(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.”
Bypass Big Tech Censors
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
