What led to Trump sharing rumors about Venezuelan gangs taking over a building in Colorado? – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Former President Donald Trump repeatedly denied rumors about Venezuelan gangs during the presidential debate in a Colorado city on Tuesday night.

Social media posts falsely claiming that a Venezuelan gang has taken over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado, have been circulating widely in pro-Trump communities and have been echoed by right-wing commentators in recent weeks.

Even after local officials publicly denied that the Tren de Aragua gang had taken over the building, sensational claims vaguely tying the rumors to Colorado’s growing migrant population continued to go viral on social media. Trump further amplified them over the past week when he invoked the rumors multiple times in recent rallies and interviews — and again during Tuesday night’s debate.

“We have millions of people pouring into our country. … Just look at Aurora, Colorado. They’re taking over the cities. They’re taking over the buildings. They’re going in violently,” Trump said on the debate stage in Philadelphia. “They’re destroying our country. They’re dangerous. They’re at the highest level of crime. And we’ve got to get them out.”

According to the News Literacy Project, a nonprofit fact-checking organization that debunked the rumor, the viral rumors used tactics from “the most common forms of disinformation,” such as reposting old videos without context, misrepresenting existing data and “Frankensteining” misleading evidence to fabricate a false narrative.

Roberta Braga, founder and director of the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, a nonprofit that studies the impact of misinformation on Latino communities, told NBC News that the false claims about Tren de Aragua are just the latest examples of rumors created to feed a broader narrative aimed at demonizing immigrants.

“We very often see these claims in relation to migrants as criminals or gang members, claims that portray them as the source of increased crime and insecurity in the US in general, in a way that directly blames them for what people see as a decline in American society,” Braga said.

Residents of the Aurora apartments, many of whom are immigrants from Venezuela and other Latin American countries, deny false rumors of gang takeovers and say they feel increasingly unsafe now that they have been wrongly labeled as criminals.

“Right now I’m scared because of what has been created, and all the xenophobia and hatred towards us has increased,” Carlos Ordosgoitti, a Venezuelan man who lives in one of the Aurora buildings, told NBC affiliate KUSA in Denver in Spanish. “I’m really scared.”

How it all started

The false claim of a takeover began with the owner of three apartment complexes in Aurora: a controversial property manager who was sued in municipal court for years of unresolved health and safety code violations.

According to city officials, documented violations since February 2021 include rat and insect infestations, overflowing trash bins, sewer flooding, water leaks and deteriorating infrastructure.

But the property management company that owns the buildings blamed the dilapidated conditions on a Venezuelan gang. Over the summer, a lawyer representing the company sent letters to local police and city and state officials claiming the gang had “violently seized control,” The Denver Gazette reported.

These claims were repeated by city officials, mostly conservatives, without concrete evidence, KUSA reported.

The allegations intensified in the last week of August after local media, including KUSA, reported on a video captured by a resident showing a group of men with guns walking around one of the buildings and attempting to break down an apartment door.

Aurora police have not yet determined whether the men in the video belong to a Venezuelan gang, KUSA reports.

Aurora police have said they are investigating Tren de Aragua’s presence in cooperation with Denver police. However, “gang members are not taking over an Aurora apartment complex,” police said, adding that the gang’s activities remain “isolated.”

“Every time there is an instance of an isolated crime committed by a migrant in the United States, it is selectively selected and then taken out of context to essentially punish all migrants,” Braga said.

Misinformation spreads despite debunking

Clips of the video showing the gunmen in the Aurora apartment building were used along with footage of a two-month-long motorcycle parade in Brazil to create an Instagram post falsely claiming that members of the Hells Angels, a criminal motorcycle gang, were headed to Aurora to “save the city after gangs from Venezuela took over the apartments.” The Colorado chapter of the Hells Angels released a statement denying the claims.

Meta, Instagram’s parent company, labeled the post as false information after its fact-checking partners debunked the claims. But that didn’t stop the misinformation from spreading as new videos making the same claims, but with other outdated and out-of-context clips, spread across social media platforms.

Mert Bayar, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public who studies rumors about immigrants and non-citizens, told NBC News that the pattern of misinformation appears to mirror an online behavior common among “news brokering” social media accounts. Often hidden behind catchy usernames and cartoonish avatars, such accounts “curate and disseminate information about a crisis event” and often fabricate inflammatory content to fit a specific agenda.

Another anti-immigration rumor circulating this week, and one that Trump repeated during Tuesday night’s debate, was the debunked claim that Haitian immigrants harm pets.

In a joint interview with KUSA, Aurora Republican Mayor Mike Coffman and Denver Democrat Mayor Mike Johnston said other long-standing criminal organizations in the area pose a greater threat than the Venezuelan gang.

But an “environment of hysteria right now about this” is complicating their ability to ensure that Tren de Aragua doesn’t gain a foothold in the area, Coffman said. Coffman even described an instance in which some people mistook an impromptu gathering of Venezuelans awaiting the results of their home country’s presidential election for gang activity.

Aurora police have arrested ten people with ties to Tren de Aragua, KUSA reports.

Despite efforts to debunk myths and rumors about the Venezuelan gang presence in Aurora, more false stories continued to surface online, including posts on X falsely claiming that Aurora police had issued a stay-at-home order in response to Venezuelan gang violence and that Venezuelan gangs had begun taking over apartments in Chicago after taking over one in Aurora.

Both posts remain on X without any labels letting users know they contain false information. The posts have been viewed 26.3 million times and reposted more than 40,000 times. X did not respond to an email requesting comment.

Making immigration a political flashpoint

As part of their political platform, Republicans focus on hardline immigration policies and tighter border security. They have often focused on narratives that link immigration and crime.

Denver is one of the cities that has received tens of thousands of migrants over the past year as part of a bus campaign by Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott to demand tighter security at the southern border.

Seeking a lower cost of living, many migrants settled in nearby Aurora, where officials said they could not help the newcomers, citing a lack of “financial capacity to fund new services related to this crisis.” Still, some migrants ended up in the apartment complexes at the center of the recent controversy.

When Trump repeatedly drew attention to Aurora by suggesting that a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex there, immigrant communities unexpectedly found themselves embroiled in a heated political debate.

“People should be aware that immigration is a common theme that misinformers are exploiting this election season. We should be extra cautious when they encounter claims that seem designed to stoke anger, outrage or fear — or that seem designed to divide us,” Christina Veiga, a spokesperson for the News Literacy Project, told NBC News in a statement. “Voters can prevent their votes from being hijacked by falsehoods by being aware of this trend and taking a few simple steps to confirm whether the claims they see are true.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News: