The Republican mayor of a Denver suburb that’s making headlines for a violent Venezuelan gang’s bold takeover of several apartment complexes spoke to Fox News about the situation.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman appeared on Thursday’s edition of “America Reports” where he updated anchor Sandra Smith on the shocking story of illegal alien criminality in the Mile High City, a prime destination for the “newcomers” who have been pouring into the country since the Biden-Harris administration took office.
Video of the heavily armed foreign thugs forcing their way into an apartment has gone viral on social media at a time when “border czar” and Democrat nominee Kamala Harris has flip-flopped on illegal immigration and is now trying to position herself to the right of former President Donald J. Trump on the issue.
(Video Credit: Fox News)
“So there are several buildings that are actually under the same ownership, out of state ownership, that have fallen to these Venezuelan gangs,” the mayor said when asked for confirmation on whether the apartments have been taken over. “I’m trying to walk it back and do the investigation as to how there’s a concentration of Venezuelans in these, these three buildings. Somebody put them there and somebody funded it, whether it’s federal government or not, we’re trying to find out who.”
“These gangs apparently are attracted to where there’s a concentration of Venezuelan migrants, and so, they’ve, in fact, have kind of pushed out the property management through intimidation and then collected the rents,” Coffman continued. “We have now, or have had, it is ongoing, operations with a task force of local law enforcement, state law enforcement partners, and federal law enforcement partners, to root them out and arrests have been made, but these operations are now are still ongoing.”
Asked by Smith whether the arrests are of confirmed gang members, the mayor was noncommittal whether it involved the notorious Tren de Aragua (TDA) gang, a group even more badass than MS-13, that thanks to the Biden-Harris open borders policies have now been able to set up shop in the United States.
“You know, they, this is an organized criminal effort. Whether it’s Tren de Aragua, that remains to be seen, but it really doesn’t matter. I mean, if they’re, you know, Venezuelan migrants and they’re and they’re, conducting crime in an organized way,” he said.
“What I just heard from you is that you don’t know how they ended up there, and you even made a suggestion that they could have been sent there by like, by federal officials,” Smith replied. “I heard you suggest. I mean do you have any reason to believe that to be the case?”
“So here’s the problem. I think we’re a victim of a failed policy at the southern border because, what you have, Venezuelan does not, according to my law enforcement, Venezuela does not cooperate with the United States in sharing criminal histories,” Coffman said, laying the blame on the administration, adding, “You’ve had a third of the country leave. You’ve had these massive waves of migrants coming across the border that many of them crossed the border illegally, were arrested, asked for political asylum, were not adequately vetted, were released into the country.”
“The city of Aurora, we did everything we could to, quite frankly, keep them out of out of the city because it’s not our problem,” he said. “This is a federal problem. This is a problem, borne by the federal government. But, what I think what we’re trying to find out, and what I believe occurred, was that federal agencies worked with some of our local nonprofits, and put them there.”
The mayor stressed to Smith that Aurora is a large city and that the criminal element is only a small number of the overall migrants who he described as “very good, good people.”
“This is only several apartment complexes, but nonetheless, I’m not going to surrender any part of this city to a criminal element,” he said.
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