❓WHAT HAPPENED: The New York Times has finally admitted that President Donald J. Trump was right in his claims about the violent illegal immigrant crime crisis that plagued the city of Aurora, Colorado, in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: The New York Times, President Donald J. Trump, illegal immigrants from Venezuela, Tren de Aragua, residents of Aurora, Colorado, and journalist Ted Conover.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Aurora saw a series of violent crimes perpetrated by illegal immigrants between 2023 and 2024, with the NYT acknowledging Trump was correct on July 3, 2025.
💬KEY QUOTE: “[T]heir refusal to acknowledge the violence that some residents were seeing with their own eyes came off not as reassurance but as erasure,” writes Ted Conover, describing Democrat lawmakers and the corporate media who waved off the incidents of violent illegal immigrant crime in Aurora in 2024.
🎯IMPACT: The issue of illegal immigrant crime became a major presidential campaign issue for Trump, with his administration subsequently enacting a sweeping nationwide crackdown on those in the country unlawfully.
The New York Times has finally acknowledged that President Donald J. Trump was right about the illegal immigrant Venezuelan gangs that have plagued residents in Aurora, Colorado. In a sprawling exposé, author and journalist Ted Conover details a violent series of incidents perpetrated by illegal immigrants believed to be members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, that became a core focus of President Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Conover admits that, at the time, the corporate media and Democrat politicians ignored the city’s illegal immigrant gang crisis, writing, “[T]heir refusal to acknowledge the violence that some residents were seeing with their own eyes came off not as reassurance but as erasure.” Notably, the NYT itself ran a story with the headline, “How the False Story of a Gang ‘Takeover’ in Colorado Reached Trump” and waved away the crisis, stating: “The claim that Aurora, Colo., has been overrun by gun-toting migrants stemmed from the city’s fight with a landlord.”
While city officials in Aurora had been engaged in a protracted battle with CBZ Management—a Brooklyn, New York-based landlord company—over sanitation and blight conditions at three apartments along East Colfax Avenue, these issues appear only tangentially connected to the spike in violent crime perpetrated by illegal immigrants at the complexes. Speaking with several former residents of the CBZ Management properties in Aurora, Conover details incidents that far exceed the claims made by Trump during the election.
While a video of a group of young male Venezuelan illegal immigrants brandishing firearms and breaking into a residential unit at the Edge at Lowry apartment complex last year garnered some corporate media attention, the details surrounding the incident and the frightening extent of criminal activity were largely ignored. Notably, while the illegal immigrants appeared to leave after briefly entering the apartment unit, they subsequently confronted the resident, Oswaldo José Dabion Araujo, outside the complex and shot and killed him. “It looked like Beirut, with bullet holes in the front,” a local pastor said, describing the state of the property after a wave of illegal immigrants, mostly young men in their twenties, arrived from Venezuela in late 2023.
In addition to the murder of Dabion Araujo, the three apartments owned by CBZ Management saw other violent assaults. In one incident, a man and a woman arguing in a parking lot outside one complex were attacked by a group of illegal Venezuelans, ending with the man being shot several times in the leg. Other residents reported illegal immigrants stealing motorcycles and riding them through the hallways of the buildings. All three properties were plagued with drug dealing, theft, and prostitution.
Two Venezuelan nationals appear to have controlled a bulk of the criminal activity in at least one of the apartment buildings. Brothers Jhonnarty and Jhonardy Pacheco Chirinos ran what Aurora Police now believe was a local affiliate of Tren de Aragua, financing their gang operations through—among other things—the theft of items from a nearby Walmart. Both brothers have subsequently been arrested.
While President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration has begun to turn the tide—U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests in Colorado are up over 250 percent—Aurora is still seeing some violent incidents. In June, the city’s Chief of Police, Todd Chamberlain, publicized a new video of an apartment break-in perpetrated by illegal immigrants believed to be members of a gang. “This might sound like déjà vu,” Chamberlain said at the time, adding: “This is something that we are proactively addressing with everything that we can.”
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