That apartment building in Aurora, Colorado that has been taken over by the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has created a dustup among pols in the Centennial state.
After a video surfaced showing armed gang members walking the building’s halls, Colorado governor Jared Polis nevertheless charged that the takeover was largely “imaginary.” His spokesman added that Aurora officials were “trashing their own city” by reporting the truth.
In an interview with Fox News yesterday, Aurora mayor Mike Coffman said that multiple local buildings had been taken over by the gang:
I’m trying to . . . do the investigation as to how there’s a concentration of Venezuelans, in these, these three buildings. Somebody put them there and somebody funded it, whether it’s federal government or not, we’re trying to find out who, these gangs apparently, or attracted to where there’s a concentration of, of, Venezuelan migrants. And so, they’ve, in fact, have kind of pushed out the property management through intimidation and then, collected the rents.
Fox News confirmed that, after seizing control of the buildings from out-of-state landlords, the gang had been collecting “rent” from the inhabitants, apparently at gunpoint.
Mayor Coffman continued:
I think we’re a victim of a failed policy at the southern border. . . . You’ve had these massive waves of migrants coming across the border that many of them crossed the border illegally, were arrested, asked for a political asylum, were not adequately vetted, were released into the country, the city of Aurora. We did everything we could to, quite frankly, keep them out of out of the city because it’s not our problem. This is a federal problem.
So it is, but the feds have a way of offloading their problems onto the unsuspecting.
For more, see Fox News.