FILE - Juan Carlos Jimenez, center left, and Geraldine Massa speak during a rally by the East Colfax Community Collective to address chronic problems in the apartment buildings occupied by people displaced from their home countries in central and South America, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024, in Aurora, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

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 outside the complex was shot and killed around the time the video was recorded, police said.

Now, two months later, authorities say they have identified the six men in the video and arrested one. Tenants of the building say police check in regularly and 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 in interviews that the threat has ebbed. “It's quiet, we can work, it's normal.”

Trump exploits a local crime

Aurora's crime rate has followed a downward trend seen across the country, a decline that has overlapped with 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 of 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 an occasional 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.”

Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, noted that Aurora has long fought to shake its reputation as Colorado's rougher big city. It's the third most populous in the state and has long lived in the shadow of its neighbor, Denver. One-fifth of Aurora's residents were born in another country.

“This is a safer town than its been before,” Polis said in an interview. “Things are going really great” in Aurora, Polis added, “and I don't want this bizarre counter-narrative out there.”

Asked how it could justify its sweeping claims about safety as crime drops in Aurora, the Trump campaign responded with a statement from the Republican National Committee: “The violent gang invasion of Aurora, Colorado, is just one example of how every state is a border state,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “Aurora apartment complexes are war zones, fentanyl is flooding communities, and migrant criminals are raping and murdering victims.”

Trump's rally will be held at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center, roughly 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the apartment complexes. His schedule for the day gives no indication he plans to visit the neighborhood.

Aurora became a magnet for Venezuelan migrants

Trump's characterization of the city and the pushback from officials and residents are reminiscent of the falsehoods he and his running mate, JD Vance, spread about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Those repeated lies led to multiple bomb threats against schools, government buildings and city officials’ homes, forced evacuations and closures, and led the city to cancel an annual celebration of diversity, arts and culture.

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 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.

In July, thousands gathered at an Aurora shopping center to mark the elections in Venezuela, and police reported gunfire after the event, intended to celebrate the defeat of President Nicolas Maduro — who instead declared himself the winner despite tallies showing he lost.

It's a rough neighborhood, slowly improving

On the campaign trail, Trump routinely cites specific cases of migrants committing crimes, often grim cases such as that of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia woman who was killed on a running trail in February. A Venezuelan citizen who entered the country illegally in 2022 has been charged with murder and other crimes in connection with the killing.

Trump has claimed Venezuela and other countries are emptying their prisons, mental institutions 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 far safer in Aurora.

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

The buildings have numerous broken windows, the hallway lights don't work, and trash and discarded mattresses spill from a dumpster behind it.

The run-down conditions are part of the reason the August episode grabbed attention. Aurora closed one of three apartment buildings owned by CBZ Management due to unsanitary conditions. Aurora has said conditions have been bad at the complexes for a long time, predating the Venezuelan arrivals. But CBZ countered that it was unable to provide maintenance because a notorious Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, took over the buildings.

The two buildings that remain open are now in receivership, and residents say they hope the new management finally restores regular maintenance. Medina said conditions have improved slightly — before, she said, the courtyards between the three-story buildings had “towers” of debris and trash.

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. On the opposite corner from the apartment complex, a mounted camera sits above the fence around a day care and a recorded voice warns visitors: “You are under video surveillance.”

Longtime residents say they've heard the occasional gunshot for years, but that 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.”

'We’re putting them in a terrible situation'

Though residents feel safer, they acknowledge the days in August during which the armed men roamed the neighborhood were terrifying. Richard Rodriguez, 48, got a call from his mother in Venezuela, panicked about his safety once the video aired.

“Remember the fear that put in people's hearts,” Rodriguez said of the video. “Imagine how it felt to us to live here.”

Dustin Zvonek, an Aurora City councilman, also got concerned calls and texts once the video aired, asking if he was safe.

“I'm like, ‘Dude, I live 40 minutes away,’” Zvonek said.

Still, he said the situation was serious and problems remain. It can take many months before many of the Venezuelans awaiting asylum hearing can obtain work permits, leaving them desperate in a new country where they have few connections.

“We're putting them in a terrible situation and it's having an impact on businesses,” he said, adding that a nearby Walmart and Walgreens recently closed because of theft concerns.

Zvonek, a Republican, 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.”

News from © The Associated Press, 2024