Trump seizes on one block of a Colorado city to warn of a migrant crime threat, even as crime dips

AURORA, Colo. (AP) — The city of Aurora is roughly the size of pre-evacuation Tampa, Florida. With 400,000 people spread over 164 square miles, it has swank subdivisions, working-class neighborhoods and the high-end resort where Donald Trump will hold a rally Friday to highlight a city turned into “a war zone” by immigrants, in the words of his campaign.

The reality is much different from the one Trump has been portraying to his rally attendees. As with many other American cities, Aurora’s crime rate is actually declining.

The matter that brought the Denver suburb to Trump’s attention occurred in August in a single block of the city, in an apartment complex housing Venezuelan migrants.

It was then that video surfaced of heavily armed men going door to door in the complex, where the New York-based owners claimed a Venezuelan gang was extorting rent from tenants. Someone was shot and killed outside the complex around the time the video was recorded, police said.

Now, two months later, authorities say they have identified six suspects and arrested one. Tenants of the building say police check in regularly and that the area is safe.

“They left, and it’s been nice and calm,” said Edward Ramirez, 38, of the gunmen as he climbed into his car this week. He was one of more than a dozen of tenants who said the threat has ebbed. “It’s quiet, we can work, it’s normal.”

Aurora’s crime rate has followed a downward trend seen across the country. That’s despite — or, some argue, partly because of — the influx of Venezuelans fleeing their country who have funneled into Colorado and other cities nationwide.

Multiple studies show immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. But Aurora also is an example of how Trump has been able to use real but isolated episodes migrant violence to tar an entire population. He uses those examples to paint a picture of a country in chaos due to what he regularly calls an immigrant “invasion.”

“Do you see what they’re doing in Colorado? They’re taking over,” Trump, who often warns of “migrant crime,” said of Venezuelan gang members during a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday. “They’re taking over real estate. They become real estate developers from Venezuela. They have equipment that our military doesn’t have.”

Trump’s sweeping claims about Aurora — his campaign’s announcement of the rally calls the city “a war zone,” linking to a story in the conservative New York Post that uses those words — have drawn sharp rebukes from local residents.

“Former President Trump’s visit to Aurora is an opportunity to show him and the nation that Aurora is a considerably safe city — not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs,” Mayor Mike Coffman, who was a sometimes Trump critic when he served as a Republican congressman, said in a statement. “The reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity have been grossly exaggerated.”

Aurora did see a “slight” uptick in crime that coincided with the arrival of large numbers of Venezuelans in the city during September 2023, Police Chief Todd Chamberlain told a press conference last month. But that increase has since ebbed. According to Aurora police data, there were 12% fewer major crimes in the city — ranging from homicide to vehicle theft — last month than in September 2023.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about how it supports its claim that the city is a “war zone” as crime is declining.

The migrants began arriving in Denver at the end of 2022, which Colorado crime statistics show was the peak of a steady increase in crime in the state since the pandemic. In 2023, when Venezuelans became a staple on some Denver streetcorners selling flowers or offering quick car windshield washes, frustrating many Colorado voters, crime dropped statewide.

Aurora’s city council passed a resolution opposing resettlement of the migrants in their city, but nonprofits found willing landlords to take some, anyway. Others moved independently, drawn by cheaper rents.

Trump has claimed Venezuela is emptying its jails and insane asylums to send dangerous people to the U.S. and has contended that Venezuela’s notoriously violent capital of Caracas is safer than many U.S. cities. The latter claim drew disbelief from Venezuelan migrants who say they feel safe in Aurora.

“It’s a thousand times better than Venezuela here,” said Dexe Medina, 44, as she left the Aurora apartment complex.

The neighborhood where many Venezuelans settled has long been one of Aurora’s rougher stretches, close to Colfax Boulevard, a sometimes run-down drag that bills itself as the nation’s longest street and runs from Aurora west through neighboring Denver and into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Longtime residents say they’ve heard the occasional gunshot for years, but things seem relatively calm now.

“Honestly, this general area has improved,” said Diego Garcia, 18, a high school senior who lives a block away from the complex where the video was filmed. “It used to be a lot worse.”

Though residents feel safer, they acknowledge that the days in August when the armed men roamed the neighborhood were terrifying.

Dustin Zvonek, an Aurora City councilman, stressed that Aurora remains a safe city with falling crime, but warned against minimizing specific problems like those in the apartment complexes. He noted that residents of the buildings and its immediate neighbors haven’t been assuaged when told crime is dropping overall.

“It’s always not a big deal,” Zvonek said, “until it happens to you.”