Immigration policies and border control were two of the main topics discussed Thursday at what was billed as a rally and conversation with Republican members of Congress and candidates.
It was much more rally than conversation.
The city of Aurora has been making national headlines for more than a week over allegations that members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, are preying on residents.
The Republicans who headlined the event — Colorado Reps. Lauren Boebert and Greg Lopez, as well as Rep. Chip Roy of Texas — used the issue to bash President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Jared Polis and the district’s Democratic Rep. Jason Crow. They also stumped for the GOP candidate running to unseat Crow, John Fabbricatore.
Fabbricatore is the former field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement for Denver. He brought up recent laws in Colorado aimed at making the state more friendly to immigrants, regardless of legal status. He particularly highlighted a state policy that limits local law enforcement’s ability to cooperate with immigration authorities.
“I've been fighting sanctuary policy in this state for a long time,” he said. “And you know what the governor of this state says — ‘we're not a sanctuary state.’ I can outline laws year after year since 2013 that make this state a sanctuary state.”
According to Fabbricatore’s team, around 150 people attended the campaign event at JJ’s Place, a bar on the southern edge of Aurora owned by City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky. She’s been a frequent presence on conservative media, making the claim that parts of Aurora are experiencing a “complete gang takeover.”
Jurinsky was greeted with applause at the event and urged those attending who live in the sixth district to support Fabbricatore.
“It's going to take the whole village — the whole village — to get this man elected, but it is do or die right now, across the country but certainly for the city of Aurora,” said Jurinsky.
For their part, residents of the buildings at the center of this controversy have told journalists that they are less concerned with gangs than with their landlord, who they say has let their homes fall into deep disrepair.
Crow argues his opponents are playing politics with the situation
Rep. Jason Crow paints a very different picture of what’s happening in the largest city in his district.
He said he’s had a lot of discussions with local and federal law enforcement and city officials and “there is no evidence of takeover by gangs of certain apartment complexes, or extortion rings.”
“We have isolated incidents of gang activity that’s being addressed by federal and local law enforcement and the metro gang task force,” Crow continued. “They are doing exactly what law enforcement should be doing. And they’re addressing it with focus and with intentions. And I’ve talked to them and I’m confident they are going to continue to do so.”
As of Wednesday, Aurora police said they have identified 10 gang members and that six were in custody. While the department has received complaints of stolen rent at three affected apartment complexes, there's hasn't been enough evidence yet to make arrests in those cases. Law enforcement has pushed back against the idea that any buildings have been "taken over" by gangs, noting their officers have been present on the ground at the affected complexes, speaking with residents.
Crow blamed the media frenzy “on a handful of politicians who have decided to lie and distort this issue into something that it is not, for purposes of politics in an election year and to get clicks on Twitter and to get on conservative media.”
He said the situation is making it harder to provide services for Aurora’s immigrants and refugees, and the housing insecure in general, as well as to address the legitimate law enforcement issues the community has been struggling with for years.
Republicans push to 'aggressively apprehend, detain, and deport'
However, the three Republicans in Colorado’s congressional delegation have pushed their own claims about what is happening in the city.
Reps. Boebert, Lopez and Doug Lamborn recently wrote to DHS and ICE officials, as well as Gov. Polis, about the situation.
They questioned what role DHS has played in bringing new immigrants to Colorado (during the surge in new arrivals over the past year, many came on buses charted by the governor of Texas), what knowledge DHS had of gangs in Aurora, and what state and local policies are hindering cooperation between federal agencies and local communities “to remove illegal aliens and TdA gang members.”
The joint query comes on the heels of Lopez writing a letter of his own to DHS asking it to issue a directive for ICE to “aggressively apprehend, detain, and deport any members of Tren de Aragua, or other known foreign criminal gangs” in the state. He’s also expected to introduce legislation this fall to compel DHS to issue detainers for migrants known by law enforcement to be affiliated with a gang, according to Fox News.
At the Thursday campaign event, Lopez claimed that Hispanic Americans want the border closed.
“It is time to shut these borders down. It's time to make sure that we get these wild dogs … I call them wild dogs because look at what they do. They go around, they create havoc, and if we allow them to take over a certain area, they're going to breed and they're going to spread,” he told the crowd.
According to a study by Stanford University, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than citizens born in the U.S. Other research has found no connection between the number of undocumented residents in a community and its crime rates.
After Lopez, Boebert took a turn at the microphone, sharing her background as an Aurora native, and how, according to her, the city has “taken a turn for the worst.”
“There's so much that we're working on in Congress to help states like ours, but ultimately it comes from the top here. This being a sanctuary state and now red cities like Aurora are being negatively impacted because of those policies,” Boebert said. “This is un-American and it's unsafe.”
That sentiment was reiterated by Fabbricatore, who’s lived in Aurora since 1998.
“I've seen Aurora grow and I've seen what it's capable of. But we also have an issue and a problem now in Aurora with crime and it's illegal migrant crime that we're seeing.”
Adding to the roster of speakers Thursday were two national immigration hardliners — Thomas Homan, who served as acting head of ICE under former president Donald Trump and Texas Rep. Chip Roy. Roy took particular aim at his congressional colleague, Rep. Crow.
“Look, I can't possibly explain to you how bad he is in terms of voting,” Roy said. “Your voting record is supposed to matter. What you do is supposed to matter.”
Roy highlighted Crow’s votes against a number of Republican immigration efforts, including the border security bill, H.R. 2, and the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship to vote, as well as his opposition to efforts to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkis. All of those House votes were party line, or near party line, with Democrats united in their opposition.
The audience in the bar Thursday was staunchly in support of Fabbricatore, even though all of the people CPR News spoke with said they live outside the district and so can not vote for him.
Alicia Garcia questioned why local officials aren’t doing more to crack down in Aurora.
“Honestly, I feel like there's something behind the scenes that they don't want us to understand. I think that the government has some benefit because I don't understand why we have the National Guard, we have SWAT, we have all of these things happening and these resources here in Colorado and they're doing nothing.” Garcia said.
Garcia, a staunch gun rights activist, says she doesn’t blame people for wanting to come to America, “but at the same time, you don't get over on people by robbing, murdering, killing, and overthrowing innocent lives. And I think that's where we have to have a hard stop. And I think that this needs to stop being a bipartisan issue.”
CPR's Caitlyn Kim contributed to this report.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include more context from law enforcement and around Crow's House votes.
