Without evidence, Trump officials say media leaks to activists hindered Aurora immigration raids

DENVER | Donald Trump’s border czar on Thursday blamed local news media leaks for hindering a large-scale operation in Aurora that President Trump has held up in his efforts to link violent crime with immigration.

Border Czar Tom Homan offered no evidence to support his claim, made earlier in the day by the U.S. Border Patrol Chief.

More than 100 members of the Tren de Aragua gang were targeted Wednesday at apartment buildings and other sites in Denver and Aurora, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

It was unclear how many people were arrested. Fox News, which was embedded with the operation, said 30 people were detained, including at least one person accused to be a member of the Venezuelan gang. But White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said more than 100 members of Tren de Aragua were deported from Colorado on Wednesday.

She offered no details or evidence.

No local official from the federal agencies has released information about the operations. Rocky Mountain DEA spokesperson Steffan Tubbs told the Sentinel that his agency would not release details because Homeland Security led the effort.

It was not clear where more than 100 people would have been sent since Venezuela does not currently accept its citizens back. The Defense Department said Wednesday that 10 people sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were Tren de Aragua members.

ICE, which promoted the operation on social media shortly after it got underway, referred questions about the raids, including arrest totals, to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond to a Associated Press requests for comment Thursday.

Requests from the Sentinel beginning Wednesday have gone unanswered.

Dozens of heavily armed officials from several federal agencies, many wearing masks and arriving in armored vehicles, swarmed locations across the metro area in the daylong operation that had been anticipated since Trump took office.

They knocked down doors in at least one apartment building and provoked outrage among activists, who were on scene at some of the operations and taunted agents as they worked.

Homan, told reporters Thursday that details on the operation had been leaked, putting officers at risk. Media reports leading up to the raids said they were imminent.

Numerous immigrant rights activists told the Sentinel on Thursday they have been preparing for months for raids, and have for the past several days been taking “shifts” among volunteers and staying at apartment buildings previously targeted by local and federal officials. They were the same apartment complexes where raids occurred.

“This isn’t a game,” Homan said.

“We know that TDA is dangerous,” he added, referring to the Venezuelan gang. “Everybody can agree to that, but when they get a heads-up that we are coming, it’s only a matter of time before our officers are ambushed. Their job is dangerous enough. So we are going to address this very seriously.”

While speaking to Fox News, Homan said he would consider withholding information from the media in a “blackout” effort.

While campaigning in Aurora last year, Trump said he would target migrant gangs nationally, calling it “Operation Aurora” after a widely circulated video showed some armed members of Tren de Aragua entering an apartment in the city of 400,000 people shortly before a fatal shooting outside.

Hannah Stickline said six heavily armed officers knocked on her door in Denver’s Cedar Run apartments around 6 a.m. Wednesday and demanded to see her identification. After she showed it, they asked which of her neighbors were in the country illegally. She refused to answer.

“It’s insulting and it’s infuriating because I would never snitch on my neighbors,” she said.

Fernando Martinez, who stayed the night at a friend’s apartment in the complex, said Drug Enforcement Administration agents knocked on their door and then used a battering ram to open it. He said a stun grenade landed at his feet before the agents threw him to the ground. He was not detained after showing identification.

Three people have died because of fentanyl at the complex in the last month, the DEA said.

Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations has raised expectations of large-scale operations. ICE averaged 787 arrests a day from Jan. 23 to Jan. 31, compared to a daily average of 311 during a 12-month period ended Sept. 30 during the Biden administration. ICE has stopped publishing daily arrests totals.

Homan, who was in Colorado for the operation on Wednesday, said arrests will increase once “the aperture opens up beyond criminals.” ICE, which has been publicizing arrests with the caption, “The Worst First,” has said people with criminal histories are their immediate — but not only — priority.

“I’ve made it clear that if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table,” Homan said.

Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said “more than 8,000” people in the country illegally had been arrested since Trump’s inauguration through Wednesday, with 461 later released for reasons that included medical conditions and lack of detention capacity.

Wednesday’s operation included the largely empty apartment complex where the viral video was taken in August. Residents have been moving out because all but one of its buildings is set to close Feb. 18 after a judge said it was a public safety threat.

In December, police say a group of people that included seven suspected Tren de Aragua members tied up, pistol whipped and terrorized two fellow immigrants from Venezuela at the complex. Nine people, initially put in ICE custody, are being prosecuted on state charges and transferred to the local jail.

Aurora and Denver immigrant rights activists say weeks of preparation made them ready for Operation Aurora

Immigration rights activists say that, at least for the Aurora raids, federal officials appeared to be targeting residents potentially in violation of immigration law, not for criminal offenses.

“This action, taking place in Aurora, a focal point of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, is a direct attempt to criminalize immigrant communities,” Colorado Immigration Rights Council officials said in a statement. “

Aurora Councilmember Alison Coombs, who has been critical of local and federal efforts to round up immigrants solely on suspected immigration application status, lambasted the raids on Wednesday.

“It is both predictable and despicable that ICE raids are targeting places in Aurora and Denver where Venezuelans are known to live immediately after the current administration revoked Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans,” Coombs.

She referred to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ending protections that shielded roughly 350,000 Venezuelans from deportation, leaving them with two months before they lose their right to work in the U.S. President Joe Biden has extended the TPS designation for Venezuelan immigrants and refugees for 15 months, just as he was leaving office. Noem’s move reverses that decisions, putting tens of thousands of immigrants at risk for deportation.

Coombs said she agrees with a local effort to ensure immigrants know their rights.

“Always ask for a warrant signed by a judge, ask to talk to a lawyer, and maintain your right to silence by not answering any questions,” Coombs said. “When living under fascism, we must do all that’s within our power to resist.”

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman said the raids illustrated a larger problem.

“I think these raids are a symptom of a broken immigration system where it has been far too easy to come into the United States illegally and far too difficult to come into our country legally,” Coffman said in a statement. ” As a former member of Congress, this should be a wake-up call for the members of both parties to come together and pass a comprehensive immigration reform that secures our borders, helps grow our economy, and is compassionate to those seeking an escape from persecution.”

The Aurora raids were garnering outright support from some residents and community leaders in the area being targeted for raids.

“If you come into our community to commit crime and sell drugs and prostitution, kidnap and torture people, and you come immigrated without documentation, you should be deported because you’re here actively committing crimes, not only against citizens but also other people who are undocumented immigrants,” said Stephen Elkins, who lives in a neighborhood of one of the raided apartments and is preparing to run for Aurora City Council in Ward I.

He said he’s sympathetic to immigrants in the community, but he thinks the raids are a net benefit for Aurora.

“I think it’s all happening so fast, and people are confused,” Elkins said. “My heart goes out to people who are confused and afraid that they may be deported, but at the same time, people who are committing violent crimes in our community against other people, other Venezuelans, against other American citizens, and they need to be held accountable.”

Some neighbors agreed with those comments.

Northwest Aurora resident David Bottoms, who lives on the same block as the Edge at Lowry, said he’s relieved the raids are happening, and that the Edge is being shut down. He said his car was stolen, and when the police returned it, the car was trashed and had instructions on how to use fentanyl.

“Watering my lawn twice last summer, I walked out into the middle of a gunfight,” Bottoms said. “So yeah, get them out of here.”

Bottoms and other neighbors started a neighborhood watch safety group last summer to be proactive, saying that they felt abandoned by their city and state leaders when crime soared after people were moved into the Edge. He said he doesn’t have a problem with immigrants, but he wants the criminals out, which includes people who entered the country illegally.

“That used to be a pretty decent, quiet neighborhood for the most part,” Bottoms said. “These people showed up, and we have random shootings all week long for no reason. There’s trash all over the place. Nobody really seems to care about your next-door neighbor. No respect for anyone.”

City officials have laid blame for the crime and slum-like conditions on the owners of the Edge apartment complex, citing absent and poor management for the dilapidated conditions and lack of security. 

Statewide, Democrats stepped up criticism of raids that swept up immigrants not accused of or linked to crimes.

“Reports that ICE was blocking school buses picking up kids and preventing families from leaving their homes are deeply troubling,” Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper said in a statement. “We all want criminals off of our streets. Securing our border doesn’t require targeting children and families who have committed no crimes.”

Aurora Democratic Congressman Jason Crow said public safety is critical.

“If someone, regardless of their immigration status, is committing violent crimes, they have no place in Colorado,” Crow said. “But I do not support rounding up our peaceful neighbors, family members, and small business owners who live, work, and contribute to our community.”

State lawmakers also jumped into the fray, telling immigrants and their families they would continue to push back against efforts to link documented and undocumented immigrants with criminals.

Aurora Democratic state Sen. Iman Jodeh said immigrant rights activists groups and others appear to have been successful and helping immigrants from being unlawfully carted off by instructing them on their rights and how to handle immigrant police confrontations.

She said the day filled with news about immigration arrests was unnerving.

“Martin Luther King said, ‘We must commit to what is said on paper, that all men are created equal.’ And then he continued to say that, ‘we must understand the urgency of this moment and today,’” Jodeh said. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that because right now, all people are not equal, but the allies of those who are targeted understand the urgency of now.”

The raids appeared to be widespread across the metro area.

9 News reported that they have confirmed some type of immigration or drug operations at: 

• Cedar Run apartments, near South Quebec Street and Leetsdale Drive

• The Edge at Lowry apartments, 1265 Dallas St.

• Whispering Pines apartments, 1357 Helena St.

• Jewell Apartments at South Colorado Boulevard and East Mexico Avenue.

• unnamed apartments at 1451 Macon St. in Aurora

• Ivy Crossing Apartments near South Quebec Street and East Harvard Avenue in Arapahoe County

• a trailer home in Thornton at West 100th Avenue and Zuni Street.

The recorded HSI official said Wednesday’s operation were not the only efforts the Aurora and Denver region will be targeted for.
“This is something that is just going to continue,” he said. “As long as there are bad guys on the streets, we’re going be out here arresting them and keeping the community safe.”

The apartment complexes targeted included the Edge of Lowry and Whispering Pines in Aurora, and Cedar Run in Denver, as well as an apartment complex South Colorado Boulevard and East Mexico Avenue.

Witnesses and residents of Whispering Pines apartments in northwest Aurora said an immigration raid carried out by multiple federal agents raided the complex at about 4 a.m., taking an unknown number of residents.

Residents said they immediately contacted family and immigrant activists that the raids were underway.

One woman speaking to the Sentinel, asking not to be identified for fear of reprisal from local or federal police, said her husband was taken by agents at about 8 a.m.

She was not with him at the time and said her husband and other residents ran to the roof in an effort to escape the raid and at least one person was “tasered” by agents and arrested.

The woman said her husband was not a criminal and was not a member of any crime organization, but that he is a Mexican immigrant, who has lived here for 17 years and does not citizenship documents.

The man was on his cell phone with his wife during the raid, and he told the woman that agents kicked down the door of the apartment as or while he was running to the roof. At some point, one of the men on the roof he was with was “tasered” by agents and arrested.

The wife and an immigration rights activist at the apartment said those who called family members before their arrests said no warrants were presented. Several people said they had been apprised of “immigrant rights” during raids and either asked for or did not see warrants.

Kayla Frawley, an immigrant rights activist for Colorado People’s Alliance, said that after talking to residents in the building, as many as eight people were arrested in the raid.

Officials from Homeland Security said in a social media post that the operations were seeking more than 100 members of the Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua, in the operation.
“100+ members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were targeted for arrest and detention in Aurora, Colo., today by ICE and its partners,” the post on X stated.

A second Aurora operation occurred at a nearby northwest Aurora apartment.
Residents near the notorious Edge at Lowry apartments in northwest Aurora told the Sentinel that federal agents arrived at the apartment buildings early Tuesday and left by about 7 a.m.

Federal officials with the DEA and Homeland Security have not made public details about the operations.

It’s unclear how many arrests were made during the series of raides. Residents and immigrant activists said there no arrests made at the Edge.

The apartment complex is currently being shut down by the city and few residents are left. A man working at the complex said only 23 units were now occupied of the Edge’s 60 units.

Residents in and near the Edge complex said they saw agents from the FBI, the DEA and ICE at the complex and that some of the agents put “red tape” on the doors of some apartments. It’s unclear at this time if agents intend to return for residents of those marked apartments.
A man working at the apartment, saying he was contracted by the City of Aurora, and asked not to be identified, said he did not see any doors with “red tape.” The tape could clearly be seen on the doorknobs of apartment doors in video produced by Fox News, embedded inthe raids.

“We did not see them take anyone away,” one resident said, asking not to be identified for fear of being harassed by federal agents.

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Associated Press reporter Darlene Superville contributed from Washington as well as Sentinel Colorado reporter Cassandra Ballard.