Denver’s decision to welcome immigrants has led to bloodshed in neighboring suburbs: A notorious Venezuelan prison gang has set up shop in Aurora, Colorado, a city that never wanted an influx of asylum seekers in the first place.
Aurora, a quiet commuter town of 390,000 people located due east of the Mile High City, is home to the vicious Tren de Aragua gang, which has taken over several apartment buildings and unleashed a wave of violent crime.
Denver leads the nation in new migrant arrivals per capita, with more than 40,000 people arriving from the southern border since December 2022.
The city is doing all it can to provide aid, even cutting emergency services to cover the costs, estimated to date at more than $68 million and growing.
But Aurora has made it clear that it does not share Denver’s desire to become the nation’s leading sanctuary city.
In February, the Aurora City Council voted 7-3 to pass a resolution highlighting the lack of resources and support for immigrants and others brought into the community from nearby cities.
“There’s a lot of tension here, and we’re feeling it,” City Councilman Daniel Jurinski, who sponsored the resolution, told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.”
“We’re not going to help with this migrant crisis.”
But Denver’s leniency has become a problem for Aurora anyway, forcing the community to contend with increasing gang violence as Tren de Aragua invades town and takes whatever they can get, according to police, officials and law enforcement sources.
“Cookie” Monsters
Police sources said one of the local gang leaders decided to set up shop in town: His name was Jonardi Jose Pacheco Chirino, and he was known by the name “Galeta,” which means “cookie” in Spanish.
Police say within months of arriving in the U.S., he and fellow gang members brutally beat a man in an Aurora apartment the gang had taken over and occupied. In July, police arrested him again, this time for a shooting at the same apartment that injured two men.
Tren de Aragua members are suspected of numerous violent crimes across the United States, including the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley earlier this year and the shooting deaths of two New York Police Department officers during an arrest in June. Gang leaders recently “gave permission” to their members to shoot American police officers who try to disrupt their criminal activities.
One local investor whose company owns several apartment complexes in Aurora said there was a “major shootout” at one of the gang-occupied properties.
“It’s scary that something like this could happen in America,” the source said.
Earlier this month, the Aurora Police Department announced it was forming a task force in partnership with Colorado State Police and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to combat the growing threat of gangs.
Aurora police declined to provide further details about the task force but said in a statement that “Aurora Police Department does not tolerate violent crime in our community.”
John Fabbricatore, a former head of the Denver-area ICE office who is now running for Congress, said gangs are running rampant in the area and authorities have been slow to respond.
“It has become increasingly apparent that some city officials, including the Aurora Police Department, are downplaying or ignoring the criminal activity that is impacting many neighborhoods in North Aurora,” Fabricatore said.
“Notably, certain apartment complexes in Aurora have been the scene of illegal immigrant gang activity, but these issues appear to have been downplayed for ideological reasons.”
Despite the rash of Tren de Aragua crimes in Denver, Aurora police union president Mark Sears said it’s “completely false” that the gang is taking over the city.
“They’re no different than any other gang that we have on our record. I think officers have concerns about the so-called ‘green light’ given to officers. Of course there are concerns, but my opinion as the head of the union is that I feel like we’ve been given the green light since 2020.”
Free to wreak havoc
According to a Department of Homeland Security source, Pacheco Chirino, the gang’s alleged “commander,” was subjected to a background check by federal border control officials when he crossed the southern border into Texas in 2022, but no suspicious activity was found in his past and he was subsequently released.
He told Border Patrol agents he was going to New York, but ended up at an ICE office in Colorado in June 2023, where he was given a court date and released again.
Soon after, he began wreaking havoc on the community.
Pacheco Chirino was recently arrested after allegedly taking part in a brutal assault that nearly resulted in death at the Fitzsimmons Place Apartments in Aurora in November 2023. Closed for violating rulesAccording to court documents obtained by The Washington Post, the owners argued that gangs had taken over the buildings and repairs were impossible.
During the assault, Pacheco, along with several other drunk men who he claimed were part of a gang that robbed Walmart and were in “control” of the apartment, allegedly hit the victim in the head with a Corona beer bottle and began punching him after he fell to the ground, according to documents.
Apartment investors told The Washington Post that they had “lost control” of some properties because gangs had taken over the units.
“At first they just hung out around the property, creating that bad element that’s always been there. Then a few months ago they started taking over, taking over vacant rooms.”
Soon, the alleged gang members began renting the rooms to other immigrants and “blackmailing” them as well. They then began threatening the apartment’s staff, forcing them to flee the apartment and into the hands of the gang.
The victim, who was left bloody after Pacheco-Chirino’s assault, suffered a traumatic brain injury, a broken nose and a fractured upper jaw, according to documents.
Pacheco-Chirino was eventually arrested in March 2024 and charged with multiple felony assault counts, but was released on bail and subsequently failed to appear in court, according to court documents.
July 28, 2024 Police make arrest Pacheco Chirino Three others were arrested in connection with a shooting at the same apartment where the previous assault occurred, in which two male victims were shot and another suffered a broken ankle.
Pacheco Chirino was arrested immediately at the time and turned over to ICE.
He received a deportation order from an immigration judge last week, but sources say he will likely remain in the U.S. because he is from Venezuela, which has not accepted deportation from the country.
Tren de Aragua, which originated in the Aragua region of Venezuela, has been smuggling members into the United States across the southern border for years, and has also begun recruiting members in immigrant communities across the US, particularly in New York, Denver and Chicago.
One of the gang members, 21-year-old Jean Torres Roman, was arrested in New Mexico this month in connection with a shocking and violent robbery that was caught on camera on June 25 at a Denver jewelry store.
Sears, who represents the Aurora police union, said he and other officers responded to the scene after the apartment shooting and sealed off the apartment where Pacheco-Chirino is believed to have committed the crime.
They found nothing wrong and no illegal items, he said, but he did find gang members ransacking the building.
The trash was piled up to the height of “two stories.”
