The Puerto Rican eatery, located in a remote industrial section of Westchester Square, is owned by Richard Caban, the brother of NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban. The establishment has for the past few years gained a reputation as a hangout for Adams, who celebrated his birthday there last year, other high-profile elected leaders, including State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, as well as top NYPD brass, including Commissioner Caban and Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey.

But Con Sofrito has since 2022 faced a bevy of open building and fire safety violations over a sprawling “party room” it erected in its parking lot during the pandemic without proper permits. The restaurant’s landlord, a corporate entity named 1315 Commerce LLC, sued Richard Caban in Bronx Civil Court over the party room in October after it refused to dismantle the illegal structure, a development first reported last month by the news outlet The City.

In a previously unreported development, Jamie Schreck, an attorney for the landlord, filed court papers in that case last week saying Richard Caban had finally agreed to break down the party room by March 1 — and close Con Sofrito for good by Aug. 31.

In addition, Caban agreed as part of a settlement to cough up $14,000 to cover Schreck’s attorney fees and continue to pay rent through the final date of Con Sofrito’s occupancy, the court papers show. The presiding judge, Betty Lugo, approved the settlement in a decision released on the court docket Friday.

Speaking to the Daily News on Friday afternoon, Schreck said his client is pleased with the settlement and looking to find a new tenant who’s not in the hospitality industry.

“What he told me is that he’s done with restaurants after this,” Schreck said, referring to Joseph Dedona III, the manager of the corporate landlord entity. “He’s fed up with the restaurant industry.”

The settlement might not spell the absolute end of Con Sofrito, though.

“They want to find a new location and a new liquor license,” Schreck said of Caban and his Con Sofrito partners.

An attorney for Richard Caban did not immediately return a request for comment, nor did a spokesman for the mayor.

The illegal party room that sparked the court feud has been featured prominently in photos and videos posted to Instagram by Jimmy Rodriguez, an infamous Bronx restaurateur who lists himself online as the “manager” and “creator” of Con Sofrito.

Rodriguez posted videos and photos in September from the mayor’s 63rd birthday party — which was held in the party room.

Rodriguez used to run Jimmy’s Bronx Cafe, a popular club shuttered in 2004 after coming under suspicion of being a hotbed for gang and drug activity. In the 1990s, Major League Baseball officials warned Yankees players to stay away from Jimmy’s after two shootings took place in front of the club.

Rodriguez did not return a request for comment Friday.

The project is one of 18 in-progress Gowanus developments that have been made possible by executive actions issued by Hochul in July, her office said. One of the actions effectively revived a lapsed statewide tax benefit for developers in Gowanus.

The New York City Council rezoned 82 blocks in Gowanus in 2021. Today, the neighborhood’s skyline is dotted by cranes and half-completed towers rising from the earth.

“You hear the jackhammers and the excavators? It’s just a symphony,” Hochul said at the groundbreaking, speaking over the buzzing and clanging of construction workers in adjacent lots.

The site of Friday’s event, at 320 and 340 Nevins St., is expected to be transformed into a two-building brick-and-glass housing complex with shopping space at ground level. The 2.3-acre plot abuts the Gowanus Canal and sits two blocks from an R train stop. Charney Companies and Tavros Holdings are developing the lot.

Overall, the 18 Gowanus developments underway are slated to produce 5,300 housing units, including 1,400 affordable homes, Hochul said. The Democratic governor, who failed to get suburban state lawmakers to support an ambitious home creation program last year, has faced intense criticism for sluggish housing development rates in New York under her watch.

She is attempting to reverse the narrative through executive orders and a $650 million program that directs funds to communities that are committed to housing growth. She has also aimed in her next state budget to use $500 million to convert state facilities into 15,000 homes, and to replace the 421a exemption, a tax break for developers that expired in 2022.

The Gowanus executive actions were issued as a workaround to replace 421a for the neighborhood’s developers. Some have criticized 421a as a handout that cost New York City $1.8 billion a year in lost tax revenue. But Mayor Adams, Hochul and industry leaders have said a replacement is critical to spur the construction of much-needed housing.

The stakes of the housing crisis are high. City data released Thursday indicates the city’s rental vacancy rate has slipped to 1.4%, the lowest rate since 1968.

“We don’t have a housing shortage at all — we have a housing crisis on steroids,” Hochul acknowledged Friday. “It’s one of the top drivers of why people are leaving our state.”

If the state can build more housing, she said, “We’re back in the game.”

“Inaction is not an option,” declared the governor.

Adams said at a news conference the new city and state partnership allowed them “to really reclaim the narrative of what we always focused on: public space, public safety and making this city livable for everyone.”

“Open space means open business. It brings tourists, it brings visitors and it brings dollar bills,” the mayor said. “We want people to spend money in this community.”

The plan, which will draw from $44.3 million in city funding and $11.5 million is state cash, is aimed at redesigning Chatham-Kimlau Square to ease vehicular traffic at the busy five-point intersection, possibly reopening Park Row to private car traffic and erecting a traditional Chinatown arch in the historic neighborhood.

That arch will be paid for through $2.5 million of the $11.5 million in state funding as well as through a private fundraising effort, according to city officials, who noted that the completion date for the arch will depend on private fundraising.

Creating the gateway for the neighborhood could be fraught for the mayor, though, given his past forays into such efforts.

An archway that Adams pushed for in Sunset Park during his days as Brooklyn borough president still hasn’t gotten off the ground, and Winnie Greco, the woman who led that effort and now heads up the mayor’s Asian affairs operation, is the target of an ongoing probe by the city’s Department of Investigation, a development first reported in The City news outlet. That investigation came on the heels of The City reporting that two people alleged Greco used her Adams’ administration post for personal gain.

The effort to fund a 40-foot arch in Sunset Park’s Chinatown depended, in part, on private donations — in that case to the Sino America New York Brooklyn Archway Association, a non-profit launched by Greco in 2012. From 2013 to 2018, the group raised $221,000, but most of that money has been spent — and there’s still no arch in Sunset Park.

That arch itself was initially supposed to come to the city as a gift from Beijing, and Greco said the money she was helping raise would go toward maintaining it.

Jennifer Sun, vice president of planning with the city’s Economic Development Corporation, appeared with the mayor Friday and said what makes the arch in Manhattan’s Chinatown different than other Chinatown arches is that it originated from a state-led process and that EDC will work closely with the Chinatown Business Improvement District to ensure donors understand what they’re contributing to.

“We are putting systems and protections in place to make sure that when individuals or organizations are donating to the gateway, they understand what they are donating for — for the design, construction and maintenance of the gateway — and that they understand that when they are making that donation, it is for that use only,” she said.

Aside from the arch, the new plans for Manhattan’s Chinatown will also include short-term improvements to “enhance the pedestrian and bicyclist experience” such as “art interventions,” new plants and additional signs. That part of the project will begin this year with a community engagement period, with the ultimate goal of making permanent improvements to Park Row.

The plan will also begin with a traffic study of Chatham-Kimlau Square with the goal of transforming it into a four-way intersection with shorter pedestrian crossings. That part of the plan is expected to be complete in 2029, city officials said.

“Curtis said that the man was a migrant and that he was shoplifting. Fox News has since spoken to the NYPD. Apparently the statement made by Curtis that the man is a migrant is not true and the man was given a summons for disorderly conduct,” Hannity said Thursday night.

In the middle of a Tuesday interview with Hannity, Sliwa stunningly directed the camera to a takedown of a man in the middle of Times Square, saying the target was a “migrant” and a “shoplifter” — claims the NYPD later refuted, explaining that the man was a 22-year-old Bronxite who had done no shoplifting. He still received a summons for disorderly conduct.

“On this show, we always want to set the record straight,” Hannity said Thursday night.

Sliwa admitted to the Daily News earlier Thursday that he’d been wrong about details of his initial accusations, but newly claimed the 22-year-old had punched a female member of his vigilante group in the breast.

That member filed a harassment complaint against the 22-year-old at the NYPD’s Midtown South Precinct on Thursday night, records showed.

Prior to that, a cop source told The News that Sliwa had been completely off the mark during Hannity’s Tuesday show.

Surveillance and bodycam footage show the 22-year-old was simply trying to make his way through Times Square at the time of the confrontation, the source said, adding that Sliwa was “just babbling” when he made the initial allegations.

Video contradicts Curtis Sliwa account of Guardian Angels ‘migrant’ beating of Bronx man on Fox News: NYPD source

Sliwa did not immediately answer a News request for comment on the Hannity correction late Thursday.

Pilip, the Republican nominee and a Nassau County legislator, sought to tie Suozzi, the Democrat, to his party’s far left and to blame him for New York City’s migrant crisis. Suozzi, a centrist, responded by portraying himself as eager to work across the aisle to fix problems, and by describing his rival as inexperienced and evasive. At one point, he forced her into a baffling exchange on her position on abortion.

The debate, taped on Thursday afternoon in Bethpage and aired by News12 in the evening, arrived five days ahead of Election Day, as early voting grinds on and public polling shows a tight race.

Gov. Hochul called the special election after the district’s former Republican representative, George Santos, was expelled from Congress, felled by his serial lies and a 23-count indictment accusing him of fraud. Santos has pleaded not guilty.

The Thusday meetup between the candidates is the only debate scheduled in the race. The tilt was animated. At times, the rivals talked over each other, and the moderator.

“If you want safe communities, if you want secure communities, I am your first choice,” Pilip declared. She said Suozzi may be the smoother talker in the race, but that she would be the stronger advocate for the district.

And she charged that Suozzi’s policies paved the way to New York City’s migrant crisis.

Suozzi, who represented the district for three terms but gave up the seat to run for governor, said Pilip was falsely portraying him as a far-left progressive.

“George Santos got elected by lying about his record,” Suozzi said. “Ms. Pilip wants to get elected by lying about me.”

When the topic turned to abortion, Suozzi went on the attack, asking Pilip if she is pro-choice and if she supports the federal right to abortion enshrined in Roe v. Wade.

“It is a personal decision,” she said. “Every woman should have that choice.”

Suozzi repeatedly pressed, “So, you’re pro-choice?”

Pilip, a registered Democrat with a limited record, responded angrily, repeatedly accusing him of misrepresenting her positions before ultimately conceding, “I am pro-life.”

She never articulated a clear position on Roe v. Wade.

The issue of abortion plays to Suozzi’s advantage, according to polling of the race, but Pilip has hung tough with the experienced politician, apparently benefiting from her pitch on immigration and her support for tax relief.

Emerson College Polling released a survey on Thursday showing Suozzi leading Pilip by 3 points. The Siena College Research Institute, earlier in the day, published a poll finding Suozzi up 4 points. Emerson’s pollster predicted the outcome would hinge on turnout.

The race for New York’s 3rd Congressional District — which includes a sliver of eastern Queens and swaths of Long Island’s tony North Shore — carries significant symbolic and practical weight. In the short term, a win by Suozzi would limit Republicans’ paper-thin majority in the House to a two-vote margin.

And it would offer Democrats a much-craved moral victory in New York after the GOP flipped four seats in the state in the midterm elections, a disaster for the New York Democratic Party that has often been blamed on Hochul’s relatively narrow victory atop the ticket.

Hochul, who overcame Suozzi in a bitter Democratic primary for governor in 2022 that left their relationship in an arctic freeze, has firmly backed her former rival in the House race and called his success her “top priority.” 

A win by Pilip would modestly solidify the Republicans’ fragile advantage in Congress, and would signal that the GOP continues to own Long Island, territory that swings between the parties and can at times serve as a bellwether for the rest of the nation. 

Pilip has pinned much of her campaign to immigration. Her campaign has branded her opponent “Sanctuary Suozzi,” and released intense ads warning that Democratic immigration policies are driving a “record invasion” at the border and “violence right here” in New York.

She has presented his record as Nassau County executive and as a three-term congressman as woefully lacking on immigration.

“Tom Suozzi opened the border,” Pilip said in Thursday’s debate. “Tom Suozzi kicked ICE from Nassau County.”

The migrant crisis has led to internal Democratic finger-pointing and strife for months, and has been seen as a potentially key weak spot for the party going into November’s nationwide general election.

But Suozzi, who has chastised Pilip for not supporting a bipartisan plan to secure the border, may be neutralizing some of his rival’s attacks.

Both polls published Thursday showed only about half of district voters viewing Pilip as the better choice on immigration — she led Suozzi on the issue by 6 points in the Emerson survey and 9 points in the Siena poll.

“On immigration, I’ll support the bipartisan solution,” Suozzi said in Thursday’s debate. “My opponent opposes that.”

“I am pro-choice,” Suozzi added. “I’m not sure what she is after today’s debate, quite frankly.”

In a quirk of the pretaped debate Thursday, both campaigns issued statements before the tilt aired. The teams traded claims that the debate had been a disaster for their opponent.

“Mazi Pilip exposed Tom Suozzi for being Joe Biden’s accomplice in creating the migrant crisis,” Pilip’s campaign declared.

Suozzi’s campaign said in its statement that Pilip had “simply repeated tired talking points” on immigration, and that she broadly appeared “defensive, flustered and unprepared.”

Thursday’s procedural step came in the form of a resolution authorizing the speaker to pursue legal action on behalf of the full Council to compel the mayor to implement the laws, which are designed to expand access to CityFHEPS, a voucher program subsidizing rent for low-income New Yorkers. The measure breezed through the Council in a voice vote with overwhelming support.

With the resolution adopted, the speaker wouldn’t say what form any legal action against the mayor will take, though, or when it might be initiated.

“There has been no final decision yet on any legal action,” she told reporters. “But this maintains our ability to keep our options open, that’s what the resolution does.”

Among other provisions, the laws in dispute would expand access to CityFHEPS by eliminating a rule requiring that otherwise income-eligible individuals must enter a homeless shelter before they can apply for a voucher. By scrapping that rule, Council Democrats have argued the city can prevent more New Yorkers from becoming homeless.

The Council enacted the laws last summer by overriding the mayor’s vetoes of them. Nonetheless, the mayor didn’t implement the laws by a legally mandated Jan. 9 deadline, arguing the city can’t shoulder the added cost that would come with them.

After Thursday’s resolution vote, Adams spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak reiterated that argument, saying “this legislation will add $17 billion onto the backs of our taxpayers” — a figure Council Democrats argue is exaggerated.

The speaker’s reluctance to talk about what exactly her next step will be on the legal front comes as others are also mulling court action over the CityFHEPS matter.

The Legal Aid Society, which by law represents the city’s homeless population, said last month it would file a lawsuit against the mayor to force him to implement the CityFHEPS laws. At the time, a Council spokesman said the speaker was eyeing legal action, too, and that it wasn’t clear whether she would bring her own lawsuit or join Legal Aid’s filing.

A spokesman for the Legal Aid Society declined to comment after Thursday’s vote.

Sliwa, who erroneously identified the Bronxite as a Venezuelan migrant during a live interview Tuesday night on national TV, admitted to the Daily News Thursday he could have been “milder and calmer” during the episode caught live on FOX News cameras.

But his group’s actions during the attack and Sliwa’s on-camera comments sparked anger and outrage across NYC Thursday.

“Washed-up comic book villain instructed his herd of wannabe vigilantes to beat up a guy they decided ‘looked like’ a migrant. A hate crime,” Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan wrote on X. “Live on TV. Violence of any kind, whether against cops or innocent people in Times Sq, must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

“The wheels of justice must move at an appropriate pace. We don’t have the luxury to do what we saw Curtis Sliwa did,” Mayor Adams, Sliwa’s opponent in the 2021 mayoral election, said at an unrelated press briefing with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. “To see someone on the corner and, based on their ethnicity, automatically identify them as a migrant or asylum seeker, and not a long-time Bronx resident — that is not what we can do. We have to get it right.”

Adams and Brannan were far from the only ones to tag Sliwa.

On CNN Thursday morning, Gov. Hochul said no one should take the law into their own hands.

“This is not the Wild West. This is New York State,” Hochul said.

Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller and possible Democratic mayoral candidate in 2025, described Sliwa’s antics as “racism” and said he looked forward to meeting him on the debate stage.

“This kind of racism has no place in our city. Unfortunately, Curtis Sliwa went to his usual worst instincts,” Stringer said. “I look forward as a potential Democratic nominee to debating this warmed-over MAGA Republican in 2025.”

While some politicos claimed the attack was motivated by hate and racism, Bragg was not ready to call it a hate crime but did call the incident “disturbing.”

“We’re going to do what we do on all of our matters, right?” Bragg said at the briefing with Adams. “So I think there are people speculating and using a legal phrase in [using] ‘hate crime.’ We don’t make assumptions, we investigate and look at the evidence, so we’ll do what we do in all the other matters — follow the facts.”

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards chalked the incident up to Sliwa’s typical fear mongering.

“This is classic Curtis Sliwa: in the mud, stoking division in New York City. And it’s shameful that he would believe that because someone speaks Spanish, they’re a migrant,” Richards said. “I’m hoping people like Curtis realize our diversity is our strength.”

In an afternoon press conference at City Hall, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said the “actions by Mr. Sliwa and his group” amounted to “fear-mongering” against migrants.

“Seeing incidents and occurrences like that certainly does not help the climate of the city right now. It actually does a lot of harm, creates a lot of confusion, a lot of anger,” she said.

Everyday New Yorkers also slammed Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels in the 1970s when crime was raging in the Big Apple and has been one of the more vocal critics chiding the city over its handling of the migrant crisis.

Desiree Joy Frias, a mutual aid volunteer, said she wasn’t surprised by the fracas or that Sliwa was wrong about the man’s background.

“This is not new behavior. They used to take down Black and brown people all the time in the 70s and 80s,” she said. “That people feel that they can handle things extra judiciously — that’s terrifying.”

Sliwa, who spoke to The News before going to a dermatologist appointment, didn’t seemed too fazed about all the controversy.

“All of these folks, I understand, they’re looking to dance on my grave. I take enough shots at them all the time, so it’s fair. But let’s get real here, guys” he said. “Let my haters know it’s not going to stop us from doing what we’ve done for 45 years — although on this one — my mistake. The rhetoric I used, I should not have used in that moment.”

The rule, which bars the city from using municipal government resources to help federal authorities carry out most forms of immigration enforcement, landed in the headlines after police said two NYPD officers were assaulted in Times Square by a group of migrants last month.

After the suspects were set free without bail, local Republicans pounced, blaming the sanctuary status law for their releases. Adding to the debate, Mayor Adams said earlier this week he “would love to entertain” allowing more cooperation with the feds on immigration enforcement, though he argued any such move would likely need to be cleared by the City Council, as it would involve altering local law.

At a press conference at City Hall on Thursday afternoon, Speaker Adams poured cold water on the possibility of the Council tweaking the sanctuary law.

“We have no plans to do that,” she said.

Noting that the city’s sanctuary edict was first established by Mayor Ed Koch in 1989, the speaker also charged it makes no sense for focus to be placed on that law in the context of the Times Square attack.

“Some have pointed to this repugnant and unfortunate incident as a reason to revisit policies advanced by Democratic and Republican mayors, from Koch to Dinkins to Giuliani to Bloomberg and beyond, who recognized that keeping city agencies and workers from being used for federal immigration enforcement is in the best interest of public safety,” she said. “In reality, these bipartisan city policies have no connection to this incident. … This was purely an issue of our local law enforcement solving and prosecuting an alleged crime.”

Since the Times Square assault, some stakeholders in the city have highlighted crimes committed by migrants. At a press conference Tuesday announcing the bust of an alleged robbery ring involving migrants, NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said “a wave of migrant crime has washed over the city.”

In Thursday’s press conference, the speaker, who has clashed with the mayor and his administration on a number of fronts lately, blasted the police commissioner’s comments as misleading.

“Continuing the fervor and the fearmongering around a supposed crime wave, which just is not true, I think is damaging,” she said. “Particularly right now.”

Suozzi holds a 48%-to-44% lead over Pilip in the poll of likely voters in the election set for Tuesday, according to the Siena College-Newsday poll released Thursday.

Pollster Don Levy suggested turnout will be comparatively light at about 25% and the results will be determined by the most regular voters in the suburban swing district.

“Relative turnout Democratic to Republican is indeed the dynamic that will probably turn the race,” Levy said.

The poll came out as Suozzi and Pilip prepared to clash in their only face-to-face debate Thursday night on the Long Island News 12 cable channel.

The election will help determine control of Congress and comes as the GOP clings to a narrow margin in the House.

The tiny edge was dramatized when Republicans fell a single vote short of impeaching Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas.

The survey of 694 voters in the district spanning the North Shore and a slice of Queens is the second poll to show Suozzi, who represented the district for three terms, with a modest advantage.

The poll included 39% Democrats and 39% Republicans with the rest being independents.

More Democrats than Republicans have voted in recent elections including the 2022 contest won by Santos when the electorate included 39% Democrats and 35% Republicans.

But Levy contends the electorate will look more like the off-year 2021 race for Nassau County executive that the GOP won.

The same Siena survey found former President Donald Trump leading President Biden by a 47%-42% margin. If that proved true, the result would flip the script on Biden’s 8% win in the district in 2020.

The only other poll of the district last month showed Suozzi with a similarly narrow lead, but found his edge could balloon to double digits if only the most likely of voters turn out.

So far, turnout has been fairly robust in early in-person and absentee mail-in voting, with both sets of voting data offering mostly good news for Suozzi.

After four days of early voting, registered Democrats held a 13.7% lead over Republicans, compared to a smaller 7.8% edge in 2022, according to Target Smart, a voting analysis firm. Among absentee ballots, Democrats led by 29% compared to a 26% edge in the race won by Santos.

“The early vote data thus far suggests Democrats are more engaged,” Tom Bonior, a Democratic analyst with Target Smart, told the News.

Republicans say they are pleased by strong early turnout in Pilip’s home base of Great Neck and note that GOP voters tend to vote in person on Election Day.

That accounted contradicted statements from the Guardian Angels’ controversial leader Curtis Sliwa, who initially said the man was a “migrant” and a “shoplifter.”

In fact, the man — not a migrant — who was roughed up “may have been a little bit drunk, but he was just trying to make his way down Seventh Ave. when Sliwa’s goons stopped him,” the source said, citing surveillance and body-worn camera footage.

“He tried to push past them and they strong-arm him to the ground,” the source said.

The incident unfolded during a live Fox News interview focusing on the city’s migrant crisis that Sean Hannity conducted with Sliwa on Tuesday night.

During the segment, Sliwa had the camera pan to the dustup between several Angels and the man, later identified by cops as a 22-year-old Bronxite.

Sliwa didn’t know what was happening but quickly made up the migrant angle, the police source said Thursday.

“Our guys have just taken down one of the migrant guys right here on the corner — 42nd [St.] and Seventh [Ave.],” Sliwa said during the Tuesday broadcast, calling the man a shoplifter.

“Let’s just say we gave him a little pain compliance,” continued Sliwa, the 2021 GOP mayoral candidate. “His mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations. He’s sucking concrete.”

The 22-year-old eventually received a summons for disorderly conduct.

“He was observed by police to be acting in a loud, threatening manner causing public alarm,” a police spokesperson said Wednesday. “As a result, he was issued a summons.”

Sliwa changed his tune, but only slightly, when contacted by the Daily News on Thursday.

“My language could have been much milder and calmer, no doubt about it, but I was in the eye of the storm at that point. It turned out it was wrong about the person that we had taken down and held and gave to the police,” he said.

That man appeared to be irate at the scene but calmed down when he got to a precinct stationhouse, where he put on a pair of glasses and began explaining that he had done nothing wrong, the police source said. He had no criminal record and has had a valid New York driver’s license since 2019, the source added.

When interviewed by police, the Angels — one of them Sliwa’s bodyguard — said they’d thought the man was “coming at” their boss, sources said.

In an interview with the AP on Wednesday, Sliwa admitted he’d believed the man was a migrant because he was “speaking Spanish” and because other Angels had encountered him with other Spanish speakers on previous patrols.

But when he spoke to The News, Sliwa claimed the man was with two others when he punched a woman Guardian Angel in the breast on Thursday.

“They’re rumbling and they’re pushing their way toward where we are and the next thing I know, they clocked a female Guardian Angel — this one guy who wound up getting arrested,” said Sliwa, who described the man as “belligerent.”

Witnesses called the man a migrant and he had a bag of baby clothes that may have been stolen, Sliwa claimed.

“This is third-hand information and I’m processing this — I personally should not have taken third-hand information. That was my mistake,” Sliwa told The News. “Obviously, that’s a big mistake.”

Arnaldo Salinas, Sliwa’s second-in-command with the angels, backed up his boss’ claims.

Salinas said he was in the middle of the melee and that the altercation started when the three men started hassling a retired cop providing security for the Fox TV crew.

“I walked over to de-escalate — and the gentleman simply was not de-escalating,” Salinas said. “He was ultra-aggressive, saying he was going to shoot us.”

According to Salinas, the man then used two open hands to shove a female Angel. Salinas said a tussle ensued and that a brown paper bag the man was holding broke open, spilling clothes with anti-theft tags to the ground.

City progressives have called for the tables to be turned on the Angels, with some saying they committed a hate crime.

Sliwa rejected the suggestion.

“It turns out he’s not a Venezuelan. I should not have implicated him as being that. (But) the Venezuelan immigrants — they’ve been on a crime spree,” he said.

“My anger boiled up. Clearly I haven’t indicted Venezuelan people,” he admitted. “The Guardian Angels are mostly minority. I, like a lot of New Yorkers, are really angry now at what the governor and the mayor and the president have done by bringing these people, many of whom have criminal records because they were never checked, here.”

During a Thursday interview on CNN, Gov. Hochul was asked to look at the Sliwa clip.

“You can not take the law into your own hands,” she said of the violence. “This is not the Wild West. This is New York State.”

Sliwa, a conservative talk radio staple, has courted controversy throughout his time in the limelight.

In 1992, he admitted to having faked several crimes years earlier, including his own kidnapping, to gain publicity and spotlight dangers in the subway system.

This week’s incident added fuel to already high tensions in New York City as officials struggle to handle an ongoing rise in migrant arrivals for more than a year.

A group of migrants attacked two NYPD officers outside a shelter in Times Square on Jan. 27, sparking outrage.

There’s also been heated debate over the city’s shelter and benefits policies for the new arrivals. A growing number of progressives have voiced concern over the prospect of anti-migrant bigotry sweeping the city.

The Guardian Angels, which Sliwa launched in the 1970s to fight rampant subway crime, have long had a tense relationship with police.

“He’s out of his f—ing mind,” the police source said of Sliwa. “He doesn’t know what was going on and he begins babbling about him being a migrant.”