AURORA, Colo. — All it took was a few rundown apartment buildings for this Denver suburb to turn into an immigrant wasteland, with violent gang shootings, men openly carrying guns, drug deals happening and cars being shot up.
Aurora has attracted national attention and was even mentioned by former President Trump during Tuesday night's debate thanks to members of Venezuela's violent prison gang, Tren de Aragua, who have turned the commuter town of 390,000 people into a battleground.
Gangs use various rundown apartment complexes, like the one where Aurora's Jessica Montenegro and her young family were forced to flee, as bases to terrorize residents with gun crimes, thefts and drug dealing.
“We were afraid to stay there and we knew the situation would get worse,” one shaken Montenegrin told The Post recently.
For weeks, local authorities denied that gangs were operating in Aurora and dismissed it as a temporary problem.
But after The Washington Post exposed that a top Tren de Aragua leader nicknamed “Cookie” is based in Aurora, police on Wednesday released the names of 10 suspected members of the gang who have been arrested for terrorizing the city in recent months.
Montenegro and her husband fled the Edge at Raleigh complex with their three children after a frightening incident one day when a man carrying a gun on his hip knocked on the door of their $1,200-a-month apartment and tried to get inside.
“Now that I think about it [about it]”It's really scary, not just for me, but for my kids,” said the 35-year-old mother of two middle school-aged children and a 10-month-old baby. “I can't imagine what would have happened if I had still been there.”
The gang members have poured into Aurora along with a wave of Venezuelan migrants from the neighboring sanctuary city of Denver, which has accepted more than 42,000 migrants since 2022, most of them from the politically unstable South American country.
This is despite Aurora officials saying they will not provide assistance to any asylum seekers.
“While we are not a border state, we are dealing with the effects of failed immigration policies and are doing all we can to keep our citizens and immigrants safe,” District Attorney John Kellner, whose district covers Aurora and a large area outside Denver, told The Washington Post.
Among the Tren de Aragua members named by Aurora police on Wednesday was Jonardi Jose Pacheco Chirinos, known by the nickname “Galeta,” Spanish for “Cookie.” Homeland Security sources told The Washington Post he is the “commander” of Tren de Aragua operations in the Aurora area. A few months after crossing the southern border, Pacheco Chirinos and fellow gang members allegedly brutally beat a man in an Aurora apartment.
Police say he was arrested and released on bail, but soon became violent again.
In July, police arrested him and his brother, Honarty DeJesus Pacheco Chirinos, also a member of Trend de Aragua, again, this time for allegedly carrying out a shooting at the same complex that left two men wounded.
Most of the gang members identified by Aurora police were arrested in rundown apartments in the city, where trash and broken bottles littered the hallways.
One Aurora landlord told The Washington Post that gang members were using vacant apartments to live in and occupy them, then threatening maintenance workers and staff who tried to clean the apartments, sources said.
In response, the city closed two apartment buildings and forced the owners of two of the area's most crime-ridden apartment complexes to give up control of their buildings.
An old apartment building on Dallas Street in Montenegro is one of the city's most notorious apartment complexes: infested with cockroaches, unkempt, and littered with cars without license plates or riddled with bullet holes.
In the months before the family fled, gunfire, fights and loud music began to be heard every night in Montenegro. The final straw was a terrifying encounter with an armed man on their front door.
In August, two months after she moved out of her studio apartment, a video went viral showing heavily armed men, believed to be members of Tren de Aragua, banging on the front door of her old apartment and trying to get inside.
“It's not safe there, especially if you have children. You hear gunshots and my kids used to walk to school but they don't feel safe there anymore,” she said.
“I think it was the right decision to move out of there.”
Police have made no arrests in the incident, which took place at an old apartment building in Montenegro.
Tren de Aragua gang violence isn't limited to Aurora: In Denver, the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office arrested four people associated with the gang at the Ivy Crossing Apartments in late August. During the arrests, officers seized 750 counterfeit pills, ketamine, and a stolen vehicle.
Arapahoe County Sheriff Tyler Brown told The Washington Post that his office took action after receiving a tip and seeing reports of “someone walking around with a firearm and someone dealing drugs.”
Deputy Sheriff Christopher Calderon accompanied a Washington Post reporter to the scene of the operation, saying the area “has changed considerably over the years with immigrants from different countries.”
But much goes unreported because immigrant communities fear law enforcement due to corruption in their home countries, Calderon said.
“They are so afraid of retaliation that they don't want to talk,” Calderon said.
Residents and local officials say Aurora police are downplaying the gang problem.
Residents living near the old Montenegro building fear gang retaliation and asked not to be named in order to speak freely about the threats.
The neighbor told The Post that Aurora Police, which just hired a new chief, had not responded to calls about gunfire and extremely loud music playing throughout the night.
“I've called the police 20 times in the last month or two and they've never come,” the neighbor said.
He said he felt “totally” powerless.
“They're completely out of control,” the neighbor added.
Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekley, who has yet to see such gang activity in neighboring counties, told The Post that the Aurora Police Department is downplaying the issue.
“We need people in our police departments who are willing to go in and clean up the mess, serve the community, solve crimes, catch bad guys and hold criminals accountable,” Weekley said. “We don't have those people in our police departments. It's chaos.”
