Colorado City closes migrant apartment complex over gang crime and misery

City officials in Aurora, Colorado, are closing a large apartment building today amid landlords’ allegations of violence and a hostile takeover by the Venezuelan migrant gang Tren de Aragua.

“Tren de Aragua’s acquisition of properties and communities in Aurora means that we will not be able to have a presence on this property, or any of our other properties in similar situations that are also impacted by the presence of (migrant) gangs,” said a statement to Breitbart News from an “investor in multiple impacted properties in Aurora.” The statement was provided by a spokesperson for the Florida-based landlord, CBZ Management.

The owners are “slum landlords from out of town,” Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman responded via 9News.com on August 8:

That building has been a problem for years, mountains of trash, rats, sewage, no electricity… We’ve been working with this building and the owners for a long time. I mean, they’re out-of-state slum landlords, and they haven’t maintained the building.

Coffman has been a prominent advocate for more labor migration into the city’s workplaces and homes. “America is a nation of immigrants with a rare ability to take the best of many cultures from all corners of the world and almost magically integrate them to become uniquely American,” he told ColoradoPolitics.com in 2020. One in five of Aurora’s 400,000 residents is an immigrant.

The migrants must leave by Tuesday. Many are being given free lodging in local hotels through Aug. 31, usually arranged through pro-migration advocacy groups such as the East Colfax Community Collective.

ABC7 in Denver reported:

Edwin Macedo, who is new to the country, said he struggled when he first arrived in the U.S., moving from several shelters and eventually ending up on the streets of Denver. “We used to live in an encampment under a bridge,” he said in Spanish. “This is the only roof I have now.” He and his children are now wondering where to go next.

But many have learned from progressive advocacy groups to demand free aid from ordinary Americans:

“We don’t want to go to a shelter, we’ve been through too much to go back to a shelter and give our children that life,” said (another) tenant, Irany Perez, in Spanish. “We are demanding our human rights, we are human beings and this is not fair.”

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Since 2021, about 40,000 illegal immigrants have flooded into Denver and the surrounding area, including Aurora, after the local Democratic mayor promised asylum, free housing and economic aid. The influx has been welcomed by employers, landlords and grocery stores who are profiting from the extra workers, renters and consumers brought in.

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Aurora Deputy Police Chief Chris Juul acknowledged that the Venezuelan Tren The Aragua gang is active in the area. “We’re working hard on it…We’re learning a lot about this community,” according to an Aug. 9 Colorado Public Radio report.

“This is happening in Denver and other big cities, and it’s happening in rural areas,” Jay Palmer, an expert on human trafficking and a former adviser to President Donald Trump, responded. Apartment buildings, he told Breitbart News, are:

taken over by migrant gangs, and the illegal workers have to pay more. I almost compare this to the mafia trend of the 20s and 30s (protection rackets): you give them a part of your salary, and you’re fine. The police do nothing. Nobody does anything.

This is straight from a senior law enforcement official who told me: When they put you through the academy, you don’t learn … immigration law. You know, burglary, robbery, murder. You don’t know these (immigration) laws and it takes a scholar to stay up to date on the laws because a lot of them change. Every (migrant) has a cell phone, everybody has a camera and law enforcement is afraid that they’re going to be persecuted by the left.

The Florida landlord has been pushing for more law enforcement for months, the PR firm said. “I’ve told them over and over again, if you had taken this seriously eight months ago, nine months ago, you probably could have eradicated it with relative ease,” the landlord told Colorado Public Radio.

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The three GOP members of the City Council support the landlord’s argument that their maintenance crews were unable to visit the 99-unit building because of extortion threats from Venezuelan gang members. “None of us believe (the mayor’s) story that this is based on a code enforcement violation,” Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky said, according to Colorado Public Radio. “Three (councilmembers) believe there is a huge gang problem,” she added.

Denver’s sanctuary laws are encouraging migrant crime that spreads through the city’s apartment buildings and into the suburbs, said John Fabbricatore, a former ICE agent now running against incumbent Rep. Jason Crow (R-CO). {snip}

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