After viral and shocking video footage depicted two cops being violently assaulted by a group of illegal immigrants, most of whom were promptly released without bail, pressure is mounting on New York’s leaders to address progressive policies that critics say are tying the hands of law enforcement and allowing crime to surge. 

Two of the illegal immigrants who attacked the cops belong to Tren de Agua, an extremely violent Venezuelan gang, a representative of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Marie Ferguson, tells the Sun. 

The NYPD this week issued a “Situational Awareness Alert” that the gang is rising in numbers in the city, as members claim asylum on the southern border and then head to New York. Tren de Aragua, which operates out of a notorious Venezuelan prison, is believed to be behind a wave of violent phone robberies where thieves sweep by on mopeds and grab victims’ phones. In December, a 62-year-old woman was dragged down the street in Brooklyn by moped riders. The National Guard recently began checking migrants for Tren de Aragua gang tattoos.

Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, last week indicted seven of the migrants charged with involvement in the assault on two cops in Times Square on January 27. Several hours after Mr. Bragg’s announcement, video footage was released that showed a chaotic lead-up to the incident, calling parts of the police narrative into question. 

Ms. Ferguson of the ICE confirmed to the Sun that two migrants connected with the assault, Kelvin Servita-Arocha, 19, and Wilson Omar Jaurez-Aguilarte, 21, were arrested and taken into custody on February 13.

“Both unlawfully present Venezuelan citizens have been charged in conjunction with the violent gang assault carried out on two NYPD officers and are currently detained without bond in ERO New York City custody,” she says. “Both noncitizens have been identified as members of the Tren de Aragua transnational criminal organization.”

Another migrant who had been released without bail, Darwin Gomez-Izquiel, is back in custody after allegedly taking part in a  robbery this week at Macy’s. The robbery was “entirely predictable given how our bail laws are structured,” a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and member of the Council on Criminal Justice, Rafael Mangual, tells the Sun. 

That’s because New York is “an outlier” when it comes to bail, he says, since it’s the “only state in the union that prohibits judges from considering risk of re-offense or future crime in any aspect of the pretrial release inquiry.” 

Many criminal offenses aren’t bail eligible at all, he adds, requiring the judge to release individuals on their own recognizance. For things to change, judges need to be granted the ability to impose pretrial detention on the basis of public safety risks, he notes. 

“What this reflects, in my opinion, is just a misguided commitment to decarceration for its own sake,” he says. “What ends up happening is that you have these situations where individuals who pose clear risks, both flight and pre-offense, get put back on the street, where they have further opportunities to continue engaging in crime.” 

Some violent offenders “need to be incapacitated,” he says, in order to prevent re-offense. There’s both a “systemic issue of the law, limiting the circumstances in which bail can even be requested and imposed,” he adds, but there’s also “prosecutors and judges who are unwilling to take advantage of those things, even when they’re on the table.” 

When it comes to both native and migrant crime, many of the institutions that are “best positioned to provide for the public safety” have had their hands tied by recent policy decisions, he says. “Injecting a large influx of young male migrants, some subset of whom are going to be criminal offenders,” he says, adds to the workload of what has become a “smaller, less equipped NYPD.” 

The decline in the city’s police force — down 2,500 last year alone and expected to keep dwindling — is due both to new recruits finding the environment toward cops inhospitable, and veteran cops retiring early or finding new positions. Lots of people consider joining but don’t ultimately take the job: “I’m one of them,” Mr. Mangual says. 

“In 2010, I took the NYPD exam and had the highest score in my cohort and very seriously considered that line of work. And my father, who’s an NYPD veteran, talked me out of it,” he says. 

Certain policies put police at a “significant tactical disadvantage” and meanwhile embolden offenders, he adds. “The New York city council has criminalized even the accidental placement of pressure on a suspect’s chest, back, or diaphragm in any manner that restricts breathing, even if that suspect is violently resisting,” he says, and even if it’s an accident and no injury results from it. 

In the midst of these issues, New York has the benefit of “a very rich and recent history of success combating all of these problems,” Mr. Mangual says. The NYPD has tackled the same issues in the past with a “robust” and “reinforced” force that targeted disorder on the streets in addition to violent crime. 

“The problem is that our policy environment has changed so dramatically that enforcement has become almost impossible,” he says. “Even if the NYPD makes an arrest on some of these public order offenses, you have prosecutors in the city that have committed to not charging those offenses.” 

Mr. Bragg said in a statement that he has “absolutely no tolerance” for the “despicable behavior” displayed in the Times Square assault. New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, has commended Mr. Bragg’s discipline and thoroughness in the case and said that the “overwhelming number” of more than 170,000 migrants simply “want to finish the next leg of their journey or pursuing the American Dream, but there is a small minority that’s participating in illegal behavior.”