How false claims of a ’complete gang takeover’ drew Trump to Aurora

Former President Donald Trump will hold a rally at a luxury resort in Aurora on Friday, a little over two months after local right-wing political figures began to spread the false and exaggerated claims about a gang “takeover” that have thrust the city into the spotlight of the 2024 presidential campaign.

No major-party presidential candidate has visited Colorado so close to Election Day since Hillary Clinton made a stop in Pueblo on Oct. 12, 2016, and polls show a commanding lead for Vice President Kamala Harris in the battle for the Centennial State’s 10 electoral votes. But Trump is making good on his promise last month to come to Aurora as he doubles down on misinformation and racist rhetoric about immigrants in the final days of his bid to return to the White House.

Trump is due to speak at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center at 1 p.m. The resort sits along Aurora’s far northern city limits just south of Denver International Airport, a 30-minute drive from the three apartment complexes at the center of the debunked claims about gang activity.

Trump will be joined at Friday’s rally by Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Windsor and conservative Aurora City Council member Danielle Jurinsky, whose false claims of a “complete gang takeover” of the city by the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua were instrumental in drawing the attention of right-leaning national media outlets in late August.

Aurora’s Republican mayor, former U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, reacted to news of Trump’s visit this week by calling the former president’s claims “grossly exaggerated.” For months, officials with the Aurora Police Department have maintained that TdA’s presence in the community is “isolated” and small compared to other gangs operating within the Denver metro area. They said last month that they had identified 10 suspected TdA members operating in Aurora, and at least seven were in custody as of Sept. 26.

Shortly after Jurinksy’s claims appeared on Fox News and in the New York Post, interest in the story was supercharged by the spread of a viral 15-second video clip captured by a doorbell camera in an Aurora apartment complex, which showed a group of armed men knocking on a neighboring apartment’s door and entering the unit. It remains unclear exactly what the video shows, and Aurora police have declined to comment on the specifics of the incident, citing a pending investigation.

Disputing claims of gang takeover, Aurora tenants protest ‘slumlord’ owner

In the days following last month’s national media firestorm, tenants at the apartment complex acknowledged what appeared to be a break-in attempt or other criminal offense captured on the viral video, but rejected claims that a gang had taken control of their buildings or was shaking down residents for rent.

Displaying receipts of their rental payments, photos of trash pileups and dead mice caught in traps in their apartments, tenants blamed problems at the buildings on longstanding habitability issues caused by the neglect of a “slumlord” owner. They were far less afraid of any gang, they said, than of the threats of vigilante violence and social media rumors like one claiming Hells Angels Motorcycle Club was en route to their neighborhood. One resident showed reporters text messages they had received containing violent racist threats against “you f—ing animals.”

“There’s nobody charging a fee to live here, nobody threatening us,” Sarimar Marin, a tenant at one of the apartment complexes, told Newsline in an interview last month. “There’s only working families and good people who live here.”

Anti-Trump protesters are expected to demonstrate outside the Gaylord resort during Friday’s rally. Later in the day, a coalition of Colorado immigrants rights groups plan to hold a news conference in Aurora to push back on what they call “efforts by extremists to spread hatred and to scapegoat immigrants,” and host a “Fiesta del Barrio” to celebrate the city’s immigrant communities.

“Anti-immigrant forces are sowing dangerous, racist lies about Aurora community members instead of addressing the real needs of our communities,” Will Dempster, vice president of strategic communications at the National Immigration Law Center, said in a statement Thursday. “Our communities are not political pawns or scapegoats, and we take care of one another no matter where we were born, the color of our skin, or how much money we have. Anti-immigrant hatred has no place in Colorado.”

From rumor to debate stage

The first uncorroborated claims of gang activity at the three Aurora properties at the center of the controversy appeared in a private report prepared by a Denver law firm conducting an investigation on behalf of the mortgage lender for one of the properties, which was shared with city officials in July.

All three properties were owned by New York-based CBZ Management and had racked up years of city code violations over a wide range of habitability issues. Living conditions at one of the buildings were bad enough that they even made local headlines as early as 2021, two years before large numbers of migrants began arriving in the Denver metro area.

In early August, as Aurora moved forward with plans to condemn one of the properties, a publicist hired by CBZ Management contacted local media to claim that the TdA gang had “taken over several communities in the Denver area,” and left “residents and building owners … in a state of fear and chaos,” according to an email obtained by the New York Times.

“The problems in this building certainly precede any problems with Venezuelan gangs,” Coffman said on Aug. 9, as the rumors began to swirl. “The problems even preceded the migrant crisis.”

Tenants at several properties owned by CBZ Management held a press conference on Sep. 3, 2024, to dispute claims of armed gang takeovers and redirect attention to longstanding habitability issues in their buildings. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)

Trump has eagerly seized on the Aurora controversy as his campaign seeks to make undocumented immigration the top issue in the 2024 election. He referred to the city twice during a Sept. 10 presidential debate with Harris, together with similarly debunked claims about town of Springfield, Ohio, where far-right political figures have falsely accused Haitian immigrants of eating pets.

“You look at Springfield, Ohio. You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently,” Trump said. “These are the people that she and Biden let into our country. And they’re destroying our country.”

If elected to another term, the Republican nominee has pledged to deploy the National Guard to forcibly deport as many as 25 million people from the U.S. He has frequently compared the scope of his plans to a 1954 U.S. government operation named after a racial slur for Mexicans living in the United States, which deported an estimated 1.1 million people to Mexico. The crackdown resulted in conditions on trains, trucks and cargo ships that a later congressional investigation likened to “slave ships” and led to the deaths of at least 88 deportees.

“We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country,” Trump said on Sept. 13. “And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora.”

A ‘war zone’?

In announcing his visit, Trump called Aurora a “war zone,” echoing the overblown rhetoric that has for weeks prompted outrage, fear and derision among local residents.

Home to nearly 400,000 residents, Aurora makes up almost all of the eastern portion of the Denver metro area. Along parts of its border with Denver, the city contains busy urban corridors and neighborhoods that have long struggled with crime. Its sprawling eastern reaches are dominated by leafy subdivisions encircling golf clubs, reservoirs and prairie hiking trails. In addition to the ritzy Gaylord resort where Trump will hold his rally, the city’s 163 square miles include Colorado’s largest medical campus, the newly rechristened Buckley Space Force Base, chic shopping and food-hall fare at the Stanley Marketplace, the region’s most diverse global cuisine on Havana Street, and easy access to Cherry Creek State Park.

“Vibrant Colorado cities like Aurora provide rich culture, a great business environment, and thriving communities that help strengthen our Colorado way of life,” Gov. Jared Polis said in a social media post ahead of Trump’s arrival on Thursday. “Aurora is a wonderful community and one of the many reasons we love Colorado.”

Claims that crime rates in Aurora have “skyrocketed” following the arrival of large numbers of migrants from Venezuela and other Central and South American countries are false. Crime rates in metro Denver and Colorado as a whole have been on a sustained decline since late 2022.

“Trump is coming to Aurora to spread lies and score cheap political points,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet wrote earlier this week. “He thinks division and dog-whistles will distract voters, but we know his game, and we’re not going back to it.

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and X.