Brutal Venezuelan gang violence spills into quiet suburb from the sanctuary city next door— despite efforts to keep migrants out
Denver’s decision to welcome migrants with open arms is bringing bloodshed to the suburbs next door. A notorious Venezuelan prison gang has set up shop in Aurora, Colorado — even though the town wanted no part of the influx of asylum seekers in the first place.
Aurora — a quiet bedroom community with a population of 390,000 directly east of the Mile-High City — has become a base of operations for the brutal Tren de Aragua gang, which has seized multiple apartment complexes and set off a wave of violent crime.
Denver leads the nation in new migrant arrivals per capita, with more than 40,000 arriving from the southern border since December 2022.
The city has bent over backwards to provide aid, even slashing emergency services to help foot the cost — so far estimated at over $68 million and counting.
But Aurora has made it clear it doesn’t share Denver’s desire to be the country’s leading sanctuary city.
In February, the Aurora City Council passed a resolution 7-3 emphatically stating that it will not provide resources and support to migrants or others brought into the community from neighboring cities.
“It’s been pretty tense here, we’re feeling it,” city council member Danielle Jurinsky, a sponsor of the resolution, told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.”
“We will not be aiding into this migrant crisis.”
But Denver’s largesse has become Aurora’s problem anyway — forcing the community to grapple with increasing gang violence as Tren de Aragua has moved into town, taking whatever it can get its hands on, according to police, officials and law enforcement sources.
The ‘Cookie’ monster
One local gang leader decided to set up shop in town, according to law enforcement sources. His name is Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirino, and he goes by “Galleta” — Spanish for “Cookie.”
Within months of arriving in the US, cops say, he and fellow gang members brutally beat a man at an Aurora apartment complex that the gang took over and occupied. In July, cops arrested him again — this time for a shooting at the same complex that left two men wounded.
Members of Tren de Aragua are accused of a slew of violent crimes across the US — including the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley earlier this year, and the shooting of two NYPD cops during an arrest in June. Leaders of the gang recently gave the “green light” for members to shoot American cops who try to interfere with their criminal activity.
One local investor in a company that owns multiple apartment complexes in Aurora said there was a “massive shootout” at one of the properties taken over by the gang.
“I’m scared that this could happen in America,” the source said.
Earlier this month, the Aurora Police Department announced it formed a task force with the Colorado State Patrol and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to counter the gang’s growing threat.
Aurora police declined to provide additional details about the task force, but said in a statement that “APD will not tolerate violent crime in our communities.”
John Fabbricatore, who was previously the head of ICE’s office in the Denver region and is now running for Congress, said the gang has been running amok in the area — and officials have been slow to react.
“It’s become increasingly clear that certain city officials, including the Aurora Police Department, have downplayed or ignored the criminal activities affecting many neighborhoods in North Aurora,” said Fabbricatore.
“Notably, illegal immigrant gang activities have been present in specific apartment complexes throughout Aurora, yet these issues have been understated for what appear to be ideological reasons.”
Despite the slew of Tren de Aragua crimes in Denver, Marc Sears, president of Aurora’s police union, said that it’s “absolutely inaccurate” to say the gang is taking over the city.
“They’re not any different than any other documented gang that we have. I can tell you that the officers, is there a concern about this quote-unquote ‘green light’ that they have on officers. Sure, there’s a concern about it, but in my opinion, as the union president, I feel that we have been green-lighted since 2020.”
Free to wreak havoc
When Pacheco-Chirino — an alleged “shot-caller” in the gang — crossed the southern border in 2022 into Texas, he was vetted by federal border authorities who didn’t see anything concerning about his past — and then released, Homeland Security sources said.
He told Border Patrol agents he was going to New York, but ended up at an ICE office in Colorado in June 2023, when he was given a court date and again was cut loose.
Soon after, he started unleashing havoc in the community.
In November 2023, Pacheco-Chirino allegedly took part in a brutal assault that almost turned deadly at the Fitzsimons Place apartment complex in Aurora, which was recently shut down over code violations, which the owners argued they couldn’t fix due to a takeover of the building by the gang, according to court documents obtained by The Post.
During the assault, Pacheco, along with several other drunk men identified who were said to be “part of a gang that steals from Walmart” and claiming “they run” the apartment, allegedly hit the victim in the head with a bottle of Corona and then began to beat him up after he fell to the ground, the documents alleged.
The apartment investor told The Post that they’ve “lost control” of several properties because the gang has taken over units.
“They were first hanging out around the property and creating a bad element that’s constantly there. And then they started taking over, quite a few months ago, they started taking over vacant units.”
Soon, the alleged gang members began renting out the units to other migrants whom they also “threatened.” Then they began terrorizing the apartment staff, who were forced to flee the properties, leaving them to the gangs.
The bloodied victim of Pacheco-Chirino’s alleged assault suffered a traumatic brain injury, a broken nose and broken upper jaw, according to the documents.
Pacheco-Chirino was eventually nabbed in March 2024 and hit with several felony assault charges, but bailed out of custody and failed to show up for his court date thereafter, the court documents show.
On July 28, 2024, cops arrested Pacheco-Chirino and three others for allegedly carrying out a shooting at the same apartment where the previous assault occurred that left two male victims with gunshot wounds and another with a broken ankle.
Pacheco-Chirino was quickly arrested that time around and handed over to ICE.
He had been ordered deported by an immigration judge last week, but because he’s from Venezuela, a country that doesn’t accept deportations from the US, he is likely here to stay, sources say.
Tren de Aragua, which hails from Venezuela’s Aragua region, has been sneaking members into the US via the southern border for years. It’s also started recruiting within the US among migrant communities, mainly in New York, Denver and Chicago.
One of the gang’s members, Jean Torres-Roman, 21, was arrested in New Mexico this month in connection to a shocking and violent caught-on-camera robbery of a Denver jewelry store from June 25.
Sears, the Aurora police union head, said that after the shooting in the apartment complex, he and other cops were on scene to close down the apartment where Pacheco-Chirino’s alleged crimes occurred.
They did so without incident and without finding any contraband, he said. They did find that the gang members had trashed the place, he said.
Garbage was piled “two stories high.”
