New York Post

ICE wrangles Target gang

Will ‘likely be deported’

- By STEVE JANOSKI

Four of the migrants arrested for robbing a Manhattan Target — then fighting the cops who tried to step in — were collared Wednesday by US Immigratio­n and Customs Enforcemen­t agents and will likely be deported, according to the federal agency.

ICE also lodged a detainer with the city’s Department of Correction for the still-jailed fifth suspect, Brayan Freites-Macias of Venezuela, an ICE rep said in a statement.

Freites-Macias, 21, is an illegal immigrant who is “amenable to removal from the United States,” the statement said.

He was the only one of the five suspects (inset) to be ordered held on bail after cops arrested them for shopliftin­g from an Upper East Side Target on April 2, according to court records and law enforcemen­t sources.

The other four — Michael Jose Sanchez Mayo, 31, of Venezuela; Henry Omar Zambrano Zapata, 19, of Venezuela; Sebastian Jaramillio Balanta, 22, of Colombia; and Yusneibi Yohana Machado Avila, 23, of Venezuela — were released without bail by the same judge.

The four were also here illegally and were arrested “without incident” Wednesday, ICE said.

They are in custody pending removal proceeding­s, according to the statement.

The crew allegedly stole $82 worth of display items from the store on Third Avenue near East 70th Street at about 7 p.m. that day, including a backpack, a gaming light, tools and assorted cereals, chips, fruit and bottled water, sources and the criminal complaint said.

Cops from the NYPD’s 19th Precinct tried to stop them. But two of them — Machado Avila and Freites-Macias — allegedly wrestled, shoved, slapped and pushed the officers in their attempts to get away, sources said.

The wild struggle left one officer with swelling, redness and pain on his left arm, cops said. He was treated at a hospital, then released.

Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Jay Wiener cut Machado Avila loose without bail, and remanded Freites-Macias on $3,000 bail or a $9,000 bond.

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