Aurora, Colorado, has been plagued with crime linked to the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) and now the city’s mayor is accusing his Denver counterpart of not being truthful about how the gangbangers – and other migrants – ended up in his city in the first place.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, in an op-ed for The Denver Gazette, called on Denver Mayor Mike Johnston to come clean about his role in how two nonprofits allegedly sent and housed migrants in Aurora without notifying the local mayor and other local officials.
Coffman said that many Venezuelan migrants have ended up in Aurora, including criminals, due to the nonprofits’ efforts.
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Johnston’s office tells Fox News Digital it denies directing any nonprofit or agency to place migrants in Aurora.
A viral from August showing gun-toting TdA gang members bursting through the door of an Aurora apartment complex brought national attention to the gang’s foothold in the city.
Coffman said that he and Johnston held a joint press conference last year to show they were aggressively pursuing TdA gang members to help calm the national hysteria over the issue following the release of the video.
Coffman, a Republican, wrote that he turned to Johnston, a Democrat, moments before the presser and said it was strange that Aurora seemed to be having all the problems with Venezuelan gangs and Denver wasn’t, despite Johnston openly welcoming thousands of migrants bused from Texas. About 45,000 migrants have arrived in the Denver metro area since December 2022, according to data from the Common Sense Institute of Colorado, a non-partisan research organization dedicated to protecting and promoting the U.S. economy.
“Johnston, who talks incessantly in political soundbites, said nothing in response,” Coffman wrote.
Coffman said his attention was then drawn to a report by the conservative think-tank magazine City Journal, which claimed to show how Johnston moved migrants from Denver to Aurora.
The article stated that the nonprofits worked with landlords to place migrants in housing units and subsidize their rent.
One of those organizations, Papagayo, worked with a landlord called CBZ Management, a property management company that operates the three apartment buildings at the center of the viral video controversy, including the Edge of Lowry Apartments, City Journal reported.
After reading the article, Coffman said he confronted Johnston about whether this was true and how many migrants were sent to Aurora.
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“He affirmed that Denver had contracts with nonprofits that ‘have’ placed migrants from Denver to Aurora but he refused to confirm a number, where they were housed, or what resources they were given. He defensively said that information wasn’t available,” Coffman wrote.
Nevertheless, Coffman wrote that Aurora’s city attorney, Pete Schulte, obtained copies of the contracts between Denver and the two nonprofits and that the words “in Denver or in the surrounding communities” were inserted into those contracts to allow the nonprofits to place the migrants in Aurora without notifying Aurora officials.
“It gives Johnston cover, should it become public, by allowing him to say that it wasn’t his decision to put them in Aurora; it was the nonprofits who made the decision,” Coffman wrote.
Coffman said that Johnston’s assertion that the information wasn’t available was contradicted via a compliance provision in the contracts obtained via Schulte, which requires nonprofits to provide information about how many migrants were sent to Aurora and where they were housed.
Coffman wrote that the Denver city attorney is also claiming that the reports containing the numbers of migrants sent to Aurora and where they were placed cannot be released because they contain personal identifiers, such as the migrants’ names.
If that’s the case, Coffman wrote that Denver should redact the names and send him the information.
A spokesperson for Johnston’s office tells Fox News Digital that “Denver did not direct any nonprofit or agency to place newcomers in Aurora.”
“We also have no documentation nor knowledge to suggest that any city funds were put toward rental support at CBZ properties. Any suggestion otherwise is untrue.”
“Denver is proud to have supported nearly 43,000 people from the southern border, many of whom arrived on buses chartered by the Governor of Texas despite having had no intentions of making Denver or Colorado their home.”
Coffman went on to write that Venezuela is a failed socialist dictatorship whose economy has collapsed and where criminality is rampant.
“Unfortunately, where there is a concentration of Venezuelans here, the criminal element sometimes follows and superimposes itself on the Venezuelans to exploit them,” Coffman wrote.
“I believe that such was the case with CBZ properties, particularly at the Edge of Lowry Apartments, in Aurora.
“Aurora has suffered from a national embarrassment that has harmed the image of our city in a way that could have lasting economic consequences. As the mayor of Aurora, I’m asking that Mayor Mike Johnston be transparent and tell the truth about what he did.”
