenses will cost more than $12 billion by 2025
and could “destroy New York City”.

To perhaps its greatest advantage, Tren de Aragua knows that petty
theft, minor stick-ups, and even armed assaults are unlikely to face
any significant policing in America’s largest city. So-called
“progressive” New Yorkers, who often live in upscale neighbourhoods far
– but not totally – removed from casual street crime, have routinely
called for reductions in police powers, lax criminal justice policies
based on peculiar ideas of “restorative justice”, and the broad decriminalisation of a range of offences, allegedly to offset perceived
biases in policing and other forms of “systemic racism”.

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who was elected in 2021 with
84 percent of the vote, may be best known for prosecuting former
president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for
business record-keeping offences that Bragg elevated from misdemeanours
to felonies. Simultaneously, however, Bragg downgraded some 60 per cent
of felonies in his jurisdiction to misdemeanours and has publicly
stated that he will only seek prison terms for the most serious crimes.

In New York, as in other American cities controlled by the Democratic
Party, the theft of goods below a certain value has been effectively decriminalised, a situation that has led many chain shops to close or
abandon their urban locations or simply lock up large quantities of
items to prevent theft. Simple assaults, personal thefts, and other
street crimes often go unpunished.

The practice of requiring even some serious criminal suspects to post
bail to be released from police detention has largely been abandoned
and is generally out of bounds for minors. Tren de Aragua exploits this
last policy with particular ruthlessness, and is known to have
recruited teenagers – and in some cases children as young as 11 – to
commit crimes ranging from purse snatching to armed robbery in the full knowledge that they will almost certainly not be held even if they are apprehended.

Even apprehending them is itself a challenge. Under New York’s
“sanctuary city” policy, the police may not enter migrant facilities –
where some of Tren de Aragua’s small army of Artful Dodgers live –
without a warrant unless they are responding to an onsite emergency. In
one exceptional case reported this week, a 15-year old Venezuelan
migrant who was remanded to police custody after an alleged violent
assault and attempted robbery had racked up at least ten prior arrests
since his arrival in the country in May 2023. And even in this case, it
is widely suspected that the detention was only ordered due to adverse publicity.

The rest of the time, a group of Tren de Aragua delinquents has been
documented on social media making rude and threatening gestures as they
operate openly in Times Square, one of the city’s most celebrated
destinations, as “Los Diablos de la 42”, or “The Devils of 42nd
Street”.

The consequence is that atomised ordinary citizens can be easily
victimised yet find themselves policed if they dare act in their own
defence or the defence of their fellow citizens. Ask Daniel Penny, a US
Marine Corps veteran who will go on trial next week on a manslaughter
charge for having restrained a subway hoodlum who allegedly menaced him
and other passengers. Penny had to post $100,000 bail and has a private criminal defence thanks to a national fundraising campaign. His
attorney, Thomas Kenniff, was Alvin Bragg’s opponent to be Manhattan’s
district attorney.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2024/10/17/venezuelan-crime- gangs-have-brought-anarchy-to-the-streets/

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