Brutal Venezuelan Gang Violence Spills Into Quiet Suburb From the Sanctuary City Next Door

Denver’s decision to welcome migrants with open arms is bringing bloodshed to the suburbs next door. A notorious Venezuelan prison gang has set up shop in Aurora, Colorado — even though the town wanted no part of the influx of asylum seekers in the first place.

Aurora — a quiet bedroom community with a population of 390,000 directly east of the Mile-High City — has become a base of operations for the brutal Tren de Aragua gang, which has seized multiple apartment complexes and set off a wave of violent crime.

Denver leads the nation in new migrant arrivals per capita, with more than 40,000 arriving from the southern border since December 2022.

The city has bent over backwards to provide aid, even slashing emergency services to help foot the cost — so far estimated at over $68 million and counting.

But Aurora has made it clear it doesn’t share Denver’s desire to be the country’s leading sanctuary city.

In February, the Aurora City Council passed a resolution 7-3 emphatically stating that it will not provide resources and support to migrants or others brought into the community from neighboring cities.

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But Denver’s largesse has become Aurora’s problem anyway — forcing the community to grapple with increasing gang violence as Tren de Aragua has moved into town, taking whatever it can get its hands on, according to police, officials and law enforcement sources.

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One local gang leader decided to set up shop in town, according to law enforcement sources. His name is Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirino, and he goes by “Galleta” — Spanish for “Cookie.”

Within months of arriving in the US, cops say, he and fellow gang members brutally beat a man at an Aurora apartment complex that the gang took over and occupied. In July, cops arrested him again — this time for a shooting at the same complex that left two men wounded.

Members of Tren de Aragua are accused of a slew of violent crimes across the US — including the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley earlier this year, and the shooting of two NYPD cops during an arrest in June. Leaders of the gang recently gave the “green light” for members to shoot American cops who try to interfere with their criminal activity.

One local investor in a company that owns multiple apartment complexes in Aurora said there was a “massive shootout” at one of the properties taken over by the gang.

“I’m scared that this could happen in America,” the source said.

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When Pacheco-Chirino — an alleged “shot-caller” in the gang — crossed the southern border in 2022 into Texas, he was vetted by federal border authorities who didn’t see anything concerning about his past — and then released, Homeland Security sources said.

He told Border Patrol agents he was going to New York, but ended up at an ICE office in Colorado in June 2023, when he was given a court date and again was cut loose.

Soon after, he started unleashing havoc in the community.

In November 2023, Pacheco-Chirino allegedly took part in a brutal assault that almost turned deadly at the Fitzsimons Place apartment complex in Aurora, which was recently shut down over code violations, which the owners argued they couldn’t fix due to a takeover of the building by the gang, according to court documents obtained by The Post.

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The apartment investor told The Post that they’ve “lost control” of several properties because the gang has taken over units.

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Soon, the alleged gang members began renting out the units to other migrants whom they also “threatened.” Then they began terrorizing the apartment staff, who were forced to flee the properties, leaving them to the gangs.

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