An investigation by a national group into the city of Aurora’s handling of a Venezuelan prison gang reveals that authorities — at all levels of government — were, in fact, aware of Tren de Aragua’s criminal activities long before city officials acknowledged their presence.
The group also found that those activities extended beyond Aurora and into the Denver metro area.
Last year, America First Legal launched an investigation into “the growing national threat” from the Venezuelan gang known as TdA through public record requests in three cities — Aurora, Chicago, and Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin — to learn when they penetrated the U.S.
Authorities said TdA gang members were involved in a myriad of criminal activities that include drug trafficking, kidnapping, money laundering, extortion, and human trafficking — particularly of immigrant women and girls.
Public documents obtained by AFL showed the following:
• State and local officials were aware of the gang’s criminal activities in Aurora as early as June 2023, yet failed to warn the public for more than a year
• The nonprofit organization Papagayo placed Venezuelans, many of them unauthorized to live in the U.S., in the apartment complexes owned and operated by CBZ Management
• The gang’s criminal activities, specifically motor vehicle theft, in Aurora, extended into the Denver metro area
AFL — headed by Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff for policy — has contended that the Venezuelan gang would not have gained a foothold in the United States with a secure southern border.
“Progressive politicians have been gaslighting the American people for the last four years regarding the presence of illegal migrant criminal gangs,” Michael Ding, AFL counsel, said in a statement. “While the Trump Administration has immediately gotten to work to clean up our communities, America First Legal will continue to investigate why state and local sanctuaries have not done more to help deport these dangerous individuals.”
Many of the findings echo what The Denver Gazette has already reported.
The cache of hundreds of emails offered a glimpse into the discussions behind the scenes from the Aurora and Englewood police departments, the Colorado State Patrol, various district attorney’s offices, and the CATPA Metro Area Task Force, a multi-agency law enforcement unit in Denver metro.
The office of Gov. Jared Polis did not respond to an email seeking comment Friday.
Once a prison gang in Aragua, Venezuela, TdA recently expanded into the western hemisphere, including the Denver metro region, where local law enforcement has arrested gang members for various crimes.
TdA victims are often killed by gang members, with their deaths publicized as a way to intimidate others from coming forward, according to federal authorities.
Aurora officials had initially rejected claims by an apartment management company that the gang’s activities had precluded its staffers from caring for its tenants and buildings. They have since publicly acknowledged the gang’s activities.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman explained that he didn’t realize the gang was a primary issue at the complexes until later. Meanwhile, the police department’s initial response was to deny the gang’s role in the deteriorating conditions.
Despite the police denials, the department was investigating behind the scenes, Coffman said.
“I think that they were acting on it andthat’swhat’s important,” Coffman said.
The Aurora mayor had accused Denver Mayor Mike Johnston of “placing“ immigrants in Aurora, refusing to tell him where they were housed and how many — and drawing up contracts with nonprofits, such as Papagayo and ViVe Wellness, that he said gave the Denver mayor plausible deniability.
“I think without Denver, there actually would be no viral video,” Coffman said on Friday.
Johnston’s administration has denied the claim, insisting his administration had been “transparent“ about the issue.
Over the summer, the Denver City Council approved spending up to $10.7 million in contracts to serve immigrants enrolled in the city’s asylum seeker program. Jon Ewing, a Johnston spokesperson, did not know the exact payments.
Marielena Suarez, president of Papagayo, did not respond to an email and phone call seeking comment.
Aurora’s ‘very rare strategy’
The gang’s operation appears to be to get a foothold in a complex — through violence and intimidation — with the intent of collecting up to half of the rent from leaseholders, drying up collections for the landlord.
Last month, police detained more than a dozen TdA gang members suspected of being involved in an armed invasion in which a Venezuelan couple was bound, pistol-whipped, and tortured. And in a January operation in the Bronx, federal agents also arrested Anderson Zambrano-Pacheco, 26, whom authorities said was one of the men captured in the viral video last summer and was involved in a June abduction.
AFL, Miller’s group, is a national, nonprofit organization created to challenge “the radical left,” according to the group’s website. The organization has taken on Disney, Nike, Mattel, Hershey, United Airlines, and the National Football League.
The organization has also filed lawsuits against school districts in multiple states, arguing against policies it has described as promoting “radical” and “unconstitutional“ transgender ideology.
According to the law firm representing CBZ Management — which operates apartment rentals in New York and Colorado — the gang took over three complexes in Aurora: Aspen Grove, Whispering Pines, and the Edge at Lowry.
As a strategy, Aurora officials sought to board up apartment complexes run by the gang — something a University of Colorado at Boulder gang expert has called “very rare.”
These complexes have had a history of health and safety issues that included rodent infestations, sewage backups and trash pileups, shattered or missing windows, and a lack of heat and electricity.
Under the Colorado Open Records Act, AFL sought public documents from Polis, the Colorado State Patrol, and the city of Aurora. The requests sought a laundry list of documents related to CBZ Management, the apartment complexes in Aurora, as well as the arrests of multiple known TdA gang members.
AFL is also seeking documents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
No comments:
Post a Comment