Former President Donald Trump stoked fears about increased immigration on Friday during a highly-anticipated rally in the Denver suburb that made national headlines over debunked claims of a Venezuelan gang takeover.
“What the hell are they doing to our country? What are they doing to Colorado? They’re ruining this state,” he said at the beginning of his speech.
Trump spoke for over one hour in front of thousands of supporters in Aurora at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center, a luxury property about 15 miles from the apartment complexes at the center of the false claims of widespread Venezuelan gang activity.
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Mugshots of migrants from Latin America with alleged gang connections, headlined with the text “Occupied America,” flanked the podium, alongside banners that read “Deport illegals now” and “End migrant crime.”
The Republican presidential nominee pledged that if reelected, he would use law enforcement to “hunt down, arrest and deport,” undocumented immigrants connected to gangs, invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. He called it Operation Aurora.
“I’m hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or law enforcement officer,” he said. “With your vote, we will achieve complete and total victory over these sadistic monsters.”
He called Nov. 5, Election Day, “Liberation Day” and repeatedly spoke about “cleaning out” the country of undocumented immigrants.
Danielle Jurinsky, a member of the Aurora City Council, speaks during a rally for former President Donald Trump, the GOP candidate for president, Oct. 11, 2024, at the Gaylord Rockies Resort in Aurora. (Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline)
Trump’s visit comes in the wake of a national frenzy among conservative figures and media over a perceived, though unfounded, wave of crime committed by immigrants. Research says that immigrants do not commit crimes at an increased rate. The city’s own interim police chief in late August publicly debunked the gang-takeover assertion.
Exaggerated claims about a citywide takeover by the transnational Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua grew with a viral video in August that showed a group of armed men knocking on a neighbor’s door and entering their apartment. Aurora police have identified six suspects seen in the video but say none of them have been connected to the gang.
The anti-migrant rhetoric became inflamed when Aurora City Council member Danielle Jurinsky appeared on Fox News and other outlets to talk about a “complete gang takeover,” and reached a peak when Trump called out Aurora during a September debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. He has since brought up Aurora at other speeches.
He soon said he would visit Aurora, suggesting the city is so dangerous, “you may never see me again.”
How false claims of a ’complete gang takeover’ drew Trump to Aurora
Police have identified 10 members of Tren de Aragua affecting migrant communities in the Aurora area, seven of whom are in custody. They maintain that TdA’s presence in the community is “isolated” and small compared to other gangs in the metro area. Republican leaders on the ground, including Aurora’s Mayor Mike Coffman, have said the takeover narrative is exaggerated.
But inside the ballroom where Trump spoke on Friday, immigration and violent crime at the hands of Venezuelan migrants were linked as a top issue in the election.
“These towns have been conquered,” he said. “We will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail, kick them out of our country, and we will be very, very effective in doing it.”
Trump is very unlikely to win Colorado’s 10 electoral votes, but the event also featured down-ballot Republican candidates, including state Rep. Gabe Evans, the Republican running in the competitive 8th Congressional District. Trump directly endorsed Evans and Jeff Crank, who is running in Colorado’s 5th Congressional District.
Recent polling shows Harris leading Trump in Colorado by 10 to 15 percentage points.
In his speech, Trump blamed Harris and President Joe Biden for the rise in immigration along the southern border.
“Kamala (Harris) has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the Third World,” he said. “They come from the dungeons … from prisons and jails, insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled into your community, to prey upon innocent American citizens.”
Trump has pledged mass deportations for undocumented immigrants if he wins a second term in the White House. Many of the migrants in the Denver metro area, most of whom are from Venezuela and other Latin American countries, have initiated a legal process to apply for asylum and are authorized to be in the country as they await immigration court proceedings. While in the country, they pay taxes and are able to work after obtaining a permit.
‘There is so much defamation’
Across town, community organizers and residents at one of the apartment complexes in the spotlight pushed back on Trump’s rhetoric. Children drew with colorful sidewalk chalk, neighbors danced to Venezuelan music and people mingled with drinks and snacks.
“We’re here in the community where the rumors and the hate that he’s spreading originated from, and if you look around, it’s a normal community with residents — some who are immigrants, some who are not — who live here and are just looking to have normal lives with their families,” said Henry Sandman, the co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.
“The message that he’s bringing is just here to drive us apart and to spread hate,” he said.
Veronica, a Venezuelan immigrant who has lived at the apartment since March, sat on the curb with her 1-year-old son Frances and friend Oriana. Veronia and Oriana declined to give their last names. She said Trump’s visit put a bad energy into the community, and his example is not fit for the presidency.
“There is so much defamation about who we are,” she said. “I’ve lived here with my family with no problems, and I’ve been living in tranquility.”
Oriana added that Trump’s visit and plans of mass deportation frighten her.
“Delinquency happens, but that doesn’t make us delinquents and it is not our experience here,” she said.
Democrats blast ‘lies and distortions’
Democrats went on offense on Friday morning ahead of the rally. Gov. Jared Polis. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper and Reps. Diana DeGette and Jason Crow denounced the misinformation Trump and his far-right allies continue to spread about the migrant community in Aurora.
“He has such a pathological hatred for immigrants and for immigration in this country that he can’t even see the economic benefits of immigration in the United States in our history, much less the cultural benefits that have accrued as a result of this country being dedicated to a nation of immigrants,” Bennet said.
“We need a president who can fix our broken immigration system,” he added. “We have to turn the page on this sorry chapter in American history, elect Kamala Harris and elect a Congress that can do the work with her to solve these problems for the American people.”
Colorado Democrats slam Trump’s ‘lies and distortions’ ahead of Aurora rally
Crow, who represents Aurora in Congress, said that he’s repeatedly spoken with federal law enforcement agencies, which have echoed the assessments by local police departments that TdA activity in the Denver area is “minimal and isolated.”
“It’s not a surge,” said Crow. “There is no takeover of any part of this city, of any apartment complex. It has not happened. It is a lie.”
But Crow said that immigrants and refugees in the community with whom he’s met recently feel threatened by Trump’s attacks.
“They’re afraid that anti-immigrant, anti-refugee rhetoric has increased, that bias and racism has increased,” he said. “Several of them have been trying to get new homes and rent new apartments, and they haven’t been able to, because people won’t rent to them anymore. These words, these lies, have real consequences.”
Speaking to reporters following the rally on Friday afternoon, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold pushed back on what she called Trump’s “xenophobic and unfounded claims,” as well as his “spread lies and conspiracy theories to undermine confidence in our democracy and in one another.”
Trump’s visit fell on the day that Colorado county clerks are authorized to begin mailing ballots to all registered voters in the state. Voters should expect to receive their ballots in the coming days.
“Colorado’s elections work. They’re accurate. They’re secure,” Griswold said. “The 2020 election was not stolen from Trump — Trump was fired by the American people. He lost. Colorado will have good elections this election cycle, and I look forward to ballots going out today and next week.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated to include additional statements from Colorado Democrats in response to Trump’s visit and quotes from Aurora residents.
Chase Woodruff contributed to this report.
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Publish date : 2024-10-11 11:10:00
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