Venezuelan migrant appears to hold back tears as she says she would ‘go back’ to her country after living in the blue state

Five abandoned migrant girls, all under the age of 7, were discovered by a rancher on his land in Quemado, Texas, near the Rio Grande River on May 9, 2021. (Twitter screenshot)

A Venezuelan immigrant living in migrant housing in Aurora, Colorado, appeared to hold back tears during an interview with independent reporter Nick Shirley, saying she would return to her country after a stay in the U.S.

This week, the city of Aurora faced major backlash from Republicans after footage surfaced online in late August of armed men at an apartment complex. Shirley was seen visiting several migrant homes before stopping at the viral location to interview residents where the gunmen were spotted.

Shirley spoke to a Venezuelan woman who showed him her family’s poor living conditions and said she pays $1,200 a month for the apartment. The migrant said the electricity and hot water in her apartment were not working and told Shirley that the landlord had not accepted any payments for the past “few months.”

“Does your father still have to pay rent?” Shirley asked as they walked through her father’s apartment.

“The owner no longer gets any form of payment because he takes all this too, and the gangs and the mafia take advantage of this to get us out as if we were dogs and that is not fair,” the migrant said, according to a translation.

Shirley asked if gangs charged people money, to which the migrant replied, “No.” The independent reporter then asked if her life in the U.S. was what she expected after crossing the border.

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“No, never. I would have stayed in my country. They say everything is different here, the laws, everyone gets a good job, you get ahead, you can save money to take back to your country,” the migrant said. “But not everything is like they say, the American dream is just a dream. When you get here, you wake up, it’s not like they say.”

Shirley then pressured the migrant, asking in Spanish if she wanted to take a “flight or the option to go back” to her home country.

“With all the love in the world I would return to my country,” the migrant said.

Republican lawmakers sent a letter Friday criticizing the Biden-Harris administration’s “open border” policy and local “sanctuary city” policies over the reported presence of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which has reportedly terrorized several apartment buildings in Aurora.

Tren de Aragua reportedly began in 2014 as a prison gang in the northern Venezuelan state of Aragua and has grown into one of Venezuela’s largest criminal organizations. With approximately 5,000 members and an international reach across Latin America and the U.S., the gang is said to have been involved in several high-profile crimes in the U.S., including the kidnapping and strangulation of a Florida man last year.

This week, Aurora police announced the arrest of two members of the Tren de Aragua gang, Jhonnarty Dejesus Pacheco-Chirinos and Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirinos, following a July 28 shooting that left two men hospitalized with serious injuries.

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