WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) released new documents obtained from the Aurora, Colorado, Police Department as part of its investigation into the extensive criminal activities of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA). These documents reveal that local officials failed to disclose the gang’s violent crimes and the threat it posed to the public for over a year, gravely endangering law-abiding U.S. citizens. The documents also show that a nonprofit placed Venezuelan illegal aliens in the Aurora apartments taken over by TdA last year.
In August 2024, viral surveillance footage showed TdA gang members violently taking over an Aurora apartment complex, forcing local officials to acknowledge the violent gang’s presence in their city. Despite this, state and local officials continued to downplay and outrightly dismiss the threat posed by the gang. These failures have now been exposed through the documents obtained by AFL and the immigration enforcement actions recently taken by the Trump Administration.
Within weeks of President Trump taking office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested the TdA ringleader who terrorized the Aurora apartment complex in New York. On February 5, 2025, ICE, with support from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Marshals, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, conducted raids across Aurora, targeting 100 TdA gang members.
The new documents released by AFL show:
- State and local officials, including the Aurora Police Department (APD), were aware of TdA’s violent, criminal activities in Aurora, Colorado, as early as June 2023 but failed to warn the public until more than a year later.
- The nonprofit “Organization Papagayo” placed Venezuelan illegal aliens in Aurora apartments owned by CBZ Management, possibly introducing TdA gang members to the Aurora area.
- Criminal activities in Aurora apartment complexes have nearly doubled every year since 2022, including shootings, stabbings, aggravated assaults, sexual assaults, attempted murder, robbery, drugs, and extortion.
- Motor vehicle theft extended outside Aurora and into the Denver metro area.
- Colorado’s sanctuary city policies inhibit local law enforcement from assisting ICE in identifying and arresting dangerous illegal aliens.
State and local officials in Colorado, including the APD, were aware of Venezuelan-connected criminal activity at two of the apartment complexes more than a year before warning the public of TdA’s growing presence in the area.
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An email from February 5, 2024, states that two apartment complexes were “currently having Venezuelan refugees placed there and we have had multiple violent cases involving those addresses with Venezuelan suspects since about June of 2023.” The APD crime analyst also noted that “it’s difficult to ID people who have no history in the U.S. yet.”
According to APD, the “Papagayo Foundation [placed the] Venezuelan refugees in these properties, most likely leading to possible TdA members moving to Aurora according to HSI [Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE agency].”
Aurora borders Denver, which openly supports sanctuary city policies. Mike Johnston, Denver’s mayor, compared President Trump’s mass deportation policies to a “Tiananmen Square moment” and released a detailed plan outlining Denver’s non-detainer policy and threatening legal action against ICE.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman would later blame Denver Mayor Mike Johnston for taking federal funds from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act to contract with nonprofits like Papagayo and move migrants from Denver into housing located in Aurora, including those owned and managed by CBZ Management. The now-infamous Edge of Lowry apartments featured in the viral TdA takeover video is one such property.
At another CBZ Management apartment, APD recorded a near doubling of calls for police service from 2022 to 2023 and again between 2023 and 2024. Criminal investigations increased from 41 in 2022 to 84 in 2023, then 66 in just the first half of 2024.
The crimes “included various motor vehicle crimes, robbery, drugs, trespass, sexual assault and aggravated assault,” and “a shooting that injured two people.” In August 2024, rather than solving the property owners’ complaints regarding gang activity, the City of Aurora condemned the property for “code violations” and “poor property conditions,” evicting its more than one hundred residents. The City of Aurora would similarly designate the Edge at Lowry as a criminal nuisance to be closed in February 2025.
In an APD document collecting incidents across CBZ Management apartments, they recorded an assault on a property manager, the arrest of two armed men allegedly on their way to kill a property manager, a stabbing incident, multiple incidents involving men with guns or gun cases, and TdA scamming residents. Alarmingly, APD documented “extortion statements about [the] gang receiving 50% of rent collected.”
As early as January 2024, TdA’s criminal activities expanded beyond Aurora, with state and local law enforcement identifying “a developing trend” of “Venezuelans stealing and selling stolen vehicles and… using fake plates.” In one report, two Venezuelans stole a vehicle in Lakewood and tried to sell it in Aurora. The Metro Area Task Force also circulated “a bulletin about Venezuelan prison gang [activity] in Colo[rado].”
APD contacted HSI to help identify suspects connected to shootings “believe[d] to be Venezuelan.” While APD was unable to confirm “with 100% certainty” that the suspects were TdA gang members, their clothing and tattoos were consistent with HSI’s descriptions of the TdA gang members they encountered at the border. The clothing and tattoo descriptions also matched the reports about TdA that AFL previously uncovered from the Sanctuary City of Chicago, Illinois.
Since late 2022, at least 43,000 illegal immigrants flooded into the Denver metro area, costing an estimated $80 million, not counting healthcare and education-related expenses.
While Colorado Governor Jared Polis recently stated that he welcomes federal agents in Colorado, Republican members of Colorado’s congressional delegation challenged Governor Polis to repeal the sanctuary state laws that prohibit Colorado law enforcement from complying with federal immigration detainers, prevent state agencies and law enforcement from sharing certain personal information with immigration authorities unless compelled by the courts, and bar state or local entities from contracting or paying from immigration detention facilities.
On December 23, 2024, AFL sent letters to Governor Polis and Mayor Johnston, notifying them of the legal consequences they could face for interfering with or impeding federal immigration enforcement and for concealing, harboring, or shielding illegal aliens.
These letters requested all records and communications about state and local enforcement efforts to shield illegal aliens from federal law enforcement and communications between officials in these jurisdictions and foreign governments coordinating these illegal sanctuary efforts.
Citizens in sanctuary strongholds across the country should contact their elected officials and urge them to support the rule of law and oppose illegal and dangerous sanctuary policies.
Statement from Michael Ding, America First Legal Counsel:
“Progressive politicians have been gaslighting the American people for the last four years regarding the presence of illegal migrant criminal gangs. 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,” said Michael Ding.
Read the documents here.
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Photo credit—Adobe Stock Images: jryanc10
