Moped Robbery Crews Hit NYC as Sanctuary Rules Keep ICE Out

Written By TNT Staff, Posted on October 18, 2026

Featured photo: East 149th Street and Third Avenue at the Hub in the Bronx, January 2022. This is a general street view, not the site of any robbery in this story. Photo: Bebo2good1 (CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons).

Two riders pull up on a moped or e-bike, one grabs the chain off a pedestrian’s neck, and they’re gone before anyone can react. If the victim fights back, the knife comes out. That’s the pattern the NYPD and the New York Post describe in the Bronx and beyond this fall, and one of the victims was an NYPD detective stabbed 10 times.

The Post reported Sunday, in an exclusive by Tina Moore and Adry Torres, that there have been more than 20 motorized-bike chain snatchings in the city since September, at least 10 of them violent, according to the NYPD. Nine victims besides the detective reported being punched, knifed or thrown to the ground, the Post said.

Some officers say the real number is far higher. “There are hundreds of chain snatchings around the city,” one law enforcement officer told the Post anonymously. TNT couldn’t verify that figure, and the NYPD’s own count is the 20-plus number above.

A detective stabbed 10 times

The worst case is on the record in court. According to Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, off-duty NYPD Detective Jose Mercedes was attacked around 1:43 p.m. on Oct. 2 near East 208th Street and Rochambeau Avenue during an attempted robbery. Prosecutors say he was stabbed 10 times, in the neck, arms and torso. The suspects fled on an e-bike.

Mercedes, 33, told reporters the attackers tried to rip off a necklace his mother gave him, and that he told them in English and Spanish that he was a detective, but “they didn’t care,” the Post reported. He chased them until he collapsed from blood loss.

Sneider Mejia, 24, and D’Angelo Caraballo, 25, were arrested in Massachusetts on Oct. 7. On Oct. 14, they were indicted on charges including attempted murder, robbery and aggravated assault on a police officer, the DA said. Both were remanded and are due back in court Dec. 3. They pleaded not guilty, Gothamist reported. As the DA’s office notes, an indictment is an accusation, and both men are presumed innocent.

Early reports said Mercedes was stabbed seven times. The indictment says 10.

What DHS says about the suspects

The Department of Homeland Security says both men are illegal aliens from the Dominican Republic who were released into the country under the Biden administration after crossing into Arizona, Caraballo in February 2023 and Mejia, whom DHS calls Sneider Mejia Bautista, in December 2022.

According to DHS, an immigration judge ordered Mejia Bautista removed on May 8, 2025. After his October 2025 arrest for criminal possession of a weapon, ICE lodged a detainer, “which was then declined by the NYPD,” DHS said. His other arrests ended with release “before ICE could lodge detainers.” Caraballo, DHS said, was released by local law enforcement after a December 2024 arrest for possession of burglar’s tools, before ICE could lodge a detainer.

“This horrific crime could have been prevented if it weren’t for Biden’s open borders and the America Last policies of New York sanctuary politicians,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said.

That’s the heart of it. If DHS’s account is right, a man under a final removal order was arrested on a weapons charge, ICE asked for him, and the city said no. Less than a year later, police say, he helped stab a cop.

Gang ties and the sanctuary wall

The Post also reported that some of the crews are tied to the Trinitarios, the gang founded by Dominican inmates on Rikers Island. That claim comes from an anonymous officer. “A lot of it has to do with the Trinitarios,” the officer told the Post. “That’s one of their big things, chain snatchings, and two people on a bike doing robberies.” The NYPD hasn’t confirmed gang ties for the current crews on the record, and prosecutors haven’t alleged gang membership in the Mercedes case.

There is a documented precedent. On July 19, 2025, an off-duty U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer was shot at Fort Washington Park in Manhattan by two men on a moped, according to DHS and the Manhattan DA. DHS described both as illegal aliens and Trinitarios members. The shooting led to Operation Salvo, which DHS said in January netted 54 arrests, with about 60% of those arrested already removed from the country.

Another officer told the Post that because New York is a sanctuary city, suspects whose immigration status is in question aren’t handed to ICE. “We’re not allowed to confer with ICE so we just arrest them,” the officer said. “They get released on their own recognizance [by a judge] and they go back and do it again.”

The father who held on

Jorge Beltre, 30, a bodega worker and Uber driver, was walking his 5-year-old son home from school near Mount Eden Parkway and Sheridan Avenue on Oct. 8 when two scooter riders went for his gold chain, the Post reported. When he fought back, one pulled a knife and stabbed him in the leg, according to police. With help from onlookers, Beltre held a 17-year-old suspect until police arrived. The teen was charged with robbery and weapon possession, police said. Beltre needed five stitches.

Beltre told the Post the Bronx DA’s office told him the teen was released on $900 bail. The DA’s office didn’t respond to the Post. “The community and I caught one,” Beltre said in Spanish. “Why did they let him go?”

What the city says

An NYPD spokesperson told the Post that “since the attempted murder of Detective Mercedes, there has been a significant decrease in chain snatches within the confines of Patrol Borough Bronx North.” The department also said major crime is down 7% citywide this year, and down 12% in the Bronx, to 20,751 incidents from 23,545 over the same period last year.

That’s real progress, and the cops who tracked the Mercedes suspects to Massachusetts deserve credit. But falling totals don’t help the people getting their chains ripped off on the street.

Critics also point to Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In March, his administration ended criminal summonses for minor traffic offenses by cyclists and e-bike riders, replacing them with civil summonses starting March 27, and said it would pursue rules extending delivery-safety requirements to mopeds. “Mamdani doesn’t want to enforce summonses against these moped guys because they’re working, but then everyone’s taking advantage of it,” former NYPD detective Michael Alcazar, a John Jay College adjunct professor, told the Post. He wants a return to broken-windows enforcement and plainclothes anti-crime units.

Not every rider is a criminal, and most delivery workers are just working. But a city that won’t honor an ICE detainer for a man under a removal order, and that eases off enforcement on the vehicles these crews ride, is making the robbers’ job easier. New Yorkers deserve a city that cooperates with federal immigration authorities on criminal suspects. Mamdani’s City Hall is choosing not to.