Colorado City Closes Migrant Apartment Block Amid Gang Crime, Squalor
Neil Munro, Breitbart, August 13, 2024
City officials in Aurora, Colorado, are closing down a large apartment building today amid rival claims about landlord abuse and a hostile takeover by Venezuala’s Tren de Aragua migrant street gang.
“Tren de Aragua taking over properties and communities in Aurora means that we are not able to be present on this property, or any of our other properties in similar situations, also being impacted by [migrant] gang presence,” said a statement to Breitbart News by an “investor for multiple affected properties in Aurora.” The statement was provided by a spokesman for the Florida-based landlord, CBZ Management.
The owners are “out-of-town slum lords,” Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman responded via 9News.com on August 8:
That building has been a problem for years, mountains of garbage, rats, sewage, no electricity …. We’ve been working with this building and its owners for a very long time. I mean, I they’re they’re out-of-state slumlords, and they haven’t maintained the building.
Coffman is a prominent supporter of more labor migration into the city’s workplaces and housing. “America is a nation of immigrants with a rare ability to take the best of many cultures from all corners of the world and almost magically integrate them to become uniquely American,” he told ColoradoPolitics.com in 2020. One in five of Auroroa’s population of 400,000 is an immigrant.
The migrants must leave by Tuesday. Many will get free accommodation at local hotels until August 31, mostly arranged via pro-migration advocacy groups, such as the East Colfax Community Collective.
ABC7 in Denver reported:
Edwin Macedo, who is new to the country, said he struggled when he first arrived to the U.S. — moving from different shelters and eventually found himself living on the street in Denver. “We used to live in an encampment under a bridge,” he said, in Spanish, “This is the only roof I have right now.” He and his children are now left wondering where they will go next.
But many have learned from progressive advocacy groups to demand free aid from ordinary Americans:
“We don’t want to go to a shelter, we have been through too much to go back to a shelter and give our kids that life,” said [another] tenant, Irany Perez, in Spanish, “We are demanding our human rights, we are humans and this is not fair.”
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Since 2021, roughly 40,000 illegal migrants have flooded into Denver and its surroundings, including such as Aurora, because the local Democratic mayor promised sanctuary, free housing, and economic aid. The inflow has been welcomed by the employers, landlords, and groceries who gain from the imported extra workers, renters, and consumers.
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Aurora police Deputy Chief Chris Juul acknowledged that the Venezuelan Tren De Aragua gang is active in the area. “We’re working diligently on that … We are learning a lot about this community,” according to an August 9 report by Colorado Public Radio.
“This happening in Denver and other big cities, and it’s happening in rural areas,” responded Jay Palmer, a trafficking expert and former advisor to President Donald Trump. Apartment buildings, he told Breitbart News, are:
being taken over by the migrant gangs, and the illegal workers have to pay upwards. I equate this almost to the 1920s, 1930s Mafia trend [of protection rackets]: You give them a part of your salary, and you’re alright. The police won’t do anything. Nobody will do anything.
This comes straight from a high-ranking law enforcement official who told me: When they put you through the academies, you are not taught … immigration law. You know burglary, robberies, homicide. You don’t know these [immigration] laws and it takes a scholar to keep up with the laws because a lot of them change. Every [migrant] has got a cell phone, everybody’s got a camera, and law enforcement officers are afraid they’ll be prosecuted by the left.
The Florida landlord has been urging more police action for months, according to the PR agency. “I told them time and time again, if you guys only took this seriously eight months ago, nine months ago, you probably could have stomped it out with relative ease,” the landlord told Colorado Public Radio.
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The three GOP members of the city council back the landlord’s argument that their maintenance crews could not visit the 99-unit building because of extortion threats from the Venezuelan gang members. “None of us buy [the Mayor’s] story that this is based on a code enforcement violation,” said Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky, according to Colorado Public Radio. “Three [council members] believe there is a huge gang problem,” she added.
Denver city’s sanctuary laws are encouraging migrant crime that is spreading through the city’s apartment buildings and into the suburbs, said John Fabbricatore, a former ICE officer who is now running against incumbent Rep. Jason Crow (R-CO). {snip}
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