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Federal immigration agents joined NYPD cops Thursday at a Bronx apartment building taken over by rowdy migrant squatters – just days after one troublesome migrant allegedly gunned down two tenants.
The Fordham Heights building, a onetime shelter, has been plagued by simmering tension between long-term tenants and a mob of migrants who took over parts of the building this year – with the beef leading to bloodshed with the fatal shooting on May 24, sources and residents said.
Police are now looking for Venezuelan migrant Josue Ruben Silva, 21, who has amassed a troubling rap sheet this year after crossing into the US illegally last year, the sources said.
“I’m scared,” one 27-year-old resident told The Post. “I don’t go over to their side [of the building]. I am afraid of them. I’m getting out of here. This is not an environment to raise a kid.
“They have a gun in the building,” she added. “Nobody was expecting that. They could have shot and killed other people in the building too. You have guns in the building with kids, people going and coming. That’s not safe.”
Neighbors said the migrants moved into one apartment and remained after the original tenant left – and then moved into another vacant unit and have never left, despite an earlier raid by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in March.
“They had their clothes in the lobby and they were holding a few of them,” the tenant said. “There were some women and kids. They took a few of them. We thought they were gone but they came back here.”
It was not immediately clear why ICE agents were back at the Davidson Avenue building with cops.
On May 24, tenant Claretha Daniels, 44, told her friends one of the migrants made a disrespectful comment to her and summoned her friends, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said this week.
The offending migrant also called his pals and the two groups got into fisticuffs – but when one asylum seeker was taking a beating Silva allegedly pulled a gun and opened fire.
Daniels and her boyfriend, Justin Lawless, were struck in the chest and were mortally wounded, while a third resident, Everett Slade, was shot in the arm.
Silva, who sources close to the case said crossed the US border with Mexico illegally in May 2023 – using a different name and identifying himself as a 17-year-old – then took off and remains on the loose.
The wanted accused killer had already been busted a half dozen times this year on a slew of robbery and theft charges – and was part of a migrant moped crew of crooks that have plagued the Big Apple, sources said.
According to police data, the use of mopeds and other two-wheeled vehicles to flee felony crimes has skyrocketed in the five boroughs in recent years – and is at an all-time high.
The stats show that, of the seven major crimes, scooters, motorcycles or mopeds were used as the getaway vehicle 790 times so far this year, a huge jump from just 156 times over the same span in 2022.
Silva, meanwhile, remains on the run.
“That’s not right, not at all,” resident Steven Colon said Thursday. “He should be punished for what he did. Taking multiple lives is not okay. Leaving a child without a mother and father is not okay.”
A memorial now sits outside the building in memory of the victims.
“That was my boy,” resident Jose Lopez said of Lawless. “He was a good dude, quiet, always with his son, who looks just like him. The little kid’s mom died and that’s when he took the boy. That’s all he had.
“I’m gonna miss him,” said Lopez, 64. “A lot of those people you don’t see no more but you think about them all the time. It’s sad.”
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