In just a matter of months, Tren de Aragua gangbangers carved out a foothold in Aurora, Colorado, and then started to take over — turning the Denver suburb into a case study for the unintended consequences of the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies.
Former President Donald Trump is headed to Aurora on Friday to highlight the scourge of migrant gang violence in the US.
He first pledged to visit two weeks ago during a campaign rally Uniondale, New York, where he said: “You may never see me again, but that’s OK. Got to do what I got to do.”
Colorado, of course, is not exactly a swing state. Polls have Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 10 or more points.
However, the border and immigration has been a major issue for Trump in each of his last three campaigns.
The Post was the first to report on Tren de Aragua’s infiltration of the city of 390,000 — where several apartment complexes were taken over by the violent Venezuelan prison gang.
Local cops later revealed that at least 10 confirmed members of Tren de Aragua have been arrested in Aurora, including one of the gang’s leaders who goes by “Galleta,” or “Cookie.”
The city has since shut down at least one of the apartment complexes that was at the center of gang activity — the Fitzimons Place, where the “Cookie Monster” allegedly brutally beat down a resident and later engaged in a shootout that left two people wounded.
Then, a video taken inside another complex — the Edge at Lowry apartments — surfaced in late August showing six heavily armed migrant men forcing their way into a unit, a group that included at least one TdA gang member. The crew minutes later was involved in a fatal shooting.
Days after the video came out, the then-interim chief of the Aurora Police Department, Heather Morris, denied a gang takeover of the complex.
“I’m not saying there’s not gang members that don’t live in this community, but what we’re learning out here is that gang members have not taken over this complex,” said Morris.
Neighbors and former residents, however, told The Post a different story of the terror TdA unleashed in and around the complex, where cars and walls were riddled with bullet holes.
City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky told The Post that the people of Aurora have felt “left out and forgotten” by their city’s leadership for its denial of TdA’s takeover. She believes Trump will be well received by residents who are fed up with migrant crime in their city.
“I think it will make people feel heard for what we have had to deal with here. And I think that’s very important,” said Jurinsky.
TdA gangbangers arrived with a massive influx of migrants who flocked to the nearby sanctuary city of Denver, which took in more than 42,000 migrants since 2022.
The gang members have largely entered the country through the Texas border, where they’ve posed as asylum seekers.
Denver attracted the migrants with aid, which forced the city to cut funding to emergency services to foot the $68 million-and-counting bill.
However, Aurora wanted the opposite, passing a resolution in February emphatically stating that it will not provide such resources to migrants or others brought into the community from neighboring cities.
