Migrant arrested in NYC on charges out of Aurora, Colorado, is among highest-profile arrests in Trump crackdown

CNN

29-01-2025

A suspected member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua who was wanted in connection to charges out of Aurora, Colorado, was arrested during a federal immigration crackdown in New York City on Tuesday morning.
Anderson Zambrano-Pacheco, 26, was arrested in the Bronx early Tuesday by the Drug Enforcement Administration and US Homeland Security Investigations officers, police said. He was wanted for burglary and felony menacing for an incident at an apartment complex in Aurora last August that was captured on camera, according to the Aurora Police Department.
He is a high-ranking member of the Tren de Aragua gang, according to a senior law enforcement source with knowledge of the operation. The arrest was part of a series of immigration enforcement actions targeting suspected gang members, according to the source.
Newly-installed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accompanied law enforcement on the sweep and repeatedly posted about it on her X account. The highly-publicized arrest comes as at least two agencies assisting US immigration officials with sweeps have told their personnel to ensure their clothing clearly depicts their respective agency in case journalists film them, sources familiar with the operations told CNN. It all adds up to what CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter has described as 'deportation TV.'
Zambrano-Pacheco is one of about 3,000 people taken into custody in the last three days as part of the Trump administration's rapid crackdown on undocumented immigrants across the US. That group of people includes a number with serious criminal convictions or charges, including members of the Tren de Aragua gang in New York City and Atlanta.
Yet the immigration sweeps have also led to what border czar Tom Homan has referred to as 'collateral arrests,' a bloodless buzzword for the arrest and detention of men and women from other countries without any criminal record.
The tally of arrests represents a significant increase from the Biden administration, which averaged about 300 immigration arrests per day in the fiscal year that ended October 2024.
Zambrano-Pacheco was wanted on a warrant out of Aurora on two felony counts stemming from an August 18 incident captured on security camera, in which six armed men knocked on doors at an apartment complex, police said. The fatal shooting of 25-year-old Oswaldo Jose Dabion Araujo occurred about 10 minutes later, police said.
The security camera footage spread widely on social media, and Donald Trump repeatedly mentioned Aurora while running for president, saying immigrants were violently taking over buildings in the city, as part of his pledge to crack down on undocumented immigration.
More than five months later, five of the six men are now in custody, and the sixth is wanted, police said.
Two were arrested in the Bronx during a gang task force operation on November 27, police previously said.
Another was arrested in December in Aurora for his suspected involvement in the kidnapping of a married couple by undocumented immigrants at the same apartment complex, police said. That incident was 'without question a gang incident,' and both the perpetrators and victims are Venezuelan immigrants, police chief Todd Chamberlain said.
The warrant for Zambrano-Pacheco was issued as part of 'Operation Safe Haven,' an Aurora Police task force set up to investigate crimes involving the migrant community, police said.
About 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, the Pew Research Center's latest estimates indicate.
The Trump administration is aiming for each of the 25 ICE field offices to make at least 75 arrests a day, according to two sources.
'The numbers you cited are a floor, not a ceiling,' White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told CNN. 'The goal is to arrest at least that many, but hopefully many more, and the Department of Justice is going to be closely involved in providing the manpower to help achieve those objectives.'
John Sandweg, the former acting director of ICE in the Obama administration, told CNN's Laura Coates he's concerned the pressure to rack up large arrest numbers could result in heavy-handed tactics.
'What I'm very interested to see is in the next few weeks as these target lists get exhausted — as they just run out of the easy pickings of the people connected to the criminal justice system — what operational tactics are they going to utilize that feed the machinery that the Trump administration has built?' he said.
CNN's Gloria Pazmino, Priscilla Alvarez and Michael Williams contributed to this report.