The migrant accused of shooting two NYPD cops is suspected of being a member of the infamous bloodthirsty Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, law-enforcement sources told The Post on Tuesday.
Suspect Bernardo Castro Mata, 19 — who illegally entered the US last year, then had his asylum case dismissed as part of a Biden administration “mass amnesty’’ program — is believed to have been lured into the powerful criminal syndicate’s clutches after his arrival in the country, sources said.
Mata, of Venezuela, was living in a hotel-turned-city migrant shelter in Queens before the cops’ shooting in the borough Monday — and authorities are concerned that such sites are becoming breeding grounds for gang culture, sources said.
Investigators suspect Mata is a member of the gang because of a tattoo he has of a clock attached to an anchor — a favored Tren de Aragua ink — and some social-media postings, sources said.
A source said migrant shelters are ripe for gang culture because of the money that’s offered for the crimes and the sense of belonging in strange and sometimes violent new surroundings.
The gang — infamous for its cruelty, including for how easily it kills women — has been having members pose as asylum-seeking migrants to infiltrate the US southern border, sources have said.
The syndicate then organizes lucrative rings of moped-riding bandits around cities such as the Big Apple to snatch such items including cell phones, sources said.
The phones are used to drain financial accounts of cash, then sent to Colombia to be wiped and resold, sources said.
The gang’s murderous activities also include drug-dealing and human-trafficking — which has taken hold in some New York City shelters, too, sources said.
Tren de Aragua’s reign of terror is becoming so serious in the city that New York’s National Guard was told several months ago to begin checking arriving migrants for tattoos linked to the gang.
In addition to a clock, other tattoos linked to the gang include a Nike logo featuring NBA legend Michael Jordan along with his uniform number 23. The number is a nod to “January 23,” the Venezuelan neighborhood that spawned a revolutionary group in the 1980s.
The gang’s favored tats also include a crown, AK-47 assault rifles, stars and gas masks.
Its name, Tren de Aragua, is Spanish for “Aragua Train” and refers to a railroad project in Aragua, Venezuela, that paved the way for enough fraud and grift to start the organized criminal enterprise.
As for Mata, he is accused of shooting two cops who tried to stop him as he drove a moped without plates the wrong way down a Queens street early Monday.
After his arrest, police identified him as a person of interest in two violent street moped snatch-and-grab robberies targeting women in Queens on May 21.
His asylum case had been dismissed in a Chicago immigration court about two weeks earlier — meaning that while he was neither denied nor granted asylum, he was freed to roam about the US legally and indefinitely, since he had no known criminal background at the time.
Sources said he is expected to face charges including attempted murder for the cop shooting.
