The violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has found a new tactic for exploiting the U.S. legal system: recruiting and training minors to commit crimes for them. In New York, for instance, a 2018 “Raise the Age” law eliminates bail for juvenile crimes, leading to an explosion in foreign-gang-related crime committed by minors in New York City. “Never mistake this: that the cartels and gangs — they all understand how American law works. They are experts at this,” warned Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) on “Washington Watch” Tuesday.

In recent days, New York City police have arrested 20 minors as young as 11 years old in connection with 50 crimes, but all the offenders are back on the streets — or, perhaps more accurately, in city-run homeless shelters. They “started off … doing some snatches in the parks and stuff, but then it escalated,” Biggs described. “They started doing some strong-arm robberies, and now they’re brandishing weapons. And they’re being so bold about it as to show videos on social media of what they are doing.”

Why so bold? “They understand that in New York … you have lenient prosecutor[s],” said Biggs. “The police officers are making the arrests, but the prosecutors are letting them out. They’re not making the charges.” On top of over-lenient laws, Soros-funded prosecutors simply refuse to prosecute some small crimes in the name of racial justice. In Manhattan, where most of these crimes have taken place, the local prosecutor’s office is overseen by District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D).

The lack of prosecution “provides an additional incentive to go ahead and commit these crimes,” argued Biggs. “Let’s just face it: if the border was secure, they wouldn’t be here in the first place. But they are here, and those people … that should be charging them are failing.”

The law is a teacher. And the lesson these school-age foreigners are learning is that there are no consequences for breaking laws in the United States. So, their consciences grow more callous, and their misconduct grows more flagrant. And the only way to stop this vicious cycle is for local governments to effectively enforce laws that uphold civic order and justice — the whole purpose of government (Romans 13:3-4).

These delinquent youth are part of a subset of the Tren de Aragua gang calling itself “Los Diablos de la 42” (The Devils of 42nd Street). Forty-Second Street cuts straight across midtown Manhattan, running right by Times Square, Grand Central Station, the United Nations, the Chrysler Building, Madame Tussauds, the Port Authority offices, and the flagship branch of the New York City Library. This contrasts with the typical image of an urban gang operating in an inner-city slum, which maintains control because the police dare not visit that part of town. New York City has a gang of teen criminals committing increasingly violent crimes in important, highly visible tourist destinations, and it can’t or won’t do anything about it.

“These are migrant young people that have come to this country, that are here in city-funded shelters,” observed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “They’re exploiting our lax judicial system, our criminal justice system.”

New York City is not the only American city where Tren de Aragua is terrorizing U.S. citizens. The “very dangerous gang” is doing “the same thing in Aurora, Colorado, El Paso, and Chicago,” said Biggs. “They understand very clearly that the prosecutors are not going to prosecute” in certain progressive jurisdictions, and this has allowed them to “emerge as a real criminal organization.”

When government officials refuse to prosecute crime, “local communities continue to pay the price,” Perkins lamented. In Aurora, Colo., Tren de Aragua has reportedly taken over whole apartment complexes, prompting some residents to leave. Recently released footage shows gang members beating one apartment complex employee. Biggs said immigration remains a top concern for Arizona voters, right next to the economy, “because we are providing all of these benefits to illegal aliens, but we’re leaving the American people to struggle.”

That remark broaches another layer of governmental failure, which is the federal government’s role in abetting these gangs of criminals, who aren’t even legally in the U.S. to begin with. Tren de Aragua and other foreign criminal organizations are “actually communicating with one another … on their government-funded cell phones that have been given to them as they come into the country,” Perkins explains. “Americans have to wake up and realize this is insanity. We’re funding people who come into this country illegally to terrorize American citizens.”

The Biden-Harris administration has effectively entered into “a tacit partnership” with the cartels, Biggs agreed. “They’re giving phones. They’re giving housing. They’re giving medical care.”

On top of that, “We transport them. We are the logistics arm of the cartels,” he continued. “Pre-Biden [administration], if a cartel had been contracted to bring somebody and smuggle them into the country, they actually had to get them to the location. That doesn’t happen anymore. They just have to get them to the border. Because if you get them to the border, this administration will grant them parole status … and we will transport them wherever they want to go.”

This border transportation pipeline is entirely separate from the CBP One app, which the Department of Homeland Security created without congressional authorization, Biggs observed. The app offers free air flights into the U.S. to residents of four troubled nations — without even the hassle of securing transport to the southern border. The four nations so favored by the Biden administration are Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. By the way, does anyone want to guess how a Venezuelan gang managed to slip into the United States?

All this misbehavior on the part of the Biden administration raises a question Biggs has been asking for years: “Where are they getting the money?” The answer Biggs encountered repeatedly was that the money was “coming from FEMA,” he said. “And so we’ve known about this for quite some time.”

Under the Biden-Harris administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent more than $1 billion “to resettle migrants into this country,” said Perkins, “yet now they’re crying, ‘Congress has to come back because we’re out of money [for hurricane relief].’ … It’s not a lack of resources. It is [a lack of] competency.”

None of this federal malfeasance is what the American people want or what their elected representatives approved. In fact, the Biden-Harris administration is “violating the law every time they grant a parole status, because they’re doing it on a collective basis, and that law was meant to provide on a singular, case-by-case, unique basis,” Biggs argued.

For ideological, political, or strategic reasons, the Biden-Harris administration has pursued a policy of importing illegal immigrants as fast as possible, without legislative authority and without performing what should be commonsense vetting. “They’ve released these people into the country — literally millions of people,” said Biggs. “And, of those millions, hundreds of thousands of them are criminals.”

Is it really too much to ask the federal government to not help violent criminals enter the country, who will exploit America’s justice system and terrorize America’s citizens?

In a recent exchange with vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance (R), ABC News anchor Martha Raddatz tried to minimize the issue of violent crime committed by gangs of illegal immigrants, saying, “I know exactly what happened. I’m going to stop you. The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes.” Vance responded, “Only, Martha? Do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes were taken over by Venezuelan gangs …? Americans are so fed up with what’s going on, and they have every right to be.”