Volunteers help set up for the Village Exchange Center’s food pantry Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, in Aurora. About 80% of the people the organization helps are Venezuelan. (Lindsey Toomer/Colorado Newsline)
Joel, a Venezuelan immigrant, has lived with his family in Aurora for just over a year.
“We’ve learned a lot about the community of Aurora, and I believe also the Aurora community has learned a lot about us, the Venezuelans who came here to work,” Joel said through an interpreter. “Our way of expression and our language is different than yours. We are more caring, more social. We like to interact with people.”
He volunteers at the Village Exchange Center’s weekly food pantry, along with dozens of other Venezuelans and local community members. Without work authorization, helping the pantry in exchange for food has been the best way he can provide for his family.
The nonprofit Village Exchange Center supports refugees and immigrants in Aurora. It serves about 3,000 people a week, about 80% of whom are from Venezuela.
Joel said he hasn’t heard anything about gangs in Aurora, and he feels safe and secure living in the city.
“The Venezuelans that are here in Aurora, we’re here to work,” he said.
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False claims of violent immigrant gang takeovers began to circulate among far-right Colorado political figures in late July. Aurora City Council member Danielle Jurinsky said “areas of our city are being taken over,” and baselessly linked a July 28 gathering at a shopping center parking lot — where a crowd of thousands assembled to await Venezuelan election results — to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organization. In an August appearance on Fox, Jurinsky said Aurora had experienced “a complete gang takeover in parts of our city.”
About 40,000 migrants from Central and South America, including Venezuela, have arrived in the Denver area since December 2022. Ten individuals associated with Tren de Aragua have been identified in Aurora, according to police. Most of them have been arrested.
Jurinsky continues to villainize Venezuelan immigrants, as she did when she spoke on stage when former President Donald Trump held a rally in the city last week. She most recently sponsored an Aurora City Council resolution she said was intended to determine how migrants got to Aurora but that immigrant advocates fear will lead to more negativity and misguided blame directed toward them.
“The recent council resolution presents a risk of diverting attention away from critical community issues and could potentially undermine the valuable work our organizations perform in public service,” said the Village Center and two other nonprofits, ViVe Wellness, and Organization Papagayo, in a joint statement.
A surge of national attention on Aurora followed the circulation of a 15-second video clip that showed a group of armed men knocking on a CBZ Management apartment door and entering the unit. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has repeatedly referenced the city on the campaign trail and pledged to use law enforcement to “hunt down, arrest and deport,” undocumented immigrants connected to gangs. At his Aurora rally, he called for the death penalty for “any migrant that kills an American citizen or law enforcement officer.”
Supporters of former President Donald Trump attend a rally for Trump, the GOP candidate for president, Oct. 11, 2024, at the Gaylord Rockies Resort in Aurora. (Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline)
Amanda Blaurock, executive director and founder of the Village Exchange Center, said the rhetoric insinuating “all Venezuelans somehow are criminals or came from a nefarious background needs to stop.”
“Conflating who you are with criminals is always going to be … really destructive for people’s ability to feel welcome and to be happy with their health and well-being, for them to feel like they can integrate and be a part of their new homes,” Blaurock said. “It’s very difficult for them.”
Raquel Lane-Arellano, spokesperson for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said she expects misinformation and disinformation about immigrants in Aurora will continue to spread until the Nov. 5 election, if not longer. She said elected officials have a responsibility to “tell the truth” and “not cause harm.”
“It’s very dangerous, and people are feeling the repercussions,” Lane-Arellano said. “I fear for our immigrant community right now and our Colorado community, because … this misinformation is being spread without thoughtful concern for how it is going to damage not only the immigrant community’s ability to protect themselves and their families from violence, but it also creates this division that isn’t Coloradan.”
Blaurock said many people her organization helps fear not knowing what comes next, especially as funding available to support people with housing and case management needs are dwindling. She said continued “cultural navigation” and case management is critical to helping families integrate and thrive in the community.
“The grants that we were working under specifically for Venezuelans and newcomers from the southern border have ended,” Blaurock said, “So I think people have been very happy to know that we’re still here, that we’re not going anywhere, that we’re going to continue to allow anyone to receive our resources.”
‘I don’t have anything to complain about’
Meanwhile, several Venezuelan immigrants have found peace and security living in Aurora.
Emyeicari has lived in Aurora with her son for just over a year after coming from Venezuela. She said she has seen no evidence that gangs are taking over the city.
“My interactions with the community have been normal,” Emyeicari said through an interpreter. “I adapted quickly. My son goes to school. I don’t have anything to complain about.”
For Venezuelans in Aurora, “life isn’t easy,” Emyeicari said, but they shouldn’t be accustomed to handouts. She said immigrants in the community need work authorization above all else, as she thinks people should support themselves and not rely on the government.
“We should work for what we need to support our families,” she said. “You have to have work authorization in order to work, and a lot of jobs aren’t going to employ you and risk losing their businesses because they hire somebody who’s undocumented.”
This misinformation is being spread without thoughtful concern for how it is going to damage not only the immigrant community’s ability to protect themselves and their families from violence, but it also creates this division that isn’t Coloradan.
– Raquel Lane-Arellano, of Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition
Angelica Maria lives in Aurora with her 9-month-old daughter and her husband. She’s been in the city for just about two years after fleeing Venezuela. She’s been treated well and feels safe in the city, she said. The food pantry at the Village Exchange Center has helped her family when they’re low on money.
“We’re good people,” Angelica Maria said through an interpreter. “I’m treated well. The food here is very good, and the help they give us is good.”
None of the people from Venezuela Newsline interviewed had heard of gang activity or felt unsafe in the city.
Displaced immigrants search for new housing
Advocates working for nonprofits that have helped residents displaced from a shuttered apartment building at the center of national attention say many immigrants still experience backlash that affects their housing and sense of safety.
Residents of the Fitzsimons Place apartments at 1568 Nome St. were removed from the complex on Aug. 13 when the city declared it uninhabitable after years of code violations. Representatives of CBZ Management, which owns Fitzsimons Place, helped initiate claims of gang takeovers in the days leading up to the closure.
At the time, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, a Republican former member of Congress who also exaggerated false claims of gang takeovers, called the company “out-of-state slumlords” who were attempting to shift blame for problems they caused.
Emily Goodman, senior manager of the East Colfax Community Collective’s housing assistance campaign, said her organization joined efforts trying to convince the city to give Nome Street residents more time to find new places to live before the closure. The collective had established prior connections with several families because Goodman’s team helped them find their original apartments.
“A lot of the families … were just extremely confused as to what was happening and didn’t know what to do once that was shut down, and it’s just not a lot of time being given for families to find new housing to get their stuff moved out,” Goodman said.
Goodman said finding affordable housing was already difficult throughout the Denver metro area, and now landlords have told Spanish speakers who were displaced that they are “not going to rent to Venezuelans,” even if they aren’t from Venezuela.
“People who are needing lower-barrier housing options are now having even less options because that narrative has just overtaken,” Goodman said. “They can’t get into housing that they would have been able to get into prior.”
Coffman and Jurinsky backpedaled in a joint statement after Trump repeated misinformation claiming gangs are taking over Aurora last month during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. Aurora’s own police chief debunked the claims, but Trump centered his entire visit to Aurora around conflating immigration and violent crime.
Disputing claims of a gang takeover and instead placing blame on an absentee landlord, tenants at several Aurora apartment complexes showed off receipts for rent payments, photos of trash pileups and dead mice they had trapped in their units. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)
Goodman said city and state officials need to work consistently to “reframe false narratives.” She said one statement or social media post is not sufficient to make up for “the horrific consequences of original statements.”
Cesar Jimenez, vice president of housing and supportive services at the Community Economic Defense Project, said his team is helping 20 families from the Nome Street building find new homes. He said it’s been “a very difficult process” because many families want to keep their kids in the same neighborhood and schools, and many don’t have substantial rental history or the income many apartments require. Landlords also have mentioned their hesitations around gang activities, he said.
“I think there’s a lot of misplaced fear from some of the new landlords who are not willing to work with the clients,” Jimenez said. “It’s been a mix between not having enough income and also the aftermath of the narrative that has been pushed around Nome Street.”
Displacement from their original homes has meant many people lost their jobs, too, Jimenez said, making it harder for the families to maintain a consistent stream of income. Several families displaced by the apartment closure are staying in motels across the metro area with support from the city and nonprofit agencies.
“The narrative and also the aftermath of the displacement has affected a lot of families, both economically and physically, mentally,” Jimenez said. “They’ve gone through a lot, and our main focus has just been trying to re-house them through connections, and building landlord relationships or collaborating with other agencies that are trying to do the same work.”
Goodman said some landlords have told families not to bother applying, saying they won’t rent to them right away. She said the negative narrative has “spun so out of control” that it’s more common for people to believe that gangs have taken over buildings than not.
“It’s so much harder to re-convince people of the reality after something so sensational has been put out there that they’ve fed into so easily, and I think that’s the hardest thing for residents right now,” Goodman said.
Negative effects on children
Jimenez said the Nome Street families’ children have borne the biggest burden from the displacement, traveling up to 45 minutes to get to their schools. Many families have felt supported by their current school communities and don’t want to uproot their children more than they already have, he said.
“Some families don’t know what to tell their kids,” Jimenez said. “Why are they all in motels? Why do they have to travel so long to get to the school? I think there’s some mental health aspects to that trauma as well.”
Goodman said the city removed Nome Street residents on their children’s first day of school, “which was really heartbreaking and traumatic.” She said families have noticed other people’s behavior around the schools change, too. While many families used to let their older kids walk to school, parents have felt safer driving them, even if that means going into work late, she said.
“Some of the parents have really struggled with feeling like their kids are safe in this school, just because they have received so much negative attention and hurtful comments,” Goodman said. “Incidents have happened that understandably they’re very concerned their kids might experience that at school when they’re not around too.”
While the displaced families have been united within their local community, Goodman said there’s concern for “how outsiders might perceive” them. She said one family asked her if it would still be safe to host their son’s third birthday party in a public park out of fear that a large group of people speaking Spanish would draw attention.
“They’re all in such survival mode and ensuring they’re not affiliating too much with everyone, because what if that paints more of a negative light on them moving forward,” Goodman said. “It’s just been really hard to witness because they all really do stick together and have such a care amongst each other, but they’re all just so nervous because they’ve experienced such hostility.”
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