We can argue all we would like about who gained the Harris-Trump debate on Tuesday, however there’s no query who misplaced: Aurora.
The individuals of Aurora have been slandered in the service of a racist lie that Trump gleefully unfold in the last weeks of his presidential marketing campaign.
I’m certain you’ve heard this one. The Venezuelan gang generally known as Tren de Aragua supposedly is operating the metropolis.
Trump said it early in the debate. “You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns ….”
The Colorado Republican Party shamelessly repurposed the lie in a fundraising email, saying that “Colorado is under violent attack” and “Venezuelan gangs have taken over Aurora.”
Meanwhile in Aurora, the mayor, stalwart Republican Mike Coffman, is attempting to reassure his group while nonetheless showing sufficiently obsequious to his political tribe. Still, it’s secure to say he’s not taking orders from Venezuelan gang members it doesn't matter what the occasion goons are saying on X.
Aurora Police Chief Heather Morris did her greatest to calm the hysteria, too, holding a information convention to say there isn't any proof that the gang has taken over an house constructing or anything. Police have recognized 10 gang members concerned in legal exercise in the space and 6 have been in custody.
In Denver, Mayor Mike Johnston has stated the metropolis is working with native, state and federal regulation enforcement companies to observe the scenario and won't tolerate any gang exercise. “We will hunt them down, we will find them, we will arrest them and we will deport them,” he said.
So, what’s actually occurring in Colorado’s third-largest city?
Denverite reporter Kyle Harris ventured into the very house constructing that the right-wing trolls insist was underneath the management of brazen gun-wielding Venezuelan gang members. Instead he found households with babies struggling to outlive in abject squalor at the arms of legal slumlords from Brooklyn, N.Y.
One resident advised Denverite of infestations of mice, cockroaches and bedbugs in his house the place the range doesn’t work and his sink is plugged. He stated his landlord, CBZ Management, has ignored his requests for repairs in addition to these of his neighbors who dwell in equally appalling situations.
Other tenants in the CBZ house complexes advised The Sun that they, too, suffered with unsafe residing situations and with piles of trash that hadn’t been picked up in two months. On prime of that, now they have been confronted with virulent racism as a results of the lie about the gang operating the metropolis.
Immigrants and all individuals of coloration in Aurora are going through suspicion, hostility and threats from militant Trump supporters and others who've been manipulated into believing the newcomers are all criminals.
The migrant households are feeling terrorized. Their kids are having nightmares.
The Sun reported on one migrant from Venezuela who has offered home made arepas and empanadas from his house to earn cash to pay his lease. He was falsely accused of being a gang member in a publish on social media that included his telephone quantity.
Unsurprisingly, the publish sparked a threatening textual content to the man’s telephone. “I hope you know the Colorado veterans are building a militia with more fire power then you guys could ever imagine,” it stated.
Trump himself has made strategies of violence towards immigrants. At a rally in Wisconsin, he repeated the lie about gangs taking on Aurora and added, “Getting them out will be a bloody story.”
When requested in the debate if his plan to deport 11 million individuals would contain police going door-to-door, Trump stated, “Yeah.”
The inflow of refugees and determined individuals unquestionably has created challenges for Denver and Aurora. Nearly 43,000 migrants have come to the space in the previous yr, although many have moved on to different cities. Securing housing and social companies for individuals who stay has been a heavy carry. Helping a whole bunch of younger kids modify to life in new communities and new faculties strains already burdened public faculty methods.
Crime has not been the drawback, nonetheless. In reality, crime in Aurora dropped 20% in the first eight months of 2024 in comparison with the similar interval in 2023.
The information don’t matter to those that search to use worry and xenophobia although, which brings us again to the debate.
Trump’s fabrications and hate-filled rhetoric have been nothing new — besides perhaps for the line about Vice President Kamala Harris desirous to do “transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison.” I imply, who even thinks these things up?
But this time certainly one of his outrageous lies hit dangerously near house.
And while Colorado cities are monitoring down and arresting any gang members who really are right here, they need to go additional. They should be sure that everybody is aware of the truth and weak households aren’t focused by the offended mobs incited by the dehumanizing lies.
If the Trump mobs as soon as once more are mobilized, it is going to be a totally different story completely in Aurora — an honest-to-goodness actual case of violent legal gangs taking on the metropolis, all for the sake of cynical political acquire.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan information group, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers don't mirror the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics coverage for extra on The Sun’s opinion coverage. Learn find out how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at [email protected].
