In Aurora, Colo., a Split Over the Biggest Threat to the City: Migrants or Trump?
The New York Times
President Trump has made Colorado’s third-largest city synonymous with the supposed scourge of Venezuelan gangs, but some wonder if his immigration raids are damaging the city more than the migrants ever did.
The crumbling apartments in Aurora, Colo., that President Trump seized on to insist the city had been overrun by Venezuelan street gangs are now boarded up and nearly empty. But in one building, the smashed door of Apartment 300 captures the fresh divisions sown by Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown.
On a recent spring morning, a crew of construction workers fixing up the apartments pointed to the door as evidence of the violence wrought by criminals let into the country by Democrats. “They allowed this sanctuary nonsense,” said Karl Baker, a contractor, who voted for Mr. Trump.
Jackelin Melendez, who lives nearby, had a different explanation. The door, she said, had been kicked in during an immigration raid last month. The men inside were laborers, not gang members, she said. Law enforcement agents had pounded on her door that morning too, terrifying her children.
“We’re caught in the middle,” Ms. Melendez, who is undocumented and from El Salvador, said in Spanish.
Just who is responsible for smashing the door remains unclear. What is clear is that Mr. Trump has made Aurora a national shorthand for migrant crime after declaring repeatedly that the vast Denver suburb, population 400,000 and Colorado’s third-largest city, had been taken over by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He pointed to a viral video of armed men stalking the halls of one of three rundown complexes where hundreds of immigrants had settled.
Mr. Trump christened his plan to expel them Operation Aurora, even as the city’s conservative Republican mayor protested that Aurora had not been taken over by Tren de Aragua, and the police chief said Aurora had arrested people suspected of gang activity and had the matter under control.
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