Armed foreign militia taking over US apartments

DENVER—As early as November 2023, armed Venezuelan gang members began terrorizing residents of an Aurora, Colorado, apartment building, according to a Denver law firm hired to investigate.

Law firm Perkins Coie’s 10-page letter to city officials details how the Tren de Aragua gang took over the Whispering Pines Apartments using threats of murder, intimidation, and beatings.
Evidence also indicates that gang members have engaged in “flagrant trespass violations,” including human trafficking, Attorney T. Markus Funk said.

Other alleged crimes included extortion, unlawful firearms possession, and sexual abuse of minors, “often targeting vulnerable Venezuelan and other immigrant populations.”

“The gang’s [motive] appears to be to unlawfully move gang members, as well as vulnerable immigrant families, into vacant units,” Funk wrote in the Aug. 9 letter to the mayor, city manager, and interim police chief.

“The gang also forces rent-paying residents out to create more open units and use the apartment for purposes of illegal activities such as prostitution.

“The gang, which operates in the open and uses firearms to patrol ‘their property,’ has intimidated staff, stabbed at least one vulnerable immigrant in the apartments because of alleged non-payment, and otherwise terrorized the community.”

The law firm represents the lender for Whispering Pines, a 54-unit apartment complex at 1357 Helena St. The average monthly rent is $1,450 to $2,000.

Funk said that Tren de Aragua has threatened or attempted to kill management staff since they began infiltrating the building around November 2023.

In one case, an apartment manager was so badly beaten that he had to go to the hospital. He later left the state in fear for his safety.

Gang activity at Whispering Pines has escalated in 2024, Funk said.

Based on interviews with tenants, around 10 gang members threatened to execute a “business plan” unless the property manager agreed to surrender vacant units.

One gang member reportedly told a housekeeper: “If he doesn’t like it, we’ll fill him with bullets.”

“The housekeeper understood the reference to be to the gang’s ‘business plan’ of extortion,” Funk wrote.

Recent video footage shows gang members moving about the building in large numbers and kicking doors open.

“This conduct’s brazen and public nature further exhibits the suspected gang members’ sense of comfort and control consistent with their taking over the property and not fearing the law enforcement or the property management,” Funk wrote.

Funk said the firm wants to meet with city officials to discuss returning the building to management control and the “helpless Whispering Pines residents, and the Aurora community.”

Aurora officials, however, have said that gang violence was “isolated” as the city seeks legal action to shut down apartment buildings with known gang activity.
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