“An illegal is just a criminal newcomer we haven’t met yet” — Joe Biden

NYPD officer tackles a moped driver as part of ongoing crackdown following incidents of scooters being used for crimes around the Big Apple

Thursday's operation was part of an ongoing effort by the NYPD to crack down on the illegal use of moped and scooters, which are increasingly being used in crimes throughout the city.

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Bernardo Raul Castro-Mata, 19, was approached by police as he drove the unregistered motorbike the wrong way down a one-way street in Queens. 

The migrant responded by opening fire on the officers with an unlicensed gun, striking one cop in the leg while the other sustained a shot to their bulletproof vest. He then fled the scene on foot at around 1.40am, the NYPD said.

Mata, who illegally entered the US at Eagle Pass, Texas, last July, allegedly told police that he is part of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, law enforcement sources told the New York Post.

The 'coordinator' of the 'snatch and grab' gang is known to provide their members with mopeds that are used in robberies, including stealing cell phones.

The notorious gang has been referred to as 'an invading criminal army' by US lawmakers and a member is suspected of the brutal murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.

The sources also told the New York Post that Mata first checked into a shelter on Ditmars Boulevard in Queens along with three other people, but he hadn't been living there since May 15.

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In February, New York City police officers arrested seven Venezuelan migrants who allegedly stole wallets and cellphones from 62 women with the help of their mopeds.

One of the most shocking thefts involved a migrant on a moped dragged a 52-year-old woman along a Big Apple street to steal her phone - a robbery caught on surveillance footage.

The scooter thief reportedly stole her bag, phone, credit cards, keys, glasses, $60 cash and her ID last month in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn.

For almost a decade, Trump has been warning of thia. Here’s what he said this past April:

"Crime is down in Venezuela by 67% because they're taking their gangs and their criminals and depositing them very nicely into the United States.”

Here’s Politfacts “fact check” that purports to refute that claim — the criminals aren’t coming north because of Biden’ open border, it’s becausae there’s nothing left to steal in their home county. Ah … okay.

"Crime dropped because the opportunities for crime were lost. Generalized poverty in the country, the absence of money circulating, the bankruptcy of companies and commerce all made the opportunities for crime in the country drop," Briceño Leon told PolitiFact in Spanish. "When crime opportunities drop, criminals don’t have people to steal from or extort."

Violent crime has also dropped because many people have left the country, but that does not substantiate Trump’s claim of criminals relocating from Venezuela’s prisons to U.S. cities.

Universidad Central de Venezuela criminology professor Luis Izquiel said many of the people who lived in poor and rural areas and were often the victims of crimes left the country. People who commit crimes have also left, partly because they had fewer opportunities to commit crimes, Izquiel said. 

The migration of millions of young people has also shifted the nature of crime in Venezuela, Briceño Leon said. Small neighborhood gangs have vanished as young people have left and large criminal organizations have consolidated power. 

"Crime has dropped because there’s more organized crime, and organized criminals act more rationally," Briceño Leon said. So, there’s a drop in lethality. For example, young people in small gangs might have killed each other over the same romantic interests. That is less likely to happen now.