State and national Republicans at Aurora bar rally jump on Venezuelan gang war

AURORA | A quartet of conservative immigration reformers campaigning for Republican candidate for the 6th Congressional District, John Fabbricatore, dove into the controversy Thursday over a controversial story that Venezuelan gangsters have overrun Aurora.

The group called for a tighter southern border and, closer to home, a tougher approach to what it sees as widespread local violence by members of a Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua, also known as TdA.

Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Thomas Homan, a former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the Trump administration, joined Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Rifle, and Rep. Greg Lopez, R-Parker, to campaign for Fabbricatore, a former regional ICE official who is trying to unseat incumbent Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, D-Aurora, on an anti-immigration agenda.

The speakers spent much of the evening repeating what police say is a false narrative repeatedly spread in Aurora by far-right politicians and influential people in the national media: that TdA gangs are taking over apartment complexes and neighborhoods in Aurora and extorting rent from tenants.

Aurora police have announced in recent days that 10 people have been identified as having ties to the TdA gang, and four have been arrested. However, those numbers are nothing compared to the arrests of non-Venezuelan gang members in the city, according to reports in the Denver Post report.

“I’m here to tell you as a Hispanic-American: Hispanics here in Colorado don’t want the border open. We want it closed. We don’t want this gang in our communities. And this is all President Biden and Kamala Harris’ fault. They opened the borders and we’re being invaded,” Lopez said.

It was unclear whether Lopez was referring specifically to TdA members or Venezuelan migrants in general when he said Aurora had a high “wild dog population.”

“Look what they do. They go around, they cause chaos, and if we let them take over a certain area, they start reproducing and spreading,” he said.

Lopez this week sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas urging him to arrest, detain and deport all members of the TdA and other known foreign criminal gangs in the United States.

Boebert is the conservative, ambitious incumbent from the Western Slope who is now running for the Front Range seat where Lopez was appointed when Rep. Ken Buck stepped down in July.

She told rally attendees that she grew up in Aurora, which she praised as “still a red city,” a tribute to Aurora’s Republican-majority City Council. She made a point to praise one of those Republican council members, Danielle Jurinsky, who owns JJ’s Place, the sports bar that hosted Thursday’s event.

“What she has done on the front lines of this issue, of the invasion that is happening in Aurora, is insurmountable,” Boebert said. “She went out against all odds and told the truth and got every liberal who spoke up.”

Jurinsky has created a lot of buzz on social media and in the news about TdA’s presence in the city, a message Mayor Mike Coffman has largely echoed in recent weeks.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has also joined their accusations, saying Wednesday that Venezuelans are “taking over the whole city.”

Their claims have been met with fierce criticism from Democrats, including Gov. Jared Polis, who say they spread fear and disinformation.

Immigrants from Venezuela and other Latin American countries living in Aurora say they are being unfairly portrayed as criminals. Many said at a news conference this week that they fear Coffman’s false claims that the city government is trying to close their apartment complexes with emergency court orders.

Residents said they are angry at his and Jurinsky’s wavering defense of the out-of-state landlord, who ignored their complaints about leaks, mold and pests in the buildings.

Boebert criticized Crow for failing to respond to what she called an “invasion” by gangsters.

“When people are being attacked and sent to the hospital or extorted, he keeps his mouth shut,” she said, referring to claims made by Jurinsky, despite repeated denials by police, that members of the TdA gang have stolen rent from apartment residents and physically harmed others.

Crow, in a phone interview later Thursday night, sharply contradicted the story of Boebert and others, saying, “There is no gang takeover of Aurora, Colorado” and “no evidence of gang takeovers” of apartment complexes in the city. Furthermore, he said, “This is not about me, and that’s not what’s relevant.

“What’s relevant here is that you have people who have been living in terrible conditions for years, and we have a huge affordable housing crisis in Aurora. We have immigrants and refugees who are trying to find safety and peace and start a new life. And you have politicians, in this case, who are misrepresenting and twisting the facts for political purposes…”

He slammed the quartet of Republicans for “demonizing immigrants and refugees in a way that…leads to racist, intolerant and hurtful rhetoric.”

“That’s what’s happening here, and it’s absolutely disgusting that Jurinsky and Boebert and others are deliberately twisting the facts and lying just to get more clicks on social media or get some national media attention,” he said.

Crow emphasized his support for bipartisan immigration policies. He also touted his efforts to secure federal funding to provide services for the recent influx of Venezuelan and other migrants to Colorado, and to offset the costs that state and local agencies have incurred as a result of their arrival.

Fabbricatore also took potshots at Crow, holding top officials in the Aurora Police Department and the city government accountable for what he suggested was a cover-up of the scale and severity of TdA’s violence and crime. Those officials have tried in recent weeks to temper and in some cases correct misinformation from Coffman and Jurinsky, who are in charge.

“I’m really angry with their leadership right now,” Fabbricatore said of APD.

“I blame the city manager for this. Nobody’s saying the city manager’s name. They all want to say this is (Mayor) Mike Coffman. Mayor Mike Coffman is not responsible for any of this. There’s a city manager who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars more than Mike Coffman, and we’re not going to hold him accountable. So I’m going to hold Mr. Batchelor accountable today.”

Jason Batchelor did not respond to an inquiry Thursday night about the biggest applause line of the night. Aurora is a council-manager form of government. The city council appoints the city manager, who oversees all city employees and the city’s police chief.

Roy, a far-right attorney who represents a Texas congressional district that includes part of Austin, mocked Crow for voting like a progressive liberal but posing as a moderate.

“You’re not a moderate, Jason,” he said. “You’re not fooling any of us.”

In addition to his warnings about Venezuelan gangs being “released like a virus onto the streets of Aurora, Colorado,” Roy also spoke about national debt and “indoctrination by trans teachers.”

“Jason Crow promotes that, votes for that, he’s for that,” he said.

Homan is currently a visiting professor at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. The decades-old group recently became embroiled in controversy for creating Project 2025, a far-right policy blueprint written for a second Trump presidency.

Homan praised Fabbricatore’s previous work at ICE and spoke of “open borders” that not only attract murderous Venezuelan gang members to the U.S. but also increase fentanyl smuggling and sex and child trafficking.

He told the audience: “I’ve been called a racist, a white nationalist, whatever you want to call it. Honestly, I don’t give a damn what people say about me.”

Homan vowed to stand with Trump, his former boss, and fight TdA in Aurora if and when Trump runs again in 2025.

“We’re gonna come here, we’re gonna stop this shit,” he said.

Aurora resident Scott Forney said he had no plans to attend Thursday’s event when he sat down to participate in a free poker competition the sports bar is sponsoring. The unemployed data analyst, who now drives for Uber, said he has not had any problems with Venezuelan immigrants in the city and that he is “reserved judgment” on the alleged gang crisis because “it all seems a little sensational.”

“Maybe it’s way out of line,” Forney said. “But immigrants are easy scapegoats, and after a little fact-checking, it seems to me like a nothing burger.”

—The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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