Colorado Apartment Residents Fight Anti-Immigrant Misinformation Amid Viral Video Of Armed Men
Residents of an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado, are speaking out after viral videos showing armed men entering one of the apartments have prompted anti-immigrant rhetoric, fearmongering and misinformation.
The videos were released by former residents at The Edge at Lowry Apartments and depicted several Spanish-speaking men with guns making their way up a set of stairs and into an apartment on Aug. 18.
Conservatives including former President Donald Trump began to spew unfounded claims that a Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua was running the complexand taking advantage of residents.
Residents sought to set the record straight during a press conference on Tuesday to dispel rumors that the entire complex was taken over by a migrant gang. Many took the opportunity and also drew attention to the unsanitary living conditions inside the apartment complex, including mice, piles of trash that hadn’t been collected, faulty appliances, leaky pipes, and more, according to The Associated Press.
“The only criminal here is the owner of the building,” said a resident named Moises Didenot, who is from Venezuela, according to the AP. Didenot also displayed live mice on a trap that he had caught recently in his apartment.
“I have been here for a year, and I have not received any kind of violence,” another resident said at the press conference, according to CBS News.
Another resident, who did not reveal their name, said that the narrative of a takeover from Tren de Aragua has prompted people in the Aurora community to classify all the residents at the Lowry Apartments as criminals.
“They are trying to put us all in one group, all in one bag,” the resident said. “They are trying to say that here there are delinquents, there are criminals. Here there’s moms, there’s families.”
In a Fox News interview last week, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman blamed “failed border policy” for the alleged incident and baselessly claimed that the gang “pushed out the property management” and has taken over at least two apartment buildings.
Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky added fuel to the fire when she claimed in an interview with The National Desk that the residents complained about the men “going through the complex, heavily armed.”
“They patrol the complex. They control who comes in, who goes out, they go from door to door. They have forced their way into many complexes. They have thrown people out,” she added.
Interim Aurora Police Chief Heather Morris quickly dispelled the idea of a Tren de Aragua takeover after talking directly to the people who live there.
“We’ve been talking to the residents here and learning from them to find out what exactly is going on, and there’s definitely a different picture,” Morris said. “I’m not saying that there’s not gang members that don’t live in this community, but what we’re learning out here is that gang members have not taken over this complex.”
AURORA POLICE CHIEF: “But what we’re learning out here is that gang members have NOT taken over this complex.” — Interim Chief of Police for Aurora, CO: Heather Morris
Even the police department that is subjected to a consent decree for their racist practices against Black… pic.twitter.com/V8CcOIpHXc— Auon’tai M. Anderson (@AuontaiAnderson) September 4, 2024
The police department, in coordination with state and federal partners, previously created a special task force in August to address crimes around the city involving Tren de Aragua. In a statement addressing the concerns at the Lowry Apartments, police officials reiterated that their task force was already investigating the gang and their investigations have led them to believe that reports of Tren de Aragua’s influence are isolated.
“We are aware that components of TdA are operating in Aurora. APD has been increasingly collecting evidence to show the gang is connected to crimes in the area,” the statement reads. “Based on our initial investigative work, we believe reports of TdA influence in Aurora are isolated.”
The string of events mirrors a similar situation in Chicago where claims that the Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment building were dispelled.
The anti-immigrant rhetoric and misinformation about migrant crime that have followed the incidents are reflective of right-wing fearmongering perpetuated by the Trump campaign.
At the 2024 Republican National Convention in July, for example, speakers fibbed freely about immigrants and crime despite research that indicates that Americans are more likely to commit crimes on American soil than immigrants, and that crime rates generally appear to be dropping across the nation.
“Every day Americans are dying — murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said at the RNC.
Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro was one of many others to lean into the anti-immigrant rhetoric at the RNC.
“Joe and Kamala, they threw out the woke blue carpet across the Rio Grande, opened our borders, to what? Murderers and rapists,” Navarro said. “It’s murderers and rapists. Drug cartels. Human traffickers. Terrorists. Chinese spies. And a whole army of illiterate illegal aliens stealing the jobs of Black, brown and blue-collar Americans.”
Former President Donald Trump, who is known for his harmful and violent verbiage surrounding the subject of immigration and a multitude of other topics, previously nodded to Adolf Hitler when talking about immigration, claiming that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
He also addressed the Aurora conflict in an apparent fearmongering attempt.
“You haven’t seen even the beginning of this migrant crime,” he said about the video while campaigning for the presidency last week.
