How Aurora, Colo., became a migrant gang war zone after Tren de Aragua took over apartment complexes in quiet suburb

AURORA, Colorado — All it took for parts of this Denver suburb to descend into a migrant wasteland — with violent gang shootings, men brazenly toting guns in the open, drug dealing and shot-up cars — was for a few apartment buildings to fall into disrepair.

Aurora has been thrust into the national eye — even cited by former President Donald Trump in Tuesday night’s debate — thanks to members of the violent Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, who have turned the bedroom community of 390,000 into a war zone.

The gangbangers have been using various dilapidated apartment complexes — like the one which Aurora native Jessica Montenegro and her young family were forced to flee — as their home base, terrorizing residents there with gun crime, theft and drug dealing.

“We were scared to stay there and we knew it was gonna get worse,” a shaken Montenegro recently told The Post.

For weeks, local officials denied the gang was operating in Aurora, brushing it aside as a one-off problem.

However, after The Post revealed a top Tren de Aragua leader, nicknamed “Cookie,” was based in Aurora, cops on Wednesday publicly identified 10 suspected members of the gang who have been arrested in recent months for terrorizing the city.

Montenegro and her husband swept up their three kids and bolted from the Edge at Lowry complex after one harrowing encounter: A man with a gun in his waistband knocked on the door of their $1,200-a-month apartment one day and tried to get inside.

“Now that I think [about it], it’s really scary for me, not just for me, but for my kids,” said the mom, 35, who has two middle school-age kids and a 10-month-old. “I couldn’t imagine what could’ve happened if I was there still.”

Gang members poured into Aurora with a wave of Venezuelan migrants from Denver — the sanctuary city next door, which has taken in more than 42,000 migrants since 2022, most of them from the politically unstable South American country.

That’s despite Aurora officials saying they wouldn’t provide support for any asylum seekers.

“We are not a border state, but we’re dealing with the fallout of a failed immigration policy and trying to do our best in trying to keep our citizens safe and immigrants,” District Attorney John Kellner, who oversees Aurora and a large swath of the Denver suburbs, told The Post.

Among the Tren de Aragua members named by Aurora police on Wednesday is Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirinos, who goes by “Galleta” — Spanish for “Cookie.”

Homeland Security sources told The Post that he is a “shot-caller” for Tren de Aragua’s activities in the Aurora area. Months after crossing the southern border, Pacheco-Chirinos and fellow gang members allegedly brutally beat a man at the Aurora apartment complex.

He was arrested and then released on bond, but it wasn’t long until he went on to carry out another act of violence, cops say.

In July, police arrested him again alongside his brother Jhonnarty Dejesus Pacheco-Chirinos — also a Tren de Aragua member — this time for a shooting at the same complex that left two men wounded.

Most of the gang members identified by Aurora cops were busted at the city’s blighted apartment buildings, where trash and broken bottles litter the hallways.

One Aurora landlord told The Post that the gang took advantage of vacancies — and would move into empty units and take over.

Then they’d threaten maintenance workers and staff who tried to clean up the apartments, the source said.

In response, the city has shuttered two apartment complexes and forced the owner of two of the worst crime hotspots to give up control of the buildings.

Montenegro’s old apartment complex, on Dallas Street, has become the most infamous of the city’s apartment blocks — roach-infested, poorly maintained and surrounded by cars with no license plates and others with bullet holes.

In the months before the family fled, Montenegro started hearing gunshots, fights and loud music every night. The final straw was the terrifying encounter with the armed man at her door.

In August, two months after they moved out of the one-bedroom apartment, viral video emerged of heavily armed men — suspected members of Tren de Aragua — banging on the front door of her old unit and trying to get inside.

“It’s not safe there, especially if you have kids. You can hear gunshots, my kids used to walk to school, but they couldn’t feel safe anymore,” she said.

“I think it was the right decision to move out from there.”

Cops have made no arrests from the incident at Montenegro’s old apartment.

Tren de Aragua gang violence isn’t just engulfing Aurora. In Denver, the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office busted four people linked to the gang in late August at the Ivy Crossing apartments.

During that bust, cops seized 750 counterfeit pills, ketamine and a stolen car.

Arapahoe Sheriff Tyler Brown told The Post that his office received intelligence and saw reports “of individuals walking around with firearms and drug transactions” and sprang into action.

Sheriff’s Deputy Christopher Calderon took The Post on a ride-along where the operation occurred — an area he said has “changed quite a bit over the years, with immigrants from different countries moving here.”

However, much is going underreported because the migrant community is fearful of law enforcement thanks to corruption in their home countries, Calderon said.

“They’re very fearful of retribution, they don’t want to talk,” said Calderon.

Residents and local officials said Aurora police have been downplaying the gang problem.

A resident who lives near Montenegro’s old building said he’s fearful of gang retaliation and requested anonymity to speak freely about the threat.

That neighbor told The Post that Aurora police — who just welcomed a new chief — have been unresponsive to their calls about the gunshots and extremely loud music playing at all hours of the night.
“I’ve called the cops 20 times in the last month or two and they never come out,” the neighbor said.

He said he feels “totally” helpless.

“They’re way out of control,” the neighbor added.

Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly, whose nearby county has yet to see such gang activity, told The Post that “the Aurora police department has minimized this issue.”

“They need somebody who is willing to go in there, straighten out the mess, be committed to the community and solve crime and arrest bad guys, hold criminals accountable,” Weekly said. “They haven’t had that. It’s been a mess.”