Residents living in the biggest hub of Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s hometown district are pleading with federal authorities as claims of prostitution, drugs, and even human trafficking continue to turn a once-friendly area into a seedy nightmare.
Activists in AOC’s hometown of Queens are calling on the FBI to take control of the popular Roosevelt Avenue area of the NYC borough, dubbing it a “gangland” running illegal sex and drug operations.
“We request that you initiate an investigation into what we understand are gangs engaging in criminal enterprises including human trafficking, illegal narcotics sales and the mass distribution of fraudulent documents which poses a national security threat,” wrote Rosa Sanchez, head of the Restore Roosevelt Avenue Coalition, and Democratic district leader Hiram Monserrate in an Aug. 14 letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, which was obtained by The New York Post.
Local activists are pleading for federal intervention because state and local laws are limited and inadequate to address the problem, according to the report.
The rampant crime on AOC’s home turf has been an ongoing challenge for local law enforcement.
However, both Sanchez and Monserrate thanked the FBI and other agencies in the Trump administration for prosecuting members of migrant gangs that have been terrorizing the Queens area — including the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua and the 18th Street gang, which regularly extort brothels, beat rivals and sell drugs and phony IDs to finance an illicit network based in El Salvador.
However, they still say thing are going too far and are in desperate need of federal assistance to clean up the streets.
“However, both gangs continue to operate in our community and we impress upon you that more needs to be done to keep our community safe,” they told the FBI director.
They noted that the NYPD has made more than 500 prostitution-related arrests thus far this year along what is called “The Market of Sweethearts,” but brothels continue to operate.
Many of them are controlled by Chinese gangs, Sanchez and Monserrate said.
“According to our sources several locations are being operated and controlled by Chinese organized crime. … The information we have continued gathering is unsettling,” the Corona-Elmhurst neighborhood leaders said.
Monserrate said the Triads are one of the Chinese groups involved in sex trafficking.
The 18th Street Gang members are still selling fraudulent green cards, Social Security and driver’s licenses on Roosevelt Avenue between 80th and 84th Streets, too, the letter writers said.
“Organized crime by both Latino and Chinese foreign nationals continues to wreak havoc in our community,” Sanchez and Monserrate said. “We urge your agency to respond and rid our community of modern slavery and a dangerous criminal element that operates flagrantly.”
They forwarded suspected addresses of brothels to the FBI.
FBI officials — and AOC’s team — have not commented on the requested resources at the time of publication.
However, the lawlessness has been on official’s radar for a long time, including Democratic NY Gov. Kathy Hochul last year dispatching state troopers to assist the NYPD in policing the area.
The rampant crime has also become a hot-button issue in the polarizing NYC mayoral race.
NYC Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa said he would target the landlords who are renting space to pimps and prostitutes.
“You go on the side streets. It’s open-air prostitution in which the girls lure you upstairs. So the number one problem is with the landlords,” said Sliwa, who appeared at the press conference in front of a brothel.
“The landlords openly and knowingly rent their establishments to houses of prostitution, whether they’re on onsite landlord or they’re a landlord who’s not around, you know, a missing-in-action landlord, they should be the ones that are made culpable because these gals would not be able to function if they didn’t have a place to take the johns into.”
He noted Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani had backed legislation to decriminalize prostitution, and claimed Mamdani wouldn’t address the problem.
“I would deal with the problem. I’d go right after the landlords — padlock the buildings….You padlock his facility, you fine him, you threaten to take the building away. Watch how fast they’ll keep the prostitutes away…As mayor, I’m making sure it’s closed down everywhere,” Sliwa said.