FBI urged to probe NYC’s seedy ‘Market of Sweethearts’

Queens activists are demanding the FBI investigate the “foreign national” crime syndicates turning seedy Roosevelt Avenue into a “gangland” — claiming the criminals pose a national security threat.

“We request that you initiate an investigation into what we understand are gangs engaging in criminal enterprises including human trafficking, illegal narcotics sales and the mass distribution of fraudulent documents which poses a national security threat,” wrote Rosa Sanchez, head of the Restore Roosevelt Avenue Coalition, and Democratic district leader Hiram Monserrate in an Aug. 14 letter to FBI Director Kash Patel.

Federal intervention is required because state and local laws are limited and inadequate to address the problem, the activists said.

In their missive, Sanchez and Monserrate thanked the FBI and other agencies in the Trump administration for prosecuting members of migrant gangs — including the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua and the 18th Street gang, which regularly extort brothels, beat rivals and sell drugs and phony IDs to finance an illicit network based in El Salvador.

“However, both gangs continue to operate in our community and we impress upon you that more needs to be done to keep our community safe,” they told the FBI director.

They noted that the NYPD has made more than 500 prostitution-related arrests thus far this year along what is called “The Market of Sweethearts,” but brothels continue to operate.

Many of them are controlled by Chinese gangs, Sanchez and Monserrate said.

“According to our sources several locations are being operated and controlled by Chinese organized crime. … The information we have continued gathering is unsettling,” the Corona-Elmhurst neighborhood leaders said.

Monserrate said the Triads are one of the Chinese groups involved in sex-trafficking.

The 18th Street Gang members are still selling fraudulent green cards, Social Security and driver’s licenses on Roosevelt Avenue between 80th and 84th Streets, too, the letter writers said.

“Organized crime by both Latino and Chinese foreign nationals continues to wreak havoc in our community,” Sanchez and Monserrate said. “We urge your agency to respond and rid our community of modern slavery and a dangerous criminal element that operates flagrantly.”

They forwarded suspected addresses of brothels to the FBI.

In the past year, The Post has exposed the seediness, crime, drug-peddling and illegal vending along the Roosevelt Avenue corridor. Gov. Kathy Hochul last year even dispatched state troopers to assist the NYPD to crack down the lawlessness.