Tren de Aragua has become the “scourge” of Times Square thanks to the Harris-Biden administration’s lax border policy — and the feds need to swoop in to stop the ruthless migrant gang, ex-NYPD top cop Ray Kelly said Sunday.
Kelly — a former Clinton appointee to Haiti during its deadly 1990s upheaval — was asked in the 77 WABC radio interview if migrants who belong to gangs, including Tren members based in makeshift hotel shelters in Manhattan tourist mecca Times Square, amount to an “invasion” of the US.
“Absolutely,” Kelly told John Catsimatidis, host of the station’s “The Cats Roundtable” program.
“It’s the reason for the federal government to get involved,” the Big Apple’s former police commissioner said.
“The federal government would be a major help if a task force were put together to address it. [The feds] have more tools as far as federal laws are concerned,” Kelly said.
The ex-top cop noted that the NYPD currently doesn’t have enough officers to adequately police migrant-related gang activity in New York City.
The city’s and state’s “sanctuary” laws — which limit cooperation between local authorities and federal immigration agents — also handcuff the cops, making it difficult for them to monitor what goes on in the emergency shelters, Kelly said.
“The cops cannot get … intel information the way they would like to get it,” he said.
He added that the security guards contracted by the city to safeguard and patrol Tren strongholds — such as the Roosevelt hotel and other sites converted to emergency migrant shelters — are of little help.
“They don’t do very much, really. They’re not doing anything” [to crack down on gang activity],” Kelly said of security workers.
He referred to a series of crimes committed by members of Tren de Aragua reported extensively by The Post, including knife and gunpoint robberies carried out by younger teens who are part of the gang’s junior offshoot called “Los Diablos de la 42” that operate out of the Roosevelt hotel in Manhattan, among other emergency migrant hotel shelters.
He said the teen terrors can’t be prosecuted as adults after New York raised the age or criminal responsibility from 16 to 18. Some of the pint-size terrors are even younger than 16.
“The scuttlebutt is that the tourists are really backing off from Times Square. We know that the hotel rooms have been taken over by gangs — almost half,” Kelly said.
Noting that the city has bid out to continue using hotels as emergency migrant shelters for up to three additional years, Kelly added, “[The migrant gangs] are going to be around for a while.”
He said migrants account for a “heavy number” of arrests in the Midtown precincts in and around Times Square.
“But we can’t officially get that information. They are a scourge,” Kelly said.
The city’s ex-police commish served as director of the Multinational Force in Haiti from October 1994 through March 1995 under Democratic then-President Bill Clinton.
Kelly described the current situation in the Caribbean nation as deteriorating and triggering the recent exodus of thousands of desperate Haitians to the United States. Many of the Haitian migrants are eligible to stay in the US under family reunification and immigration programs to work as they apply for a green card.
Gangs have taken over the capital city, Port Au Prince, Kelly said.
“Things are worse in Haiti,” he said. “No question about it. … There’s not an easy answer here.”
