US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has busted one of the gold-hunting mole menwho emerged from a manhole near the United Nations, The Post has learned.
Samuel Reveron Ascanio, 25, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, was taken into custody after the city set him free — despite a prior federal warrant for his arrest.
“New York City had a clear opportunity to transfer this individual to ICE in a secure, controlled environment,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations New York City Field Office Director Kenneth Genalo told The Post.
“Instead, the city recklessly released him despite his repeated arrests and unresolved criminal charges — a choice that needlessly returned an alleged public-safety threat to the streets. . . . ICE will not allow noncooperation to deter us from enforcing federal immigration law and protecting our communities.”
New York is a sanctuary city and its laws limit police cooperation with federal immigration agents.
“The NYPD does not participate in civil immigration enforcement, in accordance with New York City laws,” a spokesperson said in an email.
The NYPD arrested Reveron Ascanio on Sept. 24 and charged him with criminal trespassing after someone called 911 to report seeing three men climbing out of a sewer manhole a day earlier at Park Avenue and East 61st Street around 4:30 a.m.
The threesome then fled the area in two separate Toyota Corolla sedans, after using the vehicles to block the manholes, cops said.
The sighting sparked security fears because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to stay at a hotel down the block from the manhole during the UN General Assembly.
Kevin Rodriguez, 26, was also charged with criminal trespassing in connection with the incident, and police were still seeking a third man, police said.
Both Reveron Ascanio and Rodriguez, a legal US resident residing in Queens, told NYPD detectives “that they entered the manhole together to look for valuables that get washed away in the storm drains and sewers,” according to a criminal complaint.
Investigators determined the men were part of a trend of “mole people” searching for scrap metal and lost valuables in the city system, and the incident was not related to Netanyahu’s visit, authorities said.
Reveron Ascanio’s defense lawyer wasn’t aware of the federal ICE arrest.
“That’s news to me,” attorney Brian Kennedy said when reached by The Post.
“This case is so petty,” he said of the manhole caper.
A federal arrest warrant had been issued for Reveron Ascanio two days before the sewer incident, an ICE spokesperson said.
The warrant stemmed from a Sept. 20 arrest for alleged criminal mischief in which he and two other males were allegedly stripping parts from a U-Haul van in a Queens parking lot, police sources said.
When police arrived, Reveron Ascanio was under the vehicle, and the men told cops they were repairing the van, the sources said. The men handed over a rental contract, but the company told cops the men didn’t have permission to remove parts, according to the sources.
Reveron Ascanio also was also charged in the Sept. 24 manhole arrest with driving with a suspended license, the sources said.
He pleaded not guilty in the manhole case and was sprung on the non-bail eligible offense the next day by lefty Judge Sheridan Jack-Browne, court records show.
The same judge previously released sex-offender Gerardo Miguel Mora, a migrant from Mexico, despite a federal ICE detainer for his arrest.
Mora, 45, was in Manhattan Criminal Court on Jan. 29 to face a shoplifting charge from a day earlier, records show.
The NYPD said Jack-Browne should have seen a notation in the file that Mora was a wanted, deported felon.
He had been kicked out of the US in 2014 after serving a year and a half in an upstate prison for an attempted rape after following a woman home in Midtown, and he had a more recent crack-possession charge in Manhattan, according to police sources.
Court officials insisted the judge wasn’t notified about the detainer even as New York’s Finest doubled down and said the jurist was alerted.
The judge let him go after his arraignment but federal agents busted him before he left the courthouse, law enforcement sources said.
Reveron Ascanio “entered the United States illegally in August 2022, but was released as a result of the Biden administration’s open border policies,” the spokesperson said.
“Under President Trump and Secretary (Markwayne) Mullin, criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the US,” the spokesperson said. “ICE is working diligently to remove these often violent, dangerous offenders from our communities.”
There have been several recent sightings of spelunkers climbing into and out of the city’s sewer system.
Groups of men were twice spotted plunging into open manholes in Williamsburg and Gravesend in Brooklyn during the early morning hours May 29. In August, three headlamp-wearing, overalls-clad “Minions” doppelgangers were caught on camera popping out of a manhole near Penn Station.
Another “mole person” was spotted stepping out of a manhole in Middle Village, Queens in mid-September. And just last week, another threesome was spotted climbing out of a Bensonhurst sewer.
Additional reporting by Adry Torres
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