Federal agents apprehended a migrant Tren de Aragua gang crew holed up in a Bronx apartment after tracking one of their ankle monitors to the location, according to The Post.
The Dec. 5 raid on an apartment building on the outskirts of Crotona Park, carried out by a federal task force comprised of Homeland Security Investigations and the NYPD, resulted in the arrest of seven alleged gangbangers, including a troublesome 28-year-old Venezuelan national who was wearing a court-ordered monitoring device that led the feds to the crew.
“Better late than never,” quipped a law enforcement source, who questioned why Jarwin Valero-Calderon was free despite at least three arrests, a Nassau County conviction, and a federal deportation order.
“This is what actual supervised release looks like?” the source inquired. “The thing about ankle monitors is you have to actually monitor them to be effective.”
The raid was still a significant blow to TdA, the violent gang that snuck into the US with a wave of migrants seeking asylum in 2022 and established a foothold in New York.
According to law enforcement officials, the gang recruits inside tax-funded migrant shelters and operates violent theft and robbery crews while peddling drugs, guns, and women throughout the five boroughs.
“What we’re seeing is this evolution of Tren de Aragua, where they’ve gone into these sanctuary cities,” said former Denver ICE chief John Fabbricatore. “They’ve begun to solidify themselves, and then they spread tentacles to numerous other locations where they believe they can continue to make money.
“I think people are finally starting to realize how bad the situation has gotten.”
According to law enforcement sources, the majority of the gang members apprehended inside the Bronx apartment were wanted on multiple warrants after crossing the US border into Mexico and then disappearing.
Among them was Jhonaiker Alexander Gil Cardozo, 24, who had at least four arrests in two states after crossing the border in El Paso in September 2022.
Cardozo was previously arrested by the NYPD in July on charges of grand larceny and stolen property, and he was busted twice in June for reckless endangerment and robbery, according to sources.
According to sources, he was arrested for shoplifting on June 28 in Greenville, South Carolina.
Another notorious TdA member, 30-year-old Jesus Manuel Quintero Granado, crossed the border in El Paso in September 2022 with his Peruvian wife and child before entering Canada, according to sources.
However, Canadian authorities denied the family’s asylum request in September 2023 and returned them to the United States, where northern border agents released them while they awaited an immigration hearing, according to sources.
Quintero Granado quickly established himself as an undesirable, with four arrests in New York and New Jersey.
According to sources, he was initially arrested for shoplifting in Paramus on August 18, 2023, followed by an NYPD bust for grand larceny and possession of stolen property in July.
On October 1, he was arrested on a new shoplifting charge in Paramus, followed three days later by another grand larceny and stolen property arrest, this time in Walkill, upstate New York, sources said.
Angel Gabriel Marquez Rodriguez, 19, was also arrested following the Bronx raid on December 5, according to sources. He was released with a pending court date after crossing the border in September 2023, only to run afoul of the law two months later in Chicago.
Rodriguez was arrested in Chicago on November 3, 2023, for shoplifting. Still free, he returned to New York City and was arrested on larceny charges on March 30 and June 8.
Another migrant gangbanger apprehended in the raid, 21-year-old Fernandez Franco Greymer De Dios, was being processed for deportation after being apprehended at the border in May.
According to the sources, he claimed fear of persecution and was released pending a court date, only to disappear, prompting a deportation order in absentia on November 20.
Meanwhile, Valero-Calderon, the migrant fugitive whose ankle monitor led authorities to the gang, evaded arrest several times prior to the Bronx raid, according to sources.
Valero-Calderon entered the United States in August 2022 through Eagle Pass, Texas, and was released with a court date.
According to sources, he reported to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in New York City the following month, but he quickly accumulated his own criminal record.
He was arrested twice on larceny charges in New York and New Jersey, resulting in a conviction in June 2023 — following a separate petty larceny conviction in Nassau County on April 24, 2023, according to records.
Valero-Calderon then skipped a mandatory check-in with immigration authorities and was designated as a fugitive, but he remained free despite a subsequent Florida arrest on Feb. 17 this year for fraud, larceny, and resisting arrest, according to sources.
He was ordered deported on April 25, but he was still on the loose by December 5.
Federal immigration officials identified all of the illegal migrants as members of the TdA.
The gang and an underage offshoot known as the “Diablos de la 42,” or Devils of 42nd Street, have been on the NYPD’s radar in recent months, including a series of heists in Times Square.
The tiny terrors, some as young as 11, have taken advantage of the state’s lax criminal justice and juvenile detention laws to remain on the streets despite troubling criminal records.
