Mike Coffman, the conservative Republican mayor of Aurora, Colorado, spoke to former President Donald J. Trump on Friday before coming to a city the Republican candidate for the White House has repeatedly portrayed as occupied by a vicious immigrant street. I sent you a message. A thug.
“This is an opportunity to show him and the public that Aurora is a fairly safe city, not a city infested with Venezuelan gangs,” Coffman said in a statement to the Times. My open offer to show him around our community and meet with the Chief of Police for briefing is still valid. ”
It’s not a message that’s likely to get across.
In the final weeks of Trump’s campaign, his efforts to demonize immigrants from Venezuela, Haiti and other countries have become increasingly ominous, with Republican allies such as Coffman offering Even the fact that it happened is ignored. . Last month, the former president began describing Aurora, a vast Denver suburb of 404,219 people, as a “war zone” overrun by the violent Venezuelan street gang Torren de Aragua.
Trump will file a lawsuit against the city itself on Friday, despite pleas from Aurora city officials of both parties to stop. He’s heading to an afternoon rally at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center, a place apparently not infested with Venezuelan gangs.
Democratic City Council member Crystal Murillo, who is Mexican-American, asserted that he was not welcome.
“My message is that President Trump doesn’t belong here,” she said in an interview. “His divisiveness and rhetoric are not the essence of ‘Aurora.'”
The epic story of Colorado’s third-largest city being taken over by armed Venezuelans continues as out-of-state landowner CBZ Management reports residents of three apartment complexes in the city of Aurora are being kept in absolutely dire conditions. It all started with this novel excuse. He was alive.
In July, CBZ told the city that the property manager had been forced to take action after armed leaders from Torren de Aragua took over the complex, violently evicted the manager, and began collecting rent from immigrant residents. He said he was unable to make repairs requested by tenants and city officials. themselves.
A public relations firm hired by the landowner asked Denver’s Fox affiliate to run a report on the alleged takeover. Mayor Coffman and conservative City Council member Daniel Julinsky reiterated the landowner’s story, but later recanted their statements. Then a video of armed men in one of the complexes began circulating in conservative media.
By the time Mr. Trump discovered the cause, his feverish dreams that Colorado’s megacity, home to the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the nation’s top children’s hospital, would be overrun by immigrant criminals were gone. Owned.
Coffman sought to set the record straight Friday morning, saying, “The reality is that concerns about gang activity in Venezuela are grossly exaggerated.” “The incident was confined to a few apartment blocks in this city of over 400,000 people.”
The city released its own statement Friday, also fact-checking the former president ahead of the rally. “Gangs have not ‘taken over’ the city,” he said. “The exaggerated claims fueled through social media and some news outlets are simply not true. Selected individuals and organizations have mischaracterized our city based on specific incidents. It’s a tragedy.”
(The city did not release the names of the expected “selected individuals.”)
“Fellow crime is down more than 17 percent in Aurora,” he continued. “The city is actively pursuing all legal means to ensure that CBZ managers are held accountable for their properties.”
The Aurora Police Department secured all three apartment complexes. City spokesman Ryan Ruby said 10 men connected to Torren de Aragua have been identified and nine have been arrested. He added that six armed men who were seen in a viral video taken by a doorbell camera at one of the apartment complexes have now been identified and one arrested.
Murillo said one of the complexes owned by CBZ was also foreclosed and closed, and the other two are now under administration. The city is encouraging banks that have foreclosed on properties to sell them to reputable low-income housing companies so that poor residents, some but not all Venezuelan immigrants, can keep their homes.
CBZ and lawyers for Zeb Baumgarten, the man authorities identified as the landlord and who is facing criminal charges for negligence, have repeatedly said the city, not the company, is to blame for the apartment’s dire conditions.
“It is the government’s responsibility to protect the property and, more importantly, the people who live there,” said CBZ attorney Matthew C. Arensen. “The government has failed in this responsibility.”
This allegation has been strongly denied by city officials, including the Republican mayor and Democratic city council members, all of whom say CBZ defrauded the city by exploiting customers in out-of-state slums and is now weighing heavily on the city. He claims to have caused a fiasco. reputation.
Ms Murillo said talk of rampaging gangs was “detracting from the real problem”, “a lack of accountability for corporate landlords and a housing shortage”.
Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, who lives in Aurora, said Friday that he will continue to accuse Trump of “lies” about the city of Aurora, no matter how insensitive the former president is to fact-checking. The Aurora visit is another sign that Trump “knows he’s losing,” Crow said.
“We set the standard for welcoming people from all over the world, and we do that very well,” he said of his city. “We will not allow ourselves to become victims of his politics.”
