Detectives believe Troy’s link to the violent Drench street gang, emblazoned on his body in ink, led to his death last Thursday.

“Whether he was in a gang or affiliated, he was targeted,” the police source said. “We don’t know if the other gang was looking specifically for him or [just for] anyone in that gang, but this wasn’t a stray bullet shooting.”

Cops believe Troy may have been shot in retaliation for an earlier clash involving a rival street gang. Investigators are focusing their attention on a white Jeep seen fleeing the scene and were tracking the movements of the mystery vehicle both before and after the shooting.

At a vigil for the intermediate school student on Tuesday evening, Troy’s family again denied he had any gang connections.

“We don’t know anything about any tattoo,” Troy’s stepfather told the Daily News at the vigil outside Troy’s home on St. Marks Ave., where more than 100 mourners stood in the rain to remember the fallen teen. “If he had one, he must have hid it.”

Troy’s mother, Mary Culbertson, was inconsolable during the vigil.

“This hurts me,” she said, weeping. “This was my baby! This was my first son!”

Troy FaceTimed his mother moments after he was shot near the corner of New York Ave. and Bergen St., asking for help, cops said. He told her he was running toward the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, but he collapsed about two blocks from where he was hit. He was shot repeatedly in the chest and arm, cops said.

A dog walker found him bleeding in the street, cops said. Medics rushed him to Kings County Hospital, but he couldn’t be saved.

When police arrived at the scene, Troy’s frantic family was nearby, desperately searching for the mortally wounded child.

Cops recovered about six shell casings from the scene. No arrests have been made.

Culbertson told cops she didn’t know her son went to the game until he FaceTimed her from the arena about 9 p.m. He FaceTimed her again about an hour later from an Uber, according to cops.

His last call was at 10:36 p.m., telling Culbertson he had been shot, cops said.

“He was a 13-year-old boy,” Culbertson told The News on Monday. “He was a baby and that should’ve never happened to him or anyone else’s baby. He did not deserve that.”

Cops are scouring video to see what happened as Troy left the Barclays Center. They’re also trying to figure out who he went to the game with and where he was planning to go afterward.

“This homicide is extremely troubling,” Assistant Chief Jerry O’Sullivan of the NYPD Detective Bureau said Tuesday. “It bothered me personally. I have a son the same age and we’re not going to rest until this case is solved.”

“This is unacceptable,” he added. “It’s tragic. It’s disgusting.”

The Drench gang operates in Bedford-Stuyvesant and northern Brooklyn and is part of the drill rap scene. Earlier reports on Troy’s slaying misidentified the crew as the Trench gang.

“Drench gang leaves bodies in the street,” one rapper’s lyrics note.

Internal strife among the gang in 2022 led to gangbanger Dinikue Grant gunning down fellow street crew member Daquan Trantham on a basketball court in St. Andrew’s Playground at Atlantic and Kingston Aves. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, cops said. Grant was later arrested and charged with murder.

The lawsuit, filed by Nassau County in federal court on Tuesday, marks a major escalation in a public battle between the county’s Republican executive, Bruce Blakeman, and the Democratic state attorney general over the transgender sports ban.

Last week, James issued a statement threatening legal action against the county over the order, declaring it “transphobic and blatantly illegal” and instructing Blakeman to “immediately rescind” it. Her office also penned a cease-and-desist letter to Nassau County.

But before James went to court, Blakeman sent the first legal shot, filing a 12-page lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York that said James’ cease-and-desist letter “violates the constitutional rights of biologically girls and women who are a federally recognized protected class.”

The complaint cited the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection, and argued the order conferred protections to women and girls seeking fairness in athletics. The reach of Blakeman’s order would be limited to county-run facilities.

The complaint seeks a declaratory judgement asserting that the county order is legal.

In a statement responding to the lawsuit, James’ office said: “Our laws protect New Yorkers from discrimination, and the office of the attorney general is committed to upholding those laws and protecting our communities.”

“This is not up for debate: the executive order is illegal, and it will not stand in New York,” said the statement.

Because James’ actions had been limited to a cease-and-desist letter and a press statement, it was not clear that Blakeman’s complaint had presented a controversy demanding intervention by the courts, said John Barrett, a constitutional law professor at St. John’s University.

“The jurisdiction of the court begins with actual cases and controversies,” Barrett said. “This complaint may be more in the nature of a press release or a political position than a serious commencement of litigation.”

A plaintiff in the lawsuit is the father of a female 16-year-old volleyball player who, the complaint claimed, could be subject to “risk of injury by a transgender girl” if transgender females are allowed to participate in girls youth sports.

When Blakeman announced the ban two weeks ago, he could not cite for reporters any examples of transgender women or girls creating competitive disadvantages in athletics in Nassau County.

Blakeman said the county wanted to “get ahead of the curve.”

At a news conference Wednesday, Blakeman added: “It is coming to Nassau County — it is coming to all communities.”

He said courts have held that the “government can take appropriate, reasonable legal action to protect the citizens even if the harm has not actually been done yet.”

Gov. Hochul, a Democrat, issued a statement last month saying that Blakeman was seeking to “score cheap political points by putting a target on the backs of some of our state’s most vulnerable children.”

Barrett said the lack of concrete examples of harm in Nassau County’s lawsuit could hinder it by raising a question of legal standing.

“All of this is pretty abstract, and that kind of imaginary non-actual, non-concrete injury interest is usually a constitutional problem,” Barrett said. “It’s usually a basis for a court to conclude: We don’t have judicial power here.”

Susan Hazeldean, a Brooklyn Law School professor, agreed that Nassau County had not been harmed. She said she did not see a legal basis for the claim and that it appeared to be aimed at getting positive publicity.

But Hazeldean added that the state may not seek to dismiss Nassau County’s lawsuit. Instead, the complaint may simply serve as a starting gun for arguments in court about the ban’s legality.

“Presumably the State of New York believes that the executive order is unlawful and wants to see it enjoined,” the professor said. “I assume they’re going to want to make that clear to the court.”

Johannes Vulto, 64, and his company, Vulto Creamery, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of causing the introduction of adulterated food into interstate for selling and distributing the raw milk cheese linked to a 2016-2017 listeria outbreak, the Justice Department said.

Listeria is a serious bacterial infection caused by eating contaminated foods. Pregnant women, newborns, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems are most at risk of becoming severely ill if infected.

“An estimated 1,600 people get listeriosis each year, and about 260 die,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The cheeses had been sold across the country, primarily in Whole Foods Markets. The deaths occurred in Connecticut and Vermont.

According to the complaint, multiple sanitation issues were found at the company’s Walton, N.Y. plant, where Vulto himself oversaw operations, and bacteria was found in the cheeses.

“U.S. consumers rely on the FDA to ensure that their food is safe and wholesome,” Special Agent in Charge Fernando McMillan of FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations New York Field Office said. “When companies and individuals put themselves above the law by producing food that endangers and harms the public, as occurred in this case, we will see that they are brought to justice.”

Vulto is scheduled to be sentenced in July. He faces up to a year in prison, an additional year of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000. The company may be fined as much as $500,000.

Prosecutors moved to dismiss the case against Glenn Horowitz, Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski less than two weeks into their Manhattan Criminal Court trial after gaining access to thousands of pages of previously undisclosed material.

In scathing comments from the bench, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Curtis Farber said the “jarringly late disclosures” showed the 76-year-old Henley, Eagles manager Irving Azoff, and their lawyers sought to “obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging to their position that the lyric sheets were stolen” and prevent a thorough cross-examination.

“It is additionally troubling to this court that [prosecutors] were apparently manipulated. However, such manipulation was the result of passive complicity in allowing this situation to develop,” Farber said.

“Albeit late, I commend the prosecution for refusing to allow itself or the courts to be further manipulated for the benefit of anyone’s personal gain. District Attorney [Alvin] Bragg and the prosecutorial team here, while eating a slice of humble pie, are displaying the highest level of integrity in moving to dismiss the charges. I am impressed.”

Farber dismissed the high-profile case after hearing from Assistant District Attorney Aaron Ginandes, who said Henley’s decision to invoke attorney-client privilege during the trial and waive it after testifying led to the last-minute dump of around 6,000 pages of material. That included emails and “other disclosures,” but the exact nature of what was released was unclear.

“These delayed disclosures revealed relevant information that the defense should have had the opportunity to explore in cross-examination of the People’s witnesses,” Ginandes said.

“[The] People concede that dismissal is appropriate in this case.”

Farber said prosecutors should have probed Henley’s reasoning for invoking attorney-client privilege when there “was simply no criminal risk to him.”

“More importantly, they should have recognized that they did not have a complete understanding of their case and that potential material existed upon which the defense could rely on in their defense,” the judge said.

In a statement to the Daily News, an attorney whom Henley retained Tuesday indicated he would file a lawsuit.

“The attorney-client privilege is a foundational guardrail in our justice system and rarely, if ever, should you have to forsake it to prosecute or defend a case,” Daniel Petrocelli said.

“As the victim in this case, Mr. Henley has once again been victimized by this unjust outcome, and he will pursue all his rights in the civil courts.”

The case brought in June 2022 alleged the trio of collectibles experts sought to muddy the chain of custody of the valuable manuscripts — which also included developmental lyrics to the songs “Life in the Fast Lane” and “New Kid in Town” — which Horowitz purchased from Ed Sanders, a writer who worked with the Eagles on a never-published band biography. All had pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, possession of stolen property, and related offenses.

Horowitz, a rare book dealer, sold the material to Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Inciardi of Brooklyn and Kosinski of Franklin Lakes, N.J., who put them up for auction, prosecutors said.

The defense vehemently disputed the transactions were dishonest, contending Henley had willingly shared the papers with Sanders long before they ended up in the trio’s possession.

“One of the ironies of the case is that Mr. Horowitz and other defendants were accused of not doing a full investigation of Mr. Sanders. But it appears that the failure to do a full investigation lies with the other side,” Horowitz’s lawyer, Jonathan Bach, said.

“It was one-sided information because they didn’t speak to us, and … in the words of the judge, was manipulated and strategic and designed to present a one-sided view.”

Kosinski’s lawyer, Scott Edelman, said jurors had heard no evidence to suggest the would-be biographer stole the papers that wound up with his client, noting Sanders himself hadn’t faced any charges.

“And there was certainly zero evidence that Mr. Kosinski believed that the manuscript was stolen and the evidence established that he put it up for public auction,” Edelman said.

“I commend [prosecutors] in the end for making the right decision. But frankly, from the perspective of my client, Mr. Kosinski, it’s too little and too late.”

Inciardi’s attorney, Stacey Richman, said she was evaluating the next steps given Judge Farber’s “serious statements” Wednesday morning.

When he took the stand as a witness for the prosecution, Henley, who founded the Eagles with his late music partner Glenn Frey and has long advocated for artists’ ownership rights, said he reported the pages stolen upon discovering they were up for auction in 2012, when he purchased four of them for $8,500.

Henley disputed that he intended for Sanders to keep the notes after sharing them for research purposes at his Malibu, Calif., ranch, claiming he told the writer he could review the notes at a breakfast table in an apartment upstairs from the barn.

“It doesn’t matter if I drove a U-Haul truck and dumped them at his front door,” Henley testified.

“He had no right to keep them or to sell them.”

Gov. Hochul is deploying 750 members of the Guard and 250 state and MTA police officers to subway stations to inspect passengers’ bags following a spate of violent incidents across the system.

“No one heading to their job or to visit family or to go to a doctor’s appointment should worry that the person sitting next to them possesses a deadly weapon,” Hochul said Wednesday beside MTA Chairman Janno Lieber in front of a giant system map at the MTA’s Rail Control Center.

“They shouldn’t worry about whether someone’s going to brandish a knife or a gun.”

The random checks will fall well short of the body scans and pat downs of airport-level security. Straphangers are already familiar with how this will work — cops at tables performing random bag checks have appeared at subway turnstiles from time to time in the 22 years since the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Transit officials said the state support would simply allow for more such spot checks throughout the system, and that the National Guard, MTA police or other state law enforcement won’t be patrolling the trains.

The additional law enforcement power is one of a slate of state actions Hochul hopes will reduce crime underground — a “five-point plan [to] rid our subways of violent offenders and protect all commuters and transit workers,” as she put it.

“I am sending a message to all New Yorkers — I will not stop working to keep you safe and restore your peace of mind whenever you walk through those turnstiles,” she said

Besides the bag checks, the five initiatives include a $20 million plan to beef up the number of clinical teams responding to people in mental distress on subways from two to 10 systemwide.

Another of Hochul’s five initiatives is her support for the MTA’s plan to install surveillance cameras inside conductor and train-operator cabs. That initiative is a direct response to the slashing of MTA conductor Alton Scott, who narrowly survived a random assault last week when he stuck his head out of his cab as his train stopped at a Brooklyn subway station.

“If a camera had been positioned in Alton Scott’s conductor cabin last Thursday, we probably would have already apprehended the person who slashed his neck,” Hochul said.

“Today I’m directing the MTA to install cameras in every single conductor cabin, as well as [on] platforms that face the cabins,” she added.

No platform-mounted camera caught Scott’s attacker last week either.

MTA officials have stated that the station had multiple working surveillance cameras, but none were pointed at the conductor’s mid-platform position when Scott’s late-night A train pulled into the Rockaway Ave. station in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Transit brass declined to comment Wednesday on how many other stations might need upgrades to their camera coverage, citing security concerns.

Transport Workers Union Local 100 has long opposed putting cameras in conductor and operator cabs, citing privacy concerns. The MTA said last week it will install the cameras anyway.

A Local 100 spokesman said Wednesday that the union will support the installation so long as the cameras are solely for safety purposes, and are not used to support disciplinary cases against union members.

Hochul’s fourth initiative is proposed legislation to ban anyone convicted of an assault on transit from the system for three years. Currently the law allows a ban only on those who are convicted of assaulting a transit worker.

Her fifth initiative is improved coordination between MTA officials and district attorneys and police. That initiative will include regular meetings to discuss subway crime, the first of which is scheduled for next week.

As part of that fifth initiative, Hochul said, the MTA will hire a new “criminal justice advocate to assist the victims of crime in the system,” and develop a system to “flag recidivist offenders” to district attorneys.

NYPD brass and MTA leaders blame the uptick in crime on repeat offenders.

“One percent of subway arrestees, according to the NYPD, are responsible for well over 20% of the crime,” MTA boss Lieber said. “We need to have a collaboration with the [district attorneys] so they have that full information.”

The NYPD is fighting a 15.5% jump in felony assaults at city subway stops and trains.

Police have counted 97 such assaults in the subway system this year as of Sunday, 13 more than in the same period of 2023.

Misdemeanor assaults — slaps, punches and other relatively minor attacks — are down 3.9% for the year, with 249 misdemeanor assaults as of Sunday, 10 fewer than the 259 that had occurred by this time last year.

NYPD brass has said grand larcenies — property theft and pickpocketing — are the main thing pushing crime rates up in the subway system. Those crimes are up 17.8%, from 163 reported incidents last year to 192 this year.

There have been three homicides on the transit system so far this year, up from one this time last year.

The most recent was two weeks ago, when a man was fatally shot two weeks ago while on board a southbound B train in the Bronx.

On Tuesday, police arrested a man for allegedly stabbing a passenger onboard an uptown A train in what cops described as a hate crime.

Arrests in the system are up 45% over last year, according to police, with 3,261 arrests so far as of Sunday, up from 2,243 last year.

Earlier Wednesday, Mayor Adams — who did not join Hochul at her announcement — said NYPD officers will also be increasing bag checks in the subway system.

Neither the mayor nor transit officials would say at which stations the ramped-up bag checks will take place. An Adams administration spokesperson said there will be 94 NYPD bag screening teams deployed to 136 stations each week.

“They’re going to be a seven-day-a-week operation,” NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper said in a Wednesday morning appearance with Adams on CBS New York.

Adams said the checks will be “random” and that the Police Department won’t engage in any “profiling.”

“People who don’t want their bags checked can turn around and not enter the system,” he said.

The governor’s plan to put National Guard soldiers in the subway system was met with alarm from civil libertarians.

“This plan is whiplash inducing. The city only recently trumpeted safety data,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

“These heavy-handed approaches will, like stop-and-frisk, be used to accost and profile Black and Brown New Yorkers, ripping a page straight out of the Giuliani playbook,” she said, comparing Hochul to the former Republican mayor.

Albert Fox Cahn, head of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, expressed specific concern about the use of the National Guard.

“We shouldn’t militarize the MTA when crime rates are falling and budgets are contracting,” he said in a statement.

“I fear how many New Yorkers will be wrongly arrested or hurt before we recognize that soldiers have no place on the streets of democracy.”

The National Weather Service predicts up to an inch of rain will fall every hour on Wednesday during the most intense periods of precipitation, beginning in the afternoon and getting heavier at night.

“Rates of around an inch per hour for prolonged periods of time are possible with the setup,” forecasters said Tuesday. “Widespread minor flooding with areas of more significant flooding are expected as a result.”

The rain began Tuesday afternoon but is supposed to stop briefly overnight. However, forecasters warned “a second low will approach on Wednesday and pass to the southeast on Thursday, bringing more significant rainfall of 1-2 inches, with locally higher amounts possible across Long Island and southeast Connecticut,” the weather service said.

“We may manage one dry day this week on Friday before a third storm arrives this weekend and brings yet more rain,” it added.

The flood watch is set to begin at 1 p.m. Wednesday and end at 6 a.m. Thursday. Temperatures are expected to remain rather consistent, with afternoon highs in the mid-50s and overnight lows in the low-40s.

The rain and low-50s temperatures will mark a sharp contrast from last weekend, when New Yorkers enjoyed record highs and sunny skies on Sunday.

But as we move into the first half of next week, NWS forecasters all but promise “the weather pattern looks quieter.”

Twenty-one students from the Bronx Design and Construction Academy, a vocational school in the South Bronx, rode the Metro-North Railroad to Grand Central to meet with some of the tradespeople that work on the 111-year-old building.

The visiting students are studying for certifications in heating, ventilation and air conditioning — HVAC — or in one of the electrical trades, said Orvil Boatswain, an HVAC instructor at the school. They were hoping to see how their trades are plied at Grand Central.

“We’re going down to the Track 100 shops,” Brian Phillips, the railroad’s deputy director for track repair, told the students as they stood under the painted constellations of the terminal’s main concourse.

The rooms along Track 100, Phillips explained, housed many of the workshops that keep Grand Central humming: locksmiths, machinists, metal shops, HVAC — “basically all your trades you need to keep this beautiful place functioning.”

After a brief safety briefing, the students split into smaller groups.

HVAC hopefuls headed to the sheet-metal shop where duct-work is made, while the electrically-minded headed down beneath the terminal to the service plant, where water and high pressure steam are sent around the building.

“The electrical field — if you love this craft, it will take care of you,” said Severin Smith, Grand Central’s superintendent of electrical and mechanical maintenance, speaking over the din of water pumps and other machinery. “Don’t worry about the money, learn the craft.”

“What would you like to do?” Smith asked the students

“Signals,” said one student.

“You’ll work with Metro North!” Smith replied. “We need guys like you. Please, work with us.”

“Elevator repair,” said 17-year-old Daniel Santiago.

“You’re going to make a ton of money,” Smith told Santiago with a smile. “But it’s hard work. It’s not easy.”

Santiago said the challenge of working on a powerful machine tasked with moving people safely appealed to him. “And you wont run out of places where you have an elevator or an escalator,” he said.

As the students climbed out of the pump room and back up towards the tracks, Boatswain, the instructor, recognized an old student, currently employed in Grand Central’s machine shop. The two men embraced.

Back under the fiber-optic stars dotting the ceiling of the station’s main concourse, MTA chairman Janno Lieber spoke with the students.

Calling the century-old terminal “the capital of mass transit in the United States,” he asked them to consider “serving [their] neighbors” by coming to work for the MTA.

“We all know New York kids are curious about the system,” Lieber said. “The natural reservoir of talent for us is kids who grew up in New York and know our system. It means something to them.”

While inundated with gripes about weight loss drugs, BBB Metro New York received a flood of complaints about other consumer health and beauty products, including items ranging from exercise equipment to deodorant, especially those advertised heavily on social media.

“Weight loss drugs are in high demand, and many companies are just not prepared to handle the volume,” said Claire Rosenzweig, president and CEO of BBB Metro New York.

“Consumers put down their payment in good faith and too often don’t get what they pay for,” she added. “Some fall victim to miracle weight loss claims that are just not true. They can lose money and might endanger their health due to the potentially harmful ingredients in fake weight-loss drugs or other phony products.”

As part of National Consumer Protection Week, Rosenzweig urged consumers to be on the lookout for a wide range of scams from government agency imposters to sweepstake lottery prizes.

At an online news conference, she joined government agency leaders and consumer protection advocates in repeating an old adage: If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

Among the more popular tools in consumer fraud is artificial intelligence, said Wilson Guzman, associate state director of engagement for the AARP.

Scammers are scanning popular video sites to mimic the voices of actors and using them in bogus messages to the public, he explained.

“Scammers want to earn your trust, so using a beloved celebrity is one way they do it,” Guzman said.

Beware, too, of tax season scams featuring callers pretending to be government agents or tax preparation services promising upfront money. Last year, according to the Internal Revenue Service, there was more than $5.5 billion in tax fraud.

“We see a variety of scams every year,” said Paulina Rodriguez, a special agent in the IRS criminal investigation unit. “Even when someone files on your behalf, you are responsible for your tax bill. So choose a tax preparer wisely.”

Other Better Business Bureau complaint categories include financial services and insurance, online retailers and general retail stores.

As first reported by the Daily News on Monday, the city has only received $49 million of that money because federal authorities say the Adams administration isn’t filing the right paperwork to secure the rest. One Biden administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid, even said Adams’ team hasn’t “stepped up to the plate” when it comes to putting the right application paperwork together for the remainder of the aid, which was allocated last year by Congress.

Asked why his administration’s struggling to furnish the right documentation, Adams sought Tuesday afternoon to flip the script back on the feds by noting the outstanding $107 million is small potatoes when compared with the $4 billion the city has spent so far on providing housing and services for migrants.

“Why don’t you go back to that person who stated we haven’t stepped to the plate, and say: ‘Have you guys stepped up to the plate and helping them with this $4 billion, securing the border, allowing people to have work authorization, make sure we have a decompression strategy?'” said Adams, who has for over a year lamented what he sees as a lack of migrant crisis help from the Biden administration. “Ask them: Have they stepped up to the plate? New Yorkers have stepped up to the plate.”

To offset migrant spending, Adams has in recent months enacted steep city budget cuts. The cuts have resulted in various service reductions, including the elimination of Sunday hours at all public libraries.

After the mayor’s briefing, a White House official told The News that the Biden administration wants to provide New York City with more financial help to alleviate the migrant-related fiscal burden, noting it supported the creation of a new $1.4 billion fund that’d reimburse cities across the U.S. for migrant costs. However, House Republicans have blocked that allocation.

“Of course, we would love to do more,” the White House official said.

Jacques Jiha, Adams’ budget director, first revealed during a Council hearing Monday that the city has only received $49 million in migrant aid from the feds to date. In his testimony, Jiha said the city hasn’t been able to access the rest of the aid due to “stringent” eligibility requirements that make it “very difficult” to apply.

Neither Adams nor multiple top advisers who joined him for Tuesday’s briefing at City Hall would provide more details on what specifically in the requirements are tripping up their application.

“We’ll look into it and circle back to you,” Fabien Levy, Adams’ deputy mayor for communications, said when asked for specifics.

Sheena Wright, Adams’ first deputy mayor, suggested a finger should ultimately be pointed at the feds, not the mayor’s team.

“We know how to submit paperwork,” she said. “So I think the question is for them: Why haven’t these funds been released?”

Among other requirements, municipalities applying for the aid must provide names, dates of birth and so-called alien registration numbers for migrants who stand to benefit from the financial support, according to guidance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The FEMA guidance also says spending on hotels cannot exceed 5% of the total amount of aid requested by any given municipality, a wrinkle that could pose a problem for the city, which is housing thousands of new arrivals in hotels.

According to Biden administration officials, FEMA dispatched a team to New York last week to help Adams’ office with resolving aid application snags.

However, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ chief adviser, claimed it’s “not true” a FEMA team came to New York when asked about the matter during Tuesday’s briefing.

“Why don’t they come and say, ‘Listen, this is what you need to provide,'” Lewis-Martin said. “If we give people paperwork to fill out and they cannot get it done, please assist them.”

Asked about Lewis-Martin’s comments, the White House official reiterated that the FEMA team was in New York last week and provided on-the-ground application support. The official said the administration would contact Lewis-Martin about the matter.

A City Hall spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment on whether Lewis-Martin misspoke.

The latest clash between the mayor’s team and the Biden administration comes as more than 60,000 migrants remain housed in city shelters. Though he says he still supports Biden’s reelection bid, the mayor has been vocally frustrated for months with what he sees as a lack of migrant crisis help from the Democratic president, including declaring last year the commander-in-chief had “failed” New York City.

The outstanding federal migrant aid issue came up during a budget hearing held in the City Council on Tuesday, when Manuel Castro, Adams’ Immigration Affairs commissioner, testified that the city is banking on receiving the full $156 million from the feds this year.

Castro’s comment prompted Brooklyn Councilwoman Alexa Aviles, a progressive Democrat, to note that the city has received less than a third of the outlay so far.

“There are some operational issues to address there,” she said.

Marco Pina, 22, who emigrated with his family from Mexico 20 years ago when he was a toddler, said New York City is the only home he knows and he deserved better.

“I’ve never lived anywhere else,” Pina said in a statement nearly a month after he clashed with members of the Angels during a live Fox News broadcast.

“I work to support my child and I’ve never broken the law. Now I will tell my story to the [district attorney] and will seek justice, I’m not afraid anymore,” he added.

Pina crossed paths with the Angels on Feb. 7 as Sliwa, their longtime leader, was being interviewed in prime time by Fox News host Sean Hannity about crime in the area.

A group of Angels sporting their signature red berets and bomber jackets broke away to tend to an off-screen disturbance.

At Sliwa’s direction, the camera panned to show them confronting Pina, pushing him to the sidewalk and placing him in a headlock.

As the camera rolled, Sliwa labeled the man a “migrant.”

“Our guys have just taken down one of the migrant guys on the corner of 42nd and Seventh where all of this has taken place,” Sliwa told Hannity as he threw his hands in the air.

“They’ve taken over!”

Sliwa also called Pina a “shoplifter,” an allegation cops could not substantiate.

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

In a Tuesday statement, Sliwa repeated claims that Pina initiated the encounter by “pushing and shoving through the film crew despite being told by the security of the film crew to ‘please stay back’ repeatedly.

“The Guardian Angels stand against hate and we pride ourselves on our diversity and inclusivity,” he added.

Police said Pina was issued a summons for disorderly conduct because he was acting in “a loud, threatening manner causing public alarm.”

Pina said he feared that his immigration status would be in jeopardy if he stood up to a well-known man like Sliwa.

“It has taken me some time to come forward,” he said. “I’m a nobody in this city, Curtis Sliwa is famous. I was intimidated and scared since I’m only protected by DACA, a temporary permit for immigrants like myself that arrived here as babies.”

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), established by the Obama administration in 2012, offers a lifeline to specific undocumented individuals in the United States, particularly for those who entered the country as minors. The policy provides them with a renewable two-year reprieve from deportation and the chance to obtain work permit eligibility.

The incident came amid rising tensions in New York City, where officials have struggled to handle an ongoing rise in migrant arrivals for more than a year.

In one high-profile incident, a group of migrants attacked two NYPD officers outside a shelter in Times Square on Jan. 27, sparking outrage.

Pina’s lawyer, Patricia Lynch, said Pina continues to suffer from the Angels’ beatdown.

“The incident aired live on Sean Hannity, where millions of people watched Mr. Marco Pina being thrown to the ground and put into an illegal chokehold, and for Mr. Pina to have his character and reputation assaulted after this horrific incident was tantamount to pouring salt in his wound,” said Lynch, a lawyer at Sacco & Fillas.

Pina plans to file a civil suit in Manhattan Supreme Court along with making a complaint with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The DA’s office previously said it’s investigating the incident.

Pina also received support from Hispanics Across America spokesman Fernando Mateo, who was defeated by Sliwa in the 2021 Republican mayoral primary.

“He’s not a recent immigrant. He’s not a looter, not a thief,” Mateo said of Pina. “He was body-slammed and his face was pushed against the concrete. His friends who tried to support him were pushed to the streets.”