How Aurora, Colo., Became a Migrant Gang War Zone

All it took for parts of this Denver suburb to descend into a migrant wasteland — with violent gang shootings, men brazenly toting guns in the open, drug dealing and shot-up cars — was for a few apartment buildings to fall into disrepair.

Aurora has been thrust into the national eye — even cited by former President Donald Trump in Tuesday night’s debate — thanks to members of the violent Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, who have turned the bedroom community of 390,000 into a war zone.

The gangbangers have been using various dilapidated apartment complexes — like the one which Aurora native Jessica Montenegro and her young family were forced to flee — as their home base, terrorizing residents there with gun crime, theft and drug dealing.

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For weeks, local officials denied the gang was operating in Aurora, brushing it aside as a one-off problem.

However, after The Post revealed a top Tren de Aragua leader, nicknamed “Cookie,” was based in Aurora, cops on Wednesday publicly identified 10 suspected members of the gang who have been arrested in recent months for terrorizing the city.

Montenegro and her husband swept up their three kids and bolted from the Edge at Lowry complex after one harrowing encounter: A man with a gun in his waistband knocked on the door of their $1,200-a-month apartment one day and tried to get inside.

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Gang members poured into Aurora with a wave of Venezuelan migrants from Denver — the sanctuary city next door, which has taken in more than 42,000 migrants since 2022, most of them from the politically unstable South American country.

That’s despite Aurora officials saying they wouldn’t provide support for any asylum seekers.

“We are not a border state, but we’re dealing with the fallout of a failed immigration policy and trying to do our best in trying to keep our citizens safe and immigrants,” District Attorney John Kellner, who oversees Aurora and a large swath of the Denver suburbs, told The Post.

Among the Tren de Aragua members named by Aurora police on Wednesday is Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirinos, who goes by “Galleta” — Spanish for “Cookie.”

Homeland Security sources told The Post that he is a “shot-caller” for Tren de Aragua’s activities in the Aurora area. Months after crossing the southern border, Pacheco-Chirinos and fellow gang members allegedly brutally beat a man at the Aurora apartment complex.

He was arrested and then released on bond, but it wasn’t long until he went on to carry out another act of violence, cops say.

In July, police arrested him again alongside his brother Jhonnarty Dejesus Pacheco-Chirinos — also a Tren de Aragua member — this time for a shooting at the same complex that left two men wounded.

Most of the gang members identified by Aurora cops were busted at the city’s blighted apartment buildings, where trash and broken bottles litter the hallways.

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In response, the city has shuttered two apartment complexes and forced the owner of two of the worst crime hotspots to give up control of the buildings.

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