AURORA | Aurora officials pushed back against Republican Donald Trump’s assertions during Tuesday’s presidential debate that the city is overrun by immigrant gangs — adding, however, that gang activity has been concerning in some cases.
Gangs have not “taken over the city,” according to a statement released Wednesday. “The overstated claims fueled by social media and through select news organizations are simply not true.”
The rebuttal by city police and administrative officials came with new details about the arrests of eight of the 10 people they say investigators have linked so far to the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, otherwise known as TdA.
Some of those arrests stem from crimes committed at three blighted apartment complexes in northwest Aurora, all owned by the same out-of-state landlord.
The controversy exploded into national news following the dissemination of video from a resident in the complex that showed armed men knocking on an apartment door. Those raising alarms connect the controversy to local and national immigration-politics. Aurora is a diverse city that has long grappled with crime and gangs in some limited areas of the city, officials say.
“In line with these arrests, we can also now confirm that criminal activity, including TdA issues, had significantly affected those properties,” city communication officials said in a statement. The message was attributed to Mayor Mike Coffman, Aurora police, administrators and Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky, who heads the city council’s public safety committee.
Jurinsky has appeared repeatedly on national and local right-wing news, radio and social media over the past few weeks, at times insisting that parts of Aurora have been overcome by Venezuelan gangs.
Wednesday’s statement does not substantiate past claims by Jurinsky and the apartment landlord about a “gang takeover” of his three complexes, but it does validate some of their concerns about heightened gang activity in them, city spokesperson Ryan Luby said.
Ruby said landlord Zev Baumgarten, his attorney and officials with his company, CBZ Management “continue to be uncooperative in allowing the city and APD to actually investigate the claims” about gang-related incidents.
The reported arrests include two men believed to have been involved in a July 28 shooting at Aspen Grove apartments, a dilapidated complex in northwest Aurora. The arrests also include alleged TdA members detained in connection to a variety of crimes at similarly blighted complexes that Baumgarten and his company own called Whispering Pines and Aspen Grove, all within blocks of one another. Deeming Aspen Grove “uninhabitable,” the city closed down the 100-unit apartment complex Aug. 13, displacing hundreds of residents, mostly Venezuelan migrants.
The city and tenants of Baumgarten’s complexes have provided documentation about the apartments being ridden with structural and mechanical problems, garbage, leaks, mold and vermin infestations.
Wednesday’s statement came in response to Trump referring twice during his debate Tuesday with Vice President Kamala Harris to alleged lawlessness among Aurora’s Venezuelan migrants.
“We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums,” Trump said. “You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently…And they’re destroying our country. They’re dangerous. They’re at the highest level of criminality.”
The city’s statement also comes two days after former LAPD commander Todd Chamberlain swore in as Aurora’s new seventh police chief in five years. Chamberlain’s predecessor, interim Chief Heather Morris, and city management had for several weeks debunked assertions by Jurinsky, Coffman and Baumgarten that TdA gangsters wielding long guns extorted rent payments from tenants in the complexes, ran off property managers and contributed to the buildings’ blighted conditions.
The messaging is a departure from weeks of fractured and often contradictory statements coming from Coffman, Jurinsky, police officials, and even members of Congress jumping into the fray.
Several Democrats, including Gov. Jared Polis and U.S. Rep. Jason Crow — whose 6th Congressional District includes Aurora — have slammed Coffman and Jurinsky for spreading misinformation. Both were critical of efforts by local Republicans to defend Baumgarten, whom many tenants describe as a slumlord. Crow and Polis accused local and national Republicans of stoking fears about the tens of thousands of Venezuelans who have migrated to metro Denver in the last two years to flee poverty, corruption and crime under the regime of President Nicolás Maduro.
Coffman has backed off some of his previous assertions about the gang problem and most recently tried to dispel what he says are gross exaggerations about lawlessness by Venezuelan newcomers.
Aurora police released this list identifying men it says are TdA members. They are:
- Larry Medina, arrested July 10 in connection with a July 2 felony menacing allegation at Whispering Pines Condominiums. The victim reported to police Medina pointed a firearm and threatened to kill them, police said.
- Jhonardy Pacheco-Chirinos, arrested March 28 for allegedly assaulting someone at Aspen Grove. He also stands accused of involvement in a July 28 shooting at Aspen Grove apartments.
- Jhonnarty Dejesus Pacheco-Chirinos, arrested July 29 in connection with a nonfatal shooting July 28 shooting at Aspen Grove apartments.
- Luis Miguel Calzadilla-Rojas, arrested Jan. 3 in connection with a nonfatal shooting in front of the Arapahoe County Probation Office.
- Yorman Camilo Sangronis-Garcia, involved in a consensual contact with Aurora police Feb. 4 regarding a report of a hit-and-run crash
- Yoendry Vilchez Medina-Jose, arrested on Aug. 5 on a warrant stemming from a Nov. 2023 assault at Whispering Pines
- Juan Carlos Mejia-Espana, arrested March 17 following a domestic dispute with a weapon at Whispering Pines
- Carlos Aranguren-Mayora, facing 38 charges in five active court cases in Adams, Arapahoe and Boulder district courts for crimes dating to December 2023
- Roiberth Daniel Mora-Marquez, arrested April 17 in connection with an April 4 dispute and assault over unpaid rent money in the 1600 block of Lima Street
- Jose Miguel Reyes-Perez, arrested May 22 on an outstanding warrant out of Jefferson District Court for aggravated assault, menacing and motor vehicle theft
DO NOT under any circumstance let them out on bail!
We should all express our gratitude to the Colorado Legislature for their commitment to passing laws that keep the police from being able to work with Immigration to enforce our laws and remove illegal aliens (particularly dangerous ones). Further, we should thank the Legislature for passing a vague Police Reform Bill that drove thousands of police officers out of the job and made policing more hazardous for officers. Luckily, the public knows little about what any of these laws say nor their disastrous results. If you are under the threat of being murdered, the political maneuverings mean little to you. If your neighborhood is being shot up, you probably would like the police to have enough people to stop it. You don’t really care how it benefits one political party or another. The reality for all people, most often minority or people of color is that they would like not to live in fear. Instead of dealing with police misconduct where it occurs, the legislature decided to simply cripple all law enforcement proactive efforts. They appeared caring while actually making life more unpleasant and dangerous for the very people they claim to protect. I called 911 a couple of years ago when shots were being fired and no one answered. An off duty officer with me laughed, since we know how bad it is. Hundreds of pending calls being held. But, at least the politicians can look like they are caring and sensitive. The few incidents with illegal immigrants that make the news are only the tip of the iceberg. Sure, there are millions of good people who are illegal immigrants. But they are a strain on our country and are a hiding place for the ones who are criminals.
My neighborhood isn’t being shot up. If yours’s is, that is your problem, not mine. I notice that you often make a claim of the effectiveness of police proactive efforts. If you can back that up with real world data that indicates that these efforts result in the reduction of crime, (in my neighborhood) we can come to an agreement. I’m not talking about anecdotal information; I’m talking about actual data that proves that such an effort, at any time, resulted in any significant change in crime statistics in my neighborhood. In other words, for the money that I have paid you for “protection” what is return on my investment? I have nothing against you arresting, beating up or killing people I don’t like, the issue is how much does it cost me and is it cost effective?
Lol, talk about nuclear grade solipsism.
Gosh, that there is a fancy word. Have you yet made a success of yourself by buying or selling products that people want or need? I have confidence in you. There is no doubt that you could make it in the rough and tumble world of our free enterprise system. Take your gift for language and build on that. Your future is unlimited.
Thanks for conceding the point, grampy.
Seems to me that the Donald is closer to the truth than all the signs around Aurora that says, “The All American City”. Might be smart to take those old signs down.
same old tired racist playbook, Dick
Same old tired leftist hippie deflection, Debra.
I’d argue with you, Debra, but I think most of the commenters already know that you do not have much sanity nor knowledge to offer on any subject, especially politics.
You continue to be very hateful. Use your social working background to analyze yourself. Your first step to sanity.
trump, and coffman/jurinsky, a lot of GOP, use anti-immigrant rhetoric to distract from their own unfitness. trump was so out of his depth at the debate, that in desperation he went to his core tactic: pick an imaginary enemy to attack, the main one that he’s been constructing since the first moments he officially got into politics in 2015: immigrants. The worst of it is that his deflection always comes with usually a massive series of lies. It happened a lot in the debate, but it’s become the playbook for the GOP and when questioned, they doubledown. It’s the playbook for coffman since he was a Representative, and includes the unhoused too as another “bogeyman” group to distract from his unfitness, trump uses it too, & the GOP. Coffman doesn’t care if he’s slandering Aurora – he wants to cause fear to suppress voting, get national attention, deflect from his unfitness, and especially suppress the voting of the group he is attacking -and it’s so easy to then announce some policy to fix what doesn’t even exist and take credit for doing nothing. The fact that violence could result means nothing to the GOP, unless it’s seen as a benefit – more attention and more fuel for their factless blame game. It fits in the GOP playbook to get in or stay in office, or get funding. It covers when they raid homes of voting rights activists (on the rise with the GOP – testing it out in Texas and Florida), or when using the imaginary white supremacist “great replacement” theory, when they tank the bipartisan bill after a trump ask and renew attacks on immigrants to distract from that or from trump’s call for mass deportation of immigrants and says with relish that it will be bloody. The GOP’s recklessness is a byproduct of their unfitness and lack of any sense of responsibility for any of their actions or speech. For trump, it distracts from his ignorance and his terrible unbalanced mind.
Immigrants including undocumented immigrants were a big part of trump’s family success in building hotels for his grandfather, Trump Tower for trump, and maintaining his resorts. Hypocrisy is completely lost on trump and the GOP.
We Americans do not want to hate our neighbors, and we live in Aurora because we want diversity, and we want real solutions so people can come to our country legally, as all the Haitian community did in Springfield, Ohio where trump now has created a world of fear and violence, bomb threats, closed county offices and school, based on complete lies.
Good God! I rest my case.
I want to sell products and services to anyone that wants to buy them so that I can make a lot of money and buy products and services that I want. It simplifies things. Then it does not matter if you are Hatian, white, green or purple.
You are a customer and as Monty Python said: “Never kill a customer.”
Clean the bong resin out of your skull, Debra.
Please stop killing our pets!
Well, let me first congratulate Coffman and Jurinsky for bringing Aurora to the attention of the world. Unfortunately, it was for the wrong reason of political gain. These two elected officials by the citizens of Aurora have a moral duty and obligation to ensure the message(s) going out are positive. They did a great disservice not only to the immigrants and Aurora residents but to the new incoming Police Chief by megaphoning the rant that the city is being overrun by a gang and the police and other city officials are covering this up.
I hope no one was standing behind them and got hurt when they both backtracked on their initial statements.
I’m not sure what future aspirations Coffman and Jurinsky have in mind. I just hope the citizens in Aurora and the rest of Colorado ensure their political careers are over.