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Several members of a violent gang comprising migrants accused of “unleashing terror” to maintain dominance over a well-known crime area, represented by progressive Democratic Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Grace Meng, have been apprehended by police in a significant operation.
Eight individuals belonging to the brutal 18th Street transnational gang are charged with executing numerous vicious assaults and stabbings to preserve their control over the Roosevelt Avenue business corridor in Queens. They are also implicated in distributing fake passports, circulating counterfeit money, trafficking drugs and firearms, and extorting businesses for rent, according to prosecutors.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office informed Fox News Digital that seven out of the eight gang members are in the country illegally. These individuals are identified as members and affiliates of the 18th Street gang, which originated with Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles during the 1960s and now has members throughout the United States, Mexico, and Central America, prosecutorial statements revealed.
The suspects “are accused of unleashing terror onto Queens communities through brutal assaults, extortion, fraud, and drug trafficking,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said in a statement.
U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr. speaking at a press briefing announcing the busts. (US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York via X @EDNYnews)
Former Democrat state Senator Hiram Monserrate, who was part of the group calling for a federal intervention, praised the takedown.
“As our Restore Roosevelt Avenue coalition stated months ago, what was and is still happening on Roosevelt Avenue is international organized crime involving human trafficking, shoplifting syndicates and the distribution of narcotics,” Monserrate said.
“Many stood silent, we didn’t. Thank you to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI. Still much to do!”
The 18th Street gang is divided into several “cliques,” with the eight suspects being part of the “54 Tiny Locos” faction of the gang, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors pointed to three brutal assaults where the gang showed its muscle to assert influence in the area.
Monserrate and other local leaders have been voicing concerns about gang crime on the strip for months. (Restore Roosevelt Ave.)
In a December 2021 case, three suspects assaulted two victims outside a bar on the strip after being asked if they were members of a gang. The gangbangers allegedly smashed a victim’s head open with a glass bottle of tequila, leaving him with severe lacerations to his face and nerve damage.
In a January 2022 attack, two suspects held a victim down outside a bar while another perpetrator stabbed him in the lung. The 18th Street thugs then attacked a second victim with large wooden planks, causing lacerations that required sutures.
In June 2024, the gang beat a victim with a bike lock and a metal chair, among other things, believing he was a member of a rival gang.
Meng praised law enforcement for working to combat gang violence in the area. Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“As I’ve continued to say, public safety must always be a top priority in our communities and dangerous criminals who commit violent crimes must be held accountable,” Meng said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “This includes ANYBODY responsible for these types of heinous activity.”
The troubled strip has been a magnet for crime for years.
WATCH: New York City block becomes open-air brothel
NYPD Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Kaz Daughtry told Fox News Digital in May that issues like prostitution have permeated the area for decades and he remembers it being a hot spot for prostitution in the ’90s. Daughtry said the migrant crisis exacerbated the situation as many migrants were drawn to the area, given that it already has a large Latin American population.
In October, Mayor Eric Adams spearheaded a heavy police clampdown called Operation Restore Roosevelt, which consisted of more than 200 additional police officers that reduced crime by 29% in the area, Daughtry said.
Daughtry said 15 brothels were raided out of 30 court filings made by the police. For instance, days after Ocasio-Cortez’s town hall, authorities shut down a notorious brothel dubbed the “bodega brothel” by locals, which was operating above a corner store near two schools in Ocasio-Cortez’s district.
Video from inside the cat house obtained by Fox News Digital shows squalid conditions, with five cramped, makeshift rooms sectioned off by wooden panels and shower curtains with just enough room to fit a bed in every one of them.
Several other brothels have been shut down since then.
New York Reps. Grace Meng and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. ( Andrew Harnik/Getty Images, left, David Dee Delgado/Getty Images, right.)
The takedown was a multi-agency operation involving the FBI’s New York Field Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of New York, the Queens District Attorney’s Office with assistance from Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Secret Service and the Labor Department.
The suspects are Felix Bonilla Ramos, 36; Uriel Lopez, 30; Refugio Martinez, 32; Margarito Ortega, 38; Orlando Ramirez, 24; German Rodriguez, 34; David Vasquez Corona, 29; and Marco Vidal Mendez, 36. Only Rodriguez has legal status in the United States.
