Trump highlights Colorado's degradation | Denver Gazette | Opinion

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See Colorado, said former President Donald Trump during a stump speech in California on Friday.

“The (Colorado) governor can’t talk about it because he can’t go against the policies of these lunatics that want all these people to come into our country without knowing who they are,” Trump said, referring to more than 40,000 migrants who have arrived in Colorado in the past two years.

Three days earlier, during his debate with Harris, Trump mentioned violent Venezuelan gangs that have taken over apartment buildings in Aurora.

For those who don’t see Colorado’s domestic and refugee homeless encampments, the state may seem an odd place to highlight as an example of what’s wrong. To the rest of the world, Colorado is camping trips and awe-inspiring scenery.

U.S. News and World Report often ranks Colorado Springs, Boulder, Fort Collins and other Colorado communities among the best places to live in the United States. Those rankings make sense, given Colorado’s climate combined with world-class natural and cultural assets.

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Yet, the same magazine this year named Colorado the third most dangerous state in the country. Numbers back it up, and it all tracks with problems related to our country’s porous border and Colorado’s hands-off approach to the trade, possession and use of hard illicit drugs.

Since 2012, when Colorado legalized recreational pot, voters and their elected representatives have:

• Enacted criminal justice reforms to reduce penalties for crimes

• Established the country’s first commercialized marijuana market

• Decriminalized to misdemeanor status the possession of Schedule I and Schedule II controlled substances, including fentanyl

• Created a sanctuary state in which law enforcement may not cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials

Here’s what has also occurred since 2012, as told by the most recent data from the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice:

• Homicides up 94% (compared to +40% nationally)

• Rape up 13% (compared to +11% nationally)

• Robbery up 22% (compared to -39% nationally)

• Property crime up 19% (compared to -19% nationally)

• Aggravated assault up 88% (compared to +17% nationally)

• Motor vehicle theft up 231% (compared to +28% nationally)

• Top 20 state for human trafficking

“Kamala will turn America into a poor, violent, third-world refugee camp,” Trump said Friday, referring to Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

Coloradans trapped in gang-run apartments know what he means. So do victims of violent crimes, and those who avoid sidewalks-turned-homeless-camps. For thousands of migrants without work and shelter, Trump is not wrong.

Nearly four years ago, President Joe Biden instructed Harris to work with Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to stem migration to the United States. Two years after she accepted the task, illegal border crossings reached an all-time high of 2.2 million.

“Illegal border crossings soared in the months after Biden took office and rolled back many Trump-era restrictions,” explains a Washington Post news article.

Harris did nothing to control the border and the drugs pouring over it. Colorado paid the price.

One can make a logical assumption that Harris supports Colorado’s deadly drug orgy. During her last presidential run, in 2020, Harris checked “yes” on an ACLU survey that asked whether she would “support the decriminalization at the federal level of all drug possession for personal use.”

In the same survey, she promised to end “immigrant detention facilities” — which would ease the importation of drugs into the United States and help human traffickers.

Colorado’s drugs, overdoses, violent crime rates and homelessness comprise a cautionary tale about far-left leadership. For those who live in the hardest-hit communities, Colorado is not a holiday camping trip. Policies embraced by Harris turned a mountainous paradise into the country’s third-most dangerous state.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board

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