Trump seizes on one block of a Colorado city to warn of a migrant crime threat, even as crime dips

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

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

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.

''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 a sometimes 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.''

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.

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.''

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.

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 safe in Aurora.

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

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.

Longtime residents say they've heard the occasional gunshot for years, but things seem relatively calm now.

Though residents feel safer, they acknowledge that the days in August when the armed men roamed the neighborhood were terrifying.

Dustin Zvonek, an Aurora City councilman, 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.