Tren de Aragua gang members, minors live in Roosevelt Hotel, target Times Square

A group of Tren de Aragua gangsters are living in a taxpayer-funded shelter, the Roosevelt Hotel, while they are robbing stores in Times Square. And there doesn’t seem to be any justice meted out for their crimes.

Around two dozen members of the gang are part of the pack, some as young as 11, and have moved from purse snatching to armed robbery, making victims of seasoned New Yorkers and tourists, the New York Post reported Monday. But they’ve all managed to evade jail because of their youth and New York state’s lax punishment for crime, Detective Bureau New York Police Department Assistant Chief Jason Savino told the Post.

“You have individuals that are brazen,” Savino said. “We know they have access to guns, evident by the fact that they’ve done gunpoint robberies and they’ve been brazen enough to showcase pistols in and around their social media.”

“This is the first formulated group that we found where this group of about 20 individuals that, in pack format, hang out every day, they post on social media, they boast about their crew,” the chief said. “You see little pockets in and around Times Square and in and around the shelters.

“But as far as a true threshold, it’s been limited to shelters.”

They call themselves Los Diablos de la 42, Spanish for Little Devils of 42nd Street and they number about 21 gang members. The crew has been arrested for 50 different jobs but not one member is in jail, Savino said. “They committed the robberies [in] all the sexy places, in and around Central Park, in and around Times Square, in and around transit,” he said. “And targeting tourists." He continued, "They kind of had a graduation of sorts, and a progression where originally it started as snatches and then went to strong-armed robberies, and then started brandishing knives in a pack format.”

The Diablos group operates out of the Roosevelt Hotel and is guided by an older member of the gang, sources told the outlet. Savino said the group communicates online, using their government-issued phones. "They use group chat on their government-issued phones, so you know that that’s what you’re using. And the group app is titled according to their gang, really, and they’re using their government-issued phones," he said.

Also worrisome for New York’s Finest is the possibility that an all-out gang war could erupt between Tren de Aragua and one of the Big Apple’s most notorious gangs, the Latin Kings. There’s already bad blood between the two groups, with authorities noting a dispute dating back several years. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised to create an Operation Aurora that would clamp down on criminal gangs like Tren de Aragua that are terrorizing not just New York City but small cities like Aurora, CO where they have taken over entire apartment complexes.