On Friday, October 11, 2024, Trump unveiled his plans to “rescue” a Colorado city from the grip of foreign criminal gangs.
Dubbed “Operation Aurora,” it entails sending in “elite squads of ICE, Border Patrol and federal law enforcement officers to arrest and deport every last illegal alien gang member,” USA Today reported here. All 10 of them (I’ll get to this shortly).
What, exactly, triggered The Donald this time? In Springfield, Ohio, it was a false story about Haitian workers eating people’s pets that had its genesis in a report of a missing cat later found in its owner’s basement.
The story in Aurora, Colorado, begins and ends at a shabby apartment complex owned by a slumlord and briefly taken over by the aforementioned 10 gang members (see story here). Local police handled the situation by arresting them. That should have ended the story.
But in this case, the gang members were Venezuelans, which was more than enough to kick Trump’s demagoguery machinery into gear. He didn’t say a Venezuelan gang took over some apartment buildings; he proclaimed they took over the entire city.
This would come as a surprise to the people living there. Aurora, like any large city, has some bad neighborhoods, crime, drugs, and violence; but nothing out of the ordinary. Aurora is more notorious for bad cops their own chief called “despicable” (see story here) than for crime.
Aurora mayor Mike Coffman, a Republican, responded to Trump’s claims by saying, “The reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity have been grossly exaggerated. The incidents were limited to several apartment complexes in this city of more than 400,000 residents.”
Trump’s inflated rhetoric has nothing to do with helping Aurora deal with crime. He’s made immigration a campaign issue, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. His real agenda is nativistic white supremacy.
These 10 gang members give him a convenient excuse to demonize the millions of migrants who’ve come to America, often fleeing violence in their home countries, who want only safety and work. This is about keeping America white, not keeping Aurora safe.
Trump has made clear he intends to militarize America’s cities, and not only round up immigrants — an enterprise requiring enormous manpower and huge sums of money, which is likely to involve major civil rights violations — but also crack down on protesters, including peaceful ones. That’s something Aurora’s cops would be more than happy to help him with (see posting here).
Photo below: Can you spot Venezuelan gangs in this photo of Aurora, Colorado? I can’t either. Trump would have you believe this city is overrun by immigrant criminals, but it just isn’t so.
