Uncovered documents revealed law enforcement officials’ warnings that Aurora, Colorado, was under threat by the dangerous Venezuelan street gang Tren de Argua (TdA) well before this summer’s reports of the gang’s presence in several apartment complexes — even as the state’s Democrat governor denied the facts.
One document, for instance, showed that law enforcement officials discovered the Venezuelan gang had chosen the Denver area to serve as their U.S. headquarters because of the state’s extremely lenient immigration and sanctuary policies.
This document, from November of 2023, showed Aurora official Matthew Walters had been told by an official of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that “TdA has decided to make Denver their headquarters due to sanctuary policies and location.”
Other internal Aurora Police emails showed officers talking with each other about the gang infestation in some of the city’s apartment buildings. These messages were dated in June, several months before the viral video that appalled the nation.
All of this was occurring many months before news exploded across the country in August when gang members armed with rifles and pistols were seen in a viral video going door-to-door in an apartment complex in the Denver suburb. The video came as news broke that the violent Venezuelan gang was present in several apartment complexes and were forcing residents to hand over their rent money to the gang instead of to their landlords.
Aurora City Council Member Danielle Jurinsky noted in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News that fault for this dangerous situation can be laid at the feet of nearby Denver because of its sanctuary city policies.
“The problem is, though, that Denver is the problem here,” Jurinsky said in August. “They hung a huge banner on their city hall saying, ‘We love migrants,’ they helped to invite all of this here. And Denver said, ‘We will not turn anybody away,’ and ‘No human is illegal,’ so, Denver is the problem. They are absolutely the problem here, and what is going on in Aurora is the spillage from what Denver has allowed.”
Though he tried to walk a line between raising the alarm about the members of the TdA and allying fears over the issue, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman did plead with Colorado courts to allow his police officers to evict TdA members from the affected apartment complexes.
Despite the rise in crime, the statements by local officials, and the obvious proof of the viral video, Colorado’s Democrat Governor Jared Polis denied there is any sort of TdA problem in the Denver area and even raised the accusation that those who say the gang is a problem are just racists looking to pump up their own personal media profiles.
Polis even said that the video of gang members storming the apartments was fake news.
Since then, dozens of TdA gang members have been identified and arrested in and around the Aurora-Denver area.
Even as Colorado Democrats continue to try and underplay migrant crime and gang activity, news of incidents is rising. This week, for instance, police were called when a known member of the TdA was accused of throwing boiling water on a pregnant woman in one of the troubled apartment complexes in Aurora, the Daily Mail reported.
The migrant problem is also having a negative impact on the state. On Wednesday, the Denver Gazette warned that Coloradans are being replaced by hordes of illegal aliens and as more migrants move to the sanctuary state a corresponding number of legal citizens move out. It has taken Colorado out of the top tier states that people want to move into, as well.
“Colorado is no longer the destination it once was,” said Colorado’s Common Sense Institute representative Kelly Caufield. “It’s gaining more people from international migration than from domestic migration.”
“Colorado had ranked in the top 10 for migration from other states through the 2010s, and was second in the nation back in 2015,” the paper noted. Today only 0.8 percent of movers have chosen Colorado over states such as Florida, Texas, or North Carolina.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
