Fox Host Charles Payne Announces Tragic Family News
Fox Business anchor Charles Payne shared a deeply personal tragedy on national television, revealing that his niece was recently shot in Harlem.
During Wednesday's episode of "Fox & Friends," Payne opened up about the distressing incident, tying it to the broader issue of violence in many urban liberal cities.
"My niece was shot on the street that I grew up on," Payne disclosed to his co-hosts, explaining that she was in Harlem to attend a memorial for a long-time friend's son.
Reports indicate that she was caught in what appeared to be a targeted attack against other individuals. Payne added that she underwent four hours of surgery and is now recovering.
"She’s okay now," he said. "Whether it’s in places where the opioid epidemic is out of control or places like my neighborhood was being gentrified, but this gang thing has really been amazing. I had no idea it was getting, it was this bad. It’s really bad."
"These illegal immigrants are gangsters," Payne stated. "They’re all intertwined in these gangs. No one will report on it, but it’s because it’s really bad."
WATCH:
Crime, especially migrant crime, is on the rise in New York City. Fox News reported in February that "adult men from overseas in designer clothes, smoking marijuana and passing flasks as they congregate outside New York City’s crowded migrant shelters are among hundreds of thousands of new arrivals who crossed into the U.S. from the southern border and have made their way deeper into the country."
Only a small portion of them are suspects in a pattern of robberies victimizing dozens of women across New York City, according to NYPD officials who announced seven arrests at a press briefing that month. Even fewer have ties to Tren de Aragua, or TdA, a foreign organized crime ring looking to establish a presence in New York City.
However, according to police leaders, a relatively small group of bad actors is having a disproportionately large impact on crime in the city, especially when combined with New York’s lenient bail laws, Fox added.
"In recent months, a wave of migrant crime has washed over our city, but by no means do the individuals committing these crimes represent the vast number of people coming to New York to build a better life," NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said.
According to NYPD leaders, many of the suspects reside in the migrant shelter system, blending in with other migrants and asylum seekers who have recently arrived in the U.S. Caban likened them to ghosts—undocumented illegal immigrants without phones, social media presence, and sometimes without known names or dates of birth, Fox added.
Fox further noted:
One major shelter is the former Roosevelt Hotel on 45th Street, which closed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Another is the Row NYC hotel in the heart of Broadway, just a block from Times Square.
Even among the criminal element, they’re not just Venezuelan gangsters. This month, police in suburban Nassau County arrested a Palestinian migrant who they said took a bus from a city shelter and attacked a homeowner in a dispute over the victim’s support for Israel.
As the NYPD aims to crack down on the criminal element, a new threat has emerged in the form of Tren de Aragua, or TdA, an organized crime ring that began in a Venezuelan prison and has been spreading into new territories since around 2018 – most recently on U.S. soil, where it is also believed to be recruiting.
Local reports have connected the gang to a series of violent phone and purse robberies involving thieves on powered scooters. Additionally, at least two members of the organization are among several suspects charged in the gang assault of two NYPD officers outside the Amsterdam Theatre in February, Fox noted.