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(DCNF)—A Colorado town quickly shot onto the national stage after footage of armed men storming an apartment went viral, but outspoken locals say that Venezuelan gang activity isn’t new and city officials spent months ignoring the problem.
A doorbell camera on Aug. 18 recorded six armed men entering an apartment building, roughly ten minutes before a 25-year-old was shot at the complex and later died from his injuries. Local leaders say the footage prompted the city to finally acknowledge and address what had been percolating for a long time: the emergence of a notorious Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua in Aurora.
Emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation suggest that Republican Mayor Mike Coffman dismissed the narrative that problems associated with the apartment buildings were tied to gang activity. CBZ Management, the property management company that owns the apartment complex where the August incident took place, tried warning the mayor and other city officials about the threat of Tren de Aragua, but those warnings came to no avail, the company told the DCNF.
“Zev [Baumgarten] and other people working there did everything possible to get the police to pay attention to the story. They did not,” a representative for the CBZ Management said to the Daily Caller News Foundation, in a conversation that included Zev Baumgarten, who has been described in court documents as the owner of the company. CBZ Management is the owner of several apartment buildings in Aurora that have allegedly been taken over by Tren de Aragua gang members, but the company says they were made out to be the bad guys when they attempted to warn city leaders.
The company told the DCNF that it had no idea what Tren de Aragua was until an employee was viciously attacked while visiting one of its properties to empty out a unit in November 2023. CBZ subsequently hired a security firm to try to get a hold of the situation, but was soon told by the firm that the level of crime was out of their reach and suggested it reach out to the FBI — which the company did.
It was at that meeting with the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and local Aurora police that the company was informed that the crime in the building was connected to Tren de Aragua, according to CBZ. The FBI declined to comment.
Shortly afterward the company related that information to local authorities, but Aurora officials ignored their warnings and instead blamed them for building code violations, according to the CBZ spokesperson.
A spokesperson for Aurora confirmed that this assault took place. Yoendry Vilchez Medina-Jose was arrested Aug. 5 by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office on a warrant that stemmed from the November 2023 assault, according to the City of Aurora. The city also confirmed that Medina-Jose is a documented member of Tren de Aragua.
“The City — instead of going after real criminals — they manufactured a criminal in their minds with Zev Baumgarten and went after him,” the CBZ spokesperson said. “We believe the reason they did that was to hide the story.”
“Instead of shutting down a building and saying they’re doing it because of gang activity, they say they’re shutting down a building because of code enforcement violations and the big bad wolf is Zev Baumgarten,” they continued. “He was just a local person they could pin it on.”
It’s not immediately clear when Aurora government leaders began responding to reports that an organized crime syndicate had likely taken over apartment buildings in the city.
Mayor Coffman took to social media on Sept. 11 to confirm that Tren de Aragua had a presence in “specific properties” in the city and that the Venezuelan gang’s activities had “significantly affected” these properties. That confirmation was preceded by other statements to the media on Aug. 29, with Coffman specifically saying that “there are several buildings, actually under the same out-of-state ownership, that have fallen to these Venezuelan gangs.”
“The reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity in our city – and our state – have been grossly exaggerated and have unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety,” read a statement from the City of Aurora when the DCNF reached out to the mayor for comment. “The city and state have not been ‘taken over’ or ‘invaded’ or ‘occupied’ by migrant gangs.”
“The incidents that have occurred in Aurora, a city of 400,000 people, have been limited to a handful of specific apartment complexes, and our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns and will continue to do so,” the statement continued.
Yet, as recently as early August, Coffman appeared to dismiss claims of the gang’s existence at these buildings, instead painting CBZ as a “problem” that has plagued the city for years with alleged “code violations,” emails obtained by the DCNF via a records request show.
“This building has been a problem for years and the city is taking the owners to court over persistent code violations,” Coffman wrote in an email on Aug. 7. “The owners are contending that they lost control of the building due to gang activity to dodge their responsibility and that is not accurate.”
Coffman was responding to an Aug. 5 email forward originally from Red Banyon, a public relations firm hired by CBZ Management, that claimed that Tren de Aragua had been terrorizing apartment tenants and taken over the property to help facilitate their own criminal affairs. The owners of the apartment complex referenced in Coffman’s email are CBZ Management, the property management firm that owns complexes in Colorado and New York.
Red Banyon did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
Coffman seemingly brushed off a separate report put together by international law firm Perkins Coie, which found that Tren de Aragua gang members likely took over the apartment building. The law firm’s report, which was marked as “confidential,” was derived from multiple witness interviews and a review of available footage and evidence.
The Perkins Coie investigation includes images that purportedly show a CBZ employee being beaten up by gang members in November 2023.
Apartments staff, including housekeepers, were told by Tren de Aragua members that they were “working for” the gang, according to the investigation’s findings. One gang affiliate identified as “Larry” said Tren de Aragua would use vacant rooms for parties, which included drugs and child prostitution.
Responding to fraudulent apartment ads posted by gang members, new tenants to the buildings allegedly began paying rent — unbeknownst to them — directly to the gang, according to the report. One man who failed to pay rent on time was allegedly stabbed by gang members.
The investigative report was delivered via email on Aug. 9 with a message from an associate of the law firm asking the mayor and other city leaders to discuss the firm’s findings. However, a follow-up email from the associate on Aug. 15 asked Coffman and city leaders to confirm whether they had received their report — an indication that the mayor never acknowledged or responded to the law firm during that time.
An additional follow-up email was sent by the associate on Aug. 21 which again asked for city leaders to discuss the investigation’s findings. The DCNF did not find any emails from the mayor’s office that indicated a response was ever given.
The author of the Perkins Coie investigation, Markus Funk, declined to comment when reached by the DCNF.
Three days after that Aug. 15 email message, doorbell footage would be taken that set off national media attention. CBZ, the apartment buildings’ owners, now say the situation is completely out of their hands now.
“Three buildings have been taken over,” CBZ said to the DCNF. “One of [the buildings] was shut down by the city. There’s another two that’s still under control of these gangs.”
“Rent is not coming in, but it’s filled with tenants so it’s going to someone — most likely to these gangs,” CBZ continued.
In response to public accusations from the city that CBZ Management was attempting to dodge their responsibility for code violations by blaming gang activity, the company pointed to the recent closures of major name-brand stores in the area, suggesting that the community as a whole is facing consequences of Tren de Aragua’s wrath.
“Whoever is accusing CBZ of that would have to explain why there’s a Walgreens closing down right next door to these buildings. There’s a Walmart that closed down not long ago right next to these buildings,” their representative said. “They have a lot of things they’ll need to explain.”
Aurora, like many communities across the country, has felt the consequences of the unprecedented border crisis experienced under the Biden-Harris administration. Denver, a major sanctuary city just a few miles away from Aurora, accepted tens of thousands of migrants during the ongoing crisis before it was forced to pull back its services— but not before sending a number of those migrants to Aurora, to the apparent chagrin of the mayor.
Roughly 570,000 Venezuelan nationals have unlawfully crossed the U.S.-Mexico border since the beginning of the Biden administration, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection. The White House has additionally authorized around 121,000 Venezuelans to be flown into the country via mass parole program and approved thousands of others via the CBP One app.
Reports of Venezuelan-related crime — organized crime, in particular — began to roll in as the migrant population in the Denver metro area continued to swell, such as when four Venezuelan nationals were indicted for a violent robbery of a Denver-area jewelry store in June, with local reports indicating the organized heist was linked to Tren de Aragua.
Local police confirmed that members of Tren de Aragua — an international crime syndicate that originated in Venezuela — have operated in Aurora. The Aurora Police Department (APD) in September said two men who were arrested for a shootout were affiliated with Tren de Aragua and another two individuals involved in the shooting were suspected of having ties with the gang.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also confirmed that all four of those individuals were Venezuelan nationals who entered the U.S. illegally during the Biden-Harris administration.
APD has identified all six men that were captured in the viral doorbell camera footage. However, it remains to be confirmed if any of those individuals are Tren de Aragua members, with an ICE spokesperson telling the DCNF that they have no additional information yet on those men.
“There has been evidence from the beginning of this,” John Fabbricatore, the Republican candidate for Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, which includes Aurora, said to the DCNF. “City leaders had received emails and letters concerning the growth of Tren de Aragua in certain parts of Aurora, Colorado.”
“Leaders chose to ignore those warnings for political purposes and did not reach out to neighborhood residents to provide a safe and secure environment,” Fabbricatore continued.
The Republican candidate has increasingly sparred with Coffman over the threat of Tren de Aragua in the city. He recently posted a video he took of Coffman on X, which shows the mayor appearing to say that the situation in one area of Aurora had only gotten better because of the presence of private security.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman says he will not attend Trump's rally and hopes that the visit to Aurora will show the former president that his claims are inaccurate. Yet, in a video I took Saturday at MLK library in Aurora, Coffman admits how bad Colfax has gotten behind closed… pic.twitter.com/xLl3DantVu
— John Fabbricatore (@JohnE_Fabb) October 8, 2024
Fabbricatore, who spent a career as an ICE field office director, said that Aurora is handicapped in its ability to fully take on illegal migrant crime because of Colorado’s status as a sanctuary state. Policies signed into law by Democratic Gov. John Polis prevent the Aurora Police Department from fully cooperating with federal immigration authorities — with the problem only being exacerbated by a major sanctuary city such as Denver being just a few miles away.
A slate of Denver suburbs have since been actively considering litigation against the Colorado government for the sanctuary laws, arguing that the policies have only served to protect criminals.
The Colorado governor initially pushed back on allegations that gang members had taken over apartment buildings in Aurora, with a Polis spokesperson claiming in August that “this purported invasion is largely a feature of [Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky’s] imagination.”
In the weeks since the statement was made and more evidence has surfaced of Tren de Aragua’s activity in the City of Aurora, Jurinksy said it was a shame Polis did not do more at the time.
“The truth has been and will continue to come out,” Jurinsky said to the DCNF. “I find it very sad that the Governor couldn’t put politics aside and reach out to another elected official who was asking for help, specifically from him.”
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