The migrant crime wave sweeping the city just took a new twist: gun-toting teen shoplifters.
A trio of teen migrants allegedly shot an innocent tourist and fired twice at NYPD officers giving chase following a botched Times Square shoplifting attempt Thursday night.
This comes on the heels of a migrant mob’s violent beat-down of two cops, also by Times Square.
A security guard at JD Sports stopped the group, grabbed a bag of stolen merchandise — then one pulled a gun and fired, hitting a Brazilian tourist instead.
If even the kids can get guns, cops now fear, we’ll soon see more armed migrant perps.
On Friday, NYPD and the US Marshals Fugitive Recovery Task Force took a 15-year-old Venezuelan migrant, Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa, into custody in Yonkers after he had been named as a person of interest in the Times Square shooting.
Police sources say he got here in September and has been staying at a temporary shelter at the Stratford Hotel on West 70th Street.
He and the two unnamed suspects, 15 and 16, are schoolmates.
Rivas-Figuero is also suspected in a January armed robbery in The Bronx.
Here’s the latest on the Times Square shooting
- A tourist was shot in the leg at a retail store in Times Square on Thursday night by a shoplifter. The shoplifter then opened fire at an NYPD officer in Midtown, according to police.
- NYPD has identified Jesus Lejenadro Rivas-Figueroa, 15, as a person of interest in connection to the Thursday night shooting, Chief of Patrol John Chell said.
- The NYPD has offered a $10,000 reward for anyone with information leading to the suspect.
- A security guard at JD Sports at West 42 Street and Broadway approached a group of young males to stop them from stealing when one pulled out a gun, fired it in her direction and missed, hitting the nearby tourist.
- Sources said Friday that a 15-year-old and a third person were taken into custody and later released.
- Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa, a 15-year-old Venezuelan teen migrant identified as the shooting suspect by NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell, was taken into custody around 3:30 p.m. Friday at a home in Yonkers.
What now? Atop their asylum-seeker standing, the teens have “sanctuary city” protections as well as a strong presumption of kid-glove treatment in Family Court under the state Raise the Age law.
Which means any detention would be not at Rikers (or an ICE facility), but a city youth facility — and mere slaps-on-the-wrists are more likely.
It’s galling: This city has opened its arms and its wallets to migrants who crossed the border on questionable asylum claims.
They get free shelter, free meals, free clothes and free toiletries.
And these teens repaid us with thievery and violence.
State and city lawmakers need to act: Migrants adults or teens who commit crimes must face criminal penalties — including deportation — for their wrongdoing.
Criminal-justice reforms and sanctuary policies adopted in entirely different circumstances need updating to take into account the presence of newly arrived migrant gangbangers and drug traffickers.
Many migrants say they are fleeing endemic violence in their Latin American homelands.
But some are are bringing that violence here.
Letting them benefit from the Big Apple’s generosity on top of President Biden’s parole-everyone policies isn’t humanitarian, it’s madness.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
