Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined federal agents Tuesday in New York City to announce the arrests of immigrants wanted on criminal charges, including a man accused of kidnapping who was seen on a viral video entering a Colorado apartment with reputed gang members.
Noem was the latest high-ranking official from President Donald Trump’s administration to tout the president’s ramped-up immigration enforcement in a city where arrests were being made. Border czar Tom Homan and acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove were in Chicago on Sunday as federal agents made arrests there.
“Arresting some criminal aliens this morning in NYC — thank you to the brave officers involved,” Noem posted on X. “Criminal alien with kidnapping, assault & burglary charges is now in custody — thanks to @ICE. Dirtbags like this will continue to be removed from our streets.”
An operation in the Bronx early Tuesday snared Anderson Zambrano-Pacheco, 26, who authorities said was part of a group of men, including members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, who entered an apartment in Aurora, Colorado, last summer and were recorded on a widely viewed video.
The charges were brought by local authorities in Colorado. It was not immediately clear what would happen next for Zambrano-Pacheco. Two other men who police said were in the video were arrested in New York in November. They are still in ICE custody.
The incident caught President Donald Trump’s attention during the presidential campaign, and he announced a plan called “Operation Aurora” to target migrant gangs. The video led Trump to claim that the Denver suburb had been taken over by the gang, which city officials denied.
In an arrest warrant, Aurora police said Zambrano-Pacheco was also wanted in a kidnapping in which at least 20 armed men abducted and threatened two people in late June. In addition, police said Zambrano-Pacheco was with a group of armed men before a shooting occurred shortly after the apartment incident that was caught on video.
It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer or if he was a member of Tren de Aragua.
Local and federal authorities, including Aurora police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, investigated the apartment video incident for months beginning when Joe Biden was still president.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Tuesday’s arrests did not appear to be part of a “wholesale raid,” but rather an operation targeting specific people accused of crimes.
“I want to be clear, there’s always been ICE raids in the state of New York, even in the past. This is not a new dynamic,” she said.
Zambrano-Pacheco is the fifth person to be arrested in connection with the Aurora apartment incident. The video showed six armed men, including at least some people identified as Tren de Aragua members by federal authorities, entering the apartment shortly before a fatal shooting outside the complex.
In Chicago, city leaders criticized the highly publicized enforcement operations that started over the weekend in the nation’s third-largest city. That included the surprising decision to allow daytime television psychologist “Dr. Phil” McGraw to livestream immigrant arrests alongside Homan.
“This desire to popularize fear is unconscionable and abhorrent,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said Tuesday at a City Hall news conference alongside Police Superintendent Larry Snelling, city lawyers and others. “We’re talking about people’s lives.”
Johnson defended the city’s strong sanctuary protections that bar Chicago police from cooperating with federal immigration agents. Chicago has been a so-called sanctuary city for decades and has strengthened those protections several times, including during Trump’s first term.
ICE has offered few details about the operation in Chicago, including the number of arrests. The agency did not return a message seeking comment Tuesday.
Snelling said Chicago police have communicated with federal agents but did not participate in the operation or cooperate. He estimated roughly 100 people were taken into custody.
In other developments, authorities said Tuesday that none of the 41 people taken into ICE custody following a weekend raid in Colorado are likely to face drug or gun charges. The Sunday raid targeted drug trafficking by Tren de Aragua at a makeshift nightclub near Denver.
The people who had gathered dropped their drugs and guns before agents got inside, making it hard to connect the items to specific people, according to a spokesperson for the Drug Enforcement Administration, Steffan Tubbs. The drugs found were amounts for personal use, he said.
Back in the Bronx, no one answered the door at apartment 1A by the entrance to the building where Zambrano-Pacheco was detained. But Richard Egu, 50, who lives in a third-floor unit, said he was roused from sleep by the commotion around 5 a.m.
Egu, a correctional officer who is originally from Nigeria and has been a naturalized citizen for more than 15 years, said he didn’t venture out to investigate and did not know the man who was arrested.
He said he understood the need to arrest and deport those in the country illegally who commit crimes, but he also worries about the effect such enforcement will have in the community.
“You need to give immigrants a chance. These people are already here,” he said. “Figure out the ones who are committing the crimes. Don’t just judge all immigrants as criminals.”
