How the False Narrative of a Colorado Gang Takeover Reached Trump

Mike Coffman, the conservative Republican mayor of Aurora, Colorado, said he sat at home Tuesday night watching the presidential debate and prepared for the worst.

And there it was again, in front of tens of millions of viewers: former President Donald J. Trump, describing Coffman’s Aurora, a sprawling suburb just east of Denver, as a city under siege, terrorized by migrants.

“They’re taking over buildings,” Trump said. “They’re going in violently.”

Mr. Coffman was remorseful as he told that story on Thursday, having helped create the tall tale that now tarnishes his city’s reputation.

Before Springfield, Ohio, before misinformation about devoured pets and memes of Mr. Trump rescuing ducks and kittens, there was Aurora, pop. 404,219, reportedly overrun by the violent Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua. Those claims became a cause célèbre for the right-wing media and eventually a centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration repertoire as he ramped up his attacks on immigrants as part of his campaign’s effort to capitalize on voter anxieties about the crisis at the southern border.

At the center are a group of migrants, living in run-down apartments that Aurora officials now call drudgery, amid “criminal elements,” not widespread gang activity, and who can’t find or afford better. The buildings are nonetheless at the center of a national firestorm.

“Because one or two Venezuelans wanted to do something wrong, now we are all being accused of something,” Yorman Fernandez, a 29-year-old Venezuelan who lives in one of the buildings, said Friday between painting and roofing jobs. “We are not all the same.”

And Mr. Coffman has had to rethink his own rhetoric as he watches Mr. Trump, the presidential candidate he still said he would be reluctant to vote for in November, continue to stoke fear in his community. Meanwhile, the mayor has launched a crusade to undo the damage Mr. Trump is doing.

“I mean, I agree with him on a lot of policies regarding immigration,” Mr. Coffman said Thursday at City Hall. “But I’m also the mayor of the city of Aurora, and my job is not only to make sure the city is safe, but to protect the image of the city. This story has been exaggerated, and it’s our responsibility to correct it.”

How the Aurora Claims Began

As early as May 2023, Aurora officials tried to force an out-of-state landlord to renovate three dilapidated apartment complexes in the run-down East Colfax Corridor, which connects the cities of Denver and Aurora.

In July 2024, the landlord, CBZ Management, which said it has offices in Colorado and Brooklyn, offered a new argument for why the buildings couldn’t be repaired: Venezuelan gangs had taken over and the managers had been forced to flee.

Mr. Coffman and a Republican city councilwoman, Danielle Jurinsky, quickly repeated CBZ’s unverified claim in interviews.

“Unfortunately, there are areas in our city that have been taken, and we need to take them back,” Mr. Coffman told a local radio host on July 31.

On August 5, Sara Lattman, a public relations agent hired by CBZ, tipped off the local Fox television network in Denver.

“An apartment building and its owners in Aurora, Colorado have become the latest victims of violence by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which has taken over several communities in the Denver area,” she wrote on Fox 31’s tip line, according to an email obtained by The Times. “The residents and owners of these buildings have been left in a state of fear and chaos.”

But it was a viral video that began circulating in late August showing armed men in a hallway of one of the complexes that eventually caught Mr. Trump’s attention. The incident was reported as having a connection to gang violence, specifically the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, though documentation was scarce.

On Tuesday, Aurora police announced they had arrested 10 members of Tren de Aragua on charges of felony three, attempted first-degree murder, assault, child abuse, domestic violence and others. But Todd Chamberlain, Aurora’s new police chief, would not say whether any of the men were in the video, or if anyone in the video had actually committed a criminal offense.

Still, the clip, made by a resident and replayed endlessly on Fox News Channel and The New York Post website, grew into major stories about entire buildings, entire neighborhoods and, according to Trump, the entire city of Aurora being taken over by migrants armed with weapons of war.

“And getting them out is going to be a bloody mess,” Trump said of Aurora at a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, on Saturday, adding that it “won’t be easy, but we’ll do it.”

Mr Coffman and Ms Jurinsky have both since reversed their positions.

“The exaggerated claims being fueled by social media and select news organizations are simply not true,” they wrote in a joint statement released Wednesday that appeared intended to refute Trump’s comments during the debate.

A false narrative fueled by real problems

The claims about Aurora are based on real problems.

The Denver area has struggled to cope with an influx of some 40,000 migrants, many of whom were sent inland by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The skyrocketing cost of housing, acute in Denver, had brought many of those newcomers to Aurora in search of a cheaper place to live — the very same dilapidated apartments the city was already fighting to clear.

On Thursday, a resident of the complex, Star Lopez, 29, gingerly walked her three dogs through a small patch of dirt and weeds — and piles of dog feces — between two of the buildings where the video was filmed. Inside the nondescript three-story brick buildings, flies swarmed. Most of the apartments had broken windows, no screens and doors ajar without working locks or even doorknobs.

Nadeen Ibrahim, organizational director of the nonprofit East Colfax Community Collective, a community organization in the region, warned of bedbug infestations and rats.

But there were no armed men blocking the way or extorting rent or protection money, Ms. Lopez said, despite what conservative media have claimed. Most of the residents at this point are squatters.

“Oh, it’s taken over, but it’s taken over by everybody,” said Ms. Lopez, who openly admitted she hadn’t paid rent since November and added that most of her neighbors hadn’t either. “It’s survival of the fittest.”

Mrs. Lopez is pregnant and hoping for a Christmas baby, she said. Her husband, Luis Lopez, 22, said he works in a warehouse and won’t let his wife walk the dogs until he gets home from the late shift. It’s too dangerous. They spoke of cockroach infestations, long stretches without electricity or running water, a refrigerator that barely works and no landlord to communicate with or even pay.

Nearby, a Colorado Springs bystander who declined to give his name watched open-mouthed and snapped photos. He was at the nearby Department of Veterans Affairs hospital and “thought I’d stop by,” he said. “I expected to see vigilantes everywhere, people on rooftops with machine guns.”

The effects

After the video of gunmen went viral in August, Mr. Coffman recalled donning a bulletproof vest — “I looked like the Michelin Man” — to make his first visit to the building where the film was shot. All he saw were frustrated tenants begging him to intervene. When he held a meeting with apartment building tenants afterward, he didn’t bother with security.

But the story has taken on a life of its own. Mr. Trump on Friday placed Aurora at the center of his plans for mass deportations if elected.

“We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country,” Trump said during a news conference at Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. “And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora.”

There have already been real consequences for the fear-mongering, exaggerations and outright lies spread about the situation online and in the campaign. Last month, the city closed one of the buildings at the center of the controversy, Fitzsimons Place Apartments, evicting nearly 200 residents — many, but not all, migrants and recent arrivals. City officials and police officers arrived at 7 a.m. on Aug. 7, the first day of school, to announce that the residents of 1568 Nome Street had six days to leave.

Rehousing people is a huge task.

Fear and negative publicity have prompted landlords to stop renting to Venezuelan migrants, said Crystal Murillo, a city council member. Legal aid groups representing tenants and social service nonprofits struggling to house entire families say they are overwhelmed. YouTube personalities and TikTok stars are prowling slums. A white supremacist called into the City Council’s public comment period Monday night, spewing hate against Venezuelans and Jews.

“This is unlike any crisis we’ve ever experienced,” said Emily Goodman, senior manager of housing assistance at the nonprofit East Colfax Community Collective, a social services organization in the region.

The mayor blamed his initial statements on information from Aurora police, who were too naive and repeated the property owner’s excuses.

“The pattern of problems is that there is one — I’ll be honest, I guess — a slum landlord from out of state,” he said.

The city has since filed several civil and criminal lawsuits against CBZ and the man identified by authorities as the landlord of the apartments, Zev Baumgarten.

Stan Garnett, Mr. Baumgarten’s attorney, maintained that Mr. Baumgarten did not own the property and had no management role, but was merely an advisor to CBZ.

A lawyer for CBZ, Matthew C. Arentsen, said his “clients believe that this case is not, at its core, about property mismanagement, but about government failure.”

Mr. Chamberlain, the police chief, said he believed the situation at the sites was now under control. The department is shifting to supporting the Venezuelan community with youth programs and safety education — and trying to ensure that its law enforcement efforts are not focused on the entire migrant community.

“We can’t become myopic or focus on an impulsive reaction to something that is very exciting or very public at the moment,” he said.

Across the street from one of the buildings, Whispering Pines, three men sat on their porch Thursday afternoon, yelling at a reporter and photographer not to believe the “fake news” about the place. Sure, there’s crime and probably some gangs, they said, but in this neighborhood, they were there long before the Venezuelans arrived and will be there long after they’re gone. What they wouldn’t do was give their names.

“I’m not going to bother Donald Trump,” one man said as he chased the reporter from the premises.

Adblock Test (Why?)