Federal authorities have conducted a major crackdown this week in the Queens, NY district represented by progressive liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and it has links to human trafficking and prostitution ring operating under AOC’s watch.
The notorious ‘Red Light’ district of Queens, at the heart of AOC’s district that has long been a haven open-air prostitution and crime. Now, a law enforcement raid just took down a violent international criminal sex trafficking operation happening under the nose of AOC’s district, authorities said.
According to a Fox News report, several members of a violent illegal immigrant gang accused of “unleashing terror” to maintain control of the notorious Red Light district were just arrested in a major bust.
Eight members of the ruthless 18th Street transnational gang are accused of carrying out several brutal beatings and stabbings to maintain their dominance of the Roosevelt Avenue commercial corridor in Queens. They also distributed fake passports and counterfeit currency, dealt drugs, and trafficked firearms while extorting local businesses for rent payments, local prosecutors said.
Seven of the eight gang members are in the country illegally, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office told Fox News.
They are all members and associates of the 18th Street gang, which was formed by Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles in the 1960s and today has members throughout the United States as well as in Mexico and Central America, prosecutors said.
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.
The latest bust of AOC’s hometown area is part of a long line of rampant crime happening under her nose.
The Queens-area in the report has also been a long-time haven for illegal prostitution and sex trafficking. Locals have likened it to a “Red Light district” or a third-world flea market, given the sidewalks are often full of women soliciting sex as well as vendors selling all sorts of stolen or counterfeit goods and unregulated food vendors.
For years, locals have also expressed frustration over the criminal activity — and AOC has done nothing to stop it.
As previously reported by The Horn News, a well-known local brothel near two schools in AOC’s district was finally shut down in May by the NYPD after months of advocacy by local leaders who say she did nothing to help them close it.
Nicknamed the “Bodega Brothel” by locals, the establishment was operating on the second floor just off the Roosevelt Avenue strip in Queens, where prostitutes are known for openly soliciting sex on sidewalks, local Democratic district leader Hiram Monserrate told the media at the time.
Video from inside the brothel reveals five cramped, makeshift rooms divided by wooden panels and shower curtains, each just large enough to hold a bed.
The bodega was located across the street from two public schools, and students have been forced to walk past the sex workers outside the brothel on their way to and from class for months.
Monserrate, who led the campaign to shutter the location at the time, stood outside and praised the police for acting.
“The shutting down of the ‘bodega brothel’ was long overdue, but it finally got done,” said Monserrate, who also toured the brothel and described the sleazy state of the establishment.
“This place is clearly unsightly and unsanitary, and, quite frankly, disgusting,” said Monserrate, a former Democratic state senator and council member who said he organized four separate rallies to close down the brothel.
Monserrate said he and local groups have called on AOC and other elected officials to advocate for the shuttering of other illegal brothels, but few have helped.
“AOC did not play a role at all,” said Monserrate, who was chased out of a local square in October because he opposed protesters advocating for prostitution to be allowed in the neighborhood.