(Fox News) It’s the Third World meets Bangkok.
In “Squad” member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district in New York City, those who are described as scantily dressed migrant prostitutes line blocks of a long commercial strip during all hours of the day and night, brazenly soliciting sex to passersby while their pimps strike fear into local business owners, one of whom told Fox News Digital he’s been threatened for speaking out and is on the verge of closing his store.
The trash-filled streets of Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, which encompasses the migrant-heavy communities of Corona, Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, has become a veritable hotbed for one of the world’s oldest professions, and residents say that most elected officials and police are turning a blind eye to the neighborhood nightmare, which looks more like the famed brothel-filled red-light district streets of Bangkok than one of America’s biggest cities.
Alleged prostitutes line a street in Queens, New York City. (Michael Dorgan/Fox News Digital)
Known to locals as the “Avenue of the Sweethearts,” this epicenter of vice is not some desolate area on the outskirts of a city but rather the heart of the borough of Queens underneath the area’s main subway track that serves as a vital cog connecting Manhattan and its local schools to families, many of whom stream down the subway steps and are then inescapably met by armies of prowling solicitors.
Fox News Digital even recorded a man pushing his young son in a stroller past a group of five sex workers.
Residents say that students pass prostitutes every day on their way to school or on their way to local taekwondo centers situated along the busy strip and that the situation has become the norm for their youthful eyes with the alleged sex workers, mostly composed of Asian and Hispanic women, filling the sidewalks.
On Sept. 18, the NYPD raided a brothel just off Roosevelt Avenue and arrested three people. The following evening, Fox News Digital was conducting an interview in front of the raided premises when an alleged sex worker and her reported john casually walked out of the same building.
On one block along Roosevelt Avenue, Fox News Digital cameras recorded a line of no less than 19 alleged sex workers on the sidewalk. Around the corner, there were at least seven more, and a woman on the next block was witnessed soliciting sex for $60.
Nearby, vendors sell everything from used clothes to pots and pans or tools. More recently, female vendors have begun cutting hair and painting nails under canopies on the cluttered sidewalks, with all of these illegal vendors operating feet from legitimate brick-and-mortar stores whose owners rage they are being undercut in prices while also having to pay taxes, unlike the illegal vendors.
Shoplifting and pick-pocketing is also widespread, business owners say, and there’s a sense here that lawlessness is breeding more lawlessness.
An alleged sex worker in AOC’s district texting. (Michael Dorgan/Fox News Digital)
On Sept. 19, the day after the raid, Fox News Digital witnessed a man being arrested for allegedly groping a 17-year-old girl as she walked down the subway steps.
In police handcuffs, he denied the accusations to onlookers. The girl, who was being comforted by adults, looked visibly shaken.
Ramses Frías, a local resident turned activist, is furious with the deterioration of his neighborhood and says “it feels like Bangkok with women outside locations and pulling men off the street.”
“This area has been run rampant with prostitution,” he told Fox News Digital outside the raided brothel. “It’s just been out of control and the lawlessness continues to happen.”
“This doesn’t feel like my home. I’ve been here my whole life, and this feels like I’m a tourist in a Third World country. This is not how this is supposed to look, this is not how it’s supposed to feel,” he insisted. “This is a neighborhood and a community full of hardworking individuals, immigrants and second-generation Americans that worked really hard to be here and are facing all this evil and all these bad things. … And it’s just causing more issues daily and our quality of life just continues to drop.”
Seconds later, an alleged sex worker and her client emerged from the brothel.
A neighboring business owner then ushered Fox News Digital into his store, warning that “pimps” were watching via CCTV. The store owner did not want to be named but said he had reported the cathouse to police and had been threatened by those involved with the brothel.
“I’m so scared, this is my business,” he said, adding that his business is suffering because customers are avoiding the area and will likely have to close because of it.
