The man who allegedly confessed to strangling a cabbie in a fare dispute and then dumping his body in a city reservoir upstate is an illegal migrant from Guatemala, The Post has learned.

Santos Paulino Vasquez-Ramirez illegally crossed the border in 2013 at Hidalgo, Texas, under President Obama, and later ignored a final removal order issued in 2016 under the first Trump administration, according to sources and US Department of Homeland Security officials.

He “should’ve never been in our country in the first place and provided the opportunity to gruesomely take the life of Aurelio Zhunio-Orbez,” Assistant Secretary of DHS Tricia McLaughlin told The Post.

“Open border policies have deadly consequences. ICE lodged a detainer with local authorities to ensure this criminal illegal alien is never allowed back into American neighborhoods. Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, ICE is targeting the worst of the worst,” she added.

In a tragic irony, the cabbie was a legal immigrant from Ecuador.

The accused killer — who was photographed by The Post last week grinning in the back of a patrol car — has at least three prior arrests on his rap sheet, including two DWIs and a criminal mischief for breaking a deli window, according to the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office.

Vasquez-Ramirez, 27, confessed to barbarically throttling Zhunio-Orbez, 65, in a chokehold after the hack picked him up at the Brewster MetroNorth station in Putnam County, according to the county sheriff’s office.

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