2 weeks Ago
In a bold stroke of investigative reporting, The Gazette’s news staff has unearthed what amounts to a searing indictment of Colorado’s reckless sanctuary policies. A smoking gun, if you will. As The Gazette reported last week, a cache of emails obtained by our news team from Aurora police makes clear Colorado’s repute as a haven for illegal immigration led the vicious Venezuelan criminal enterprise Tren de Aragua to make the Denver area its ad hoc U.
S. headquarters. The emails also underscore how Colorado’s sanctuary laws — preventing law enforcement in our state from cooperating with federal authorities on illegal immigration — have helped pave the way for the gang, also known by its initials, TdA, to set up shop here.
The trail of emails dates back long before the sinister gang made national news — and sparked fever-pitch political debate — by taking over some Aurora apartment complexes. The gangs effectively hijacked the properties from their landlords. The gangsters shook down the mostly immigrant tenants; collected and pocketed the rent, and ran rackets, including sex-trafficked prostitution, out of the apartment units.
The documents show that while Texas law enforcement agencies — grappling with a menacing TdA threat of their own — were working closely with the FBI, the U.S. Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security, Aurora police cut a federal task force “out of all communications and investigations.
” Meanwhile, an October 2023 Aurora police internal bulletin obtained by The Gazette cited federal sources in noting, “Intelligence from ICE is that TdA has decided to make Denver their headquarters in the U.S. and will be violent toward anyone who encroaches on their territory.
” It all figures, of course. Among other state and local efforts by Colorado policymakers to roll out the red carpet for immigrants who enter the U.S.
illegally, our state’s elected lawmakers have erected a barrier between illegal immigration and law enforcement in our state. A 2023 law passed by the Democratic majority at the Legislature restricts the ability of state and local governments to make agreements with federal immigration officials over the detention of immigrants who unlawfully entered the country. A 2019 statute blocks local law enforcement from arresting immigrants who are wanted under federal law for illegal entry.
The emails exposed by The Gazette point to other troubling dimensions of TdA’s growing presence — notably, that authorities appear to have been aware of a higher-level threat from the group, longer ago, than they had let on publicly. Indeed state and some local elected leaders, as well as Denver and Aurora police, have offered a muted response to date, downplaying the gang’s takeover of the Aurora apartments and, more generally, TdA’s degree of involvement in the local crime scene. The emails, by contrast, suggest a police force wary of tackling TdA without solid backup.
“Patrol won’t respond to these locations without an armored vehicle,” an Aurora police officer wrote in one of the emails. It is perhaps inevitable officials would soft-pedal such disturbing developments to reassure the public they have a handle on things. Or, worse still, out of political considerations.
After all, it is Colorado’s overwhelmingly Democratic political establishment that ushered in our state’s sanctuary policies. And, let’s face it, sanctuary status doesn’t poll well — only days out from an election. But even if inevitable, such machinations are unjustifiable in the face of so serious a threat.
It’s time for Colorado’s leaders of every political stripe to join ranks against TdA — and for them to unshackle law enforcement so it can join forces with federal authorities to fight back. In other words, let’s scrap sanctuary policies that not only have made Colorado an innkeeper to the world but also, as it turns out, a destination for the world’s criminals..
