AURORA, Colorado — The squalid apartment complex that President Donald Trump held up as evidence that Venezuelan gangsters had taken over this city has been vacant for months, surrounded these days by fencing and barbed wire.
And now the conservative city council member who cited violence at the complex to fuel allegations of a migrant “invasion” here has lost her seat, along with two other right-wing colleagues who echoed those talking points.
AURORA, Colorado — The squalid apartment complex that President Donald Trump held up as evidence that Venezuelan gangsters had taken over this city has been vacant for months, surrounded these days by fencing and barbed wire.
And now the conservative city council member who cited violence at the complex to fuel allegations of a migrant “invasion” here has lost her seat, along with two other right-wing colleagues who echoed those talking points.
The ouster of those members flipped Aurora’s nonpartisan council to a progressive majority, in one of the more remarkable upsets in last week’s wave of Democratic gains in high-profile and downballot races across the nation. Aurora is a diverse city of 400,000 just east of Denver, but its political leadership leans red. The conservative candidates massively outspent the liberals. Some local media reports all but deemed the race a lock for the incumbents, calling progressives a “dying breed.”
Yet the bloc of five progressive candidates won decisively on vows to focus on local issues and reclaim the identity of a city that Trump and an acolyte, outgoing council member Danielle Jurinsky, made a symbol of what they called a nationwide scourge of violent immigrants. She appeared last year with Trump at a campaign rally here, where he said he would dub his future mass deportation campaign “Operation Aurora.” Jurinsky’s third-place finish in a high-turnout race for one of two at-large seats suggests voters rejected the hyperbolic claims, the winners said.
“We do have a lot of immigrants and refugees, and we love the culture and community that they bring to our city,” said Amy Wiles, who defeated a conservative incumbent for the seat representing Aurora’s most expansive ward. “By somebody weaponizing them and villainizing them on a national stage, it not only hurt them, it hurt our city.”
Political observers said the results should be seen as part of an off-year pendulum shift across the country, as well as in Colorado, where progressive ballot measures prevailed and voters in Douglas County, a sliver of which reaches into Aurora, booted the school board’s conservative majority.
But the Aurora results are also a clear sign that public angst over an influx of migrants into the Denver region during the Biden administration has given way to other concerns, said Robert Preuhs, a political scientist at Metro State University of Denver.
Although Aurora, Colorado’s third-largest city, was never taken over by Venezuelan gangs, officials have acknowledged that reports of violence and extortion, including by alleged members of Tren de Aragua, were real at three neglected apartment buildings that mostly housed immigrants. But the city placed most of the blame on absentee property owners, and authorities closed those complexes months ago. Two remain empty.
“I think Republican members of that council perhaps overestimated the longevity of those cues and that context,” Preuhs said. “Now what we have are ICE raids and a detention center [in Aurora]. The public’s attention has shifted a bit to more empathy for immigrants and a return to normalcy in a city with a large immigrant population.”
Aurora, where a quarter of residents are foreign-born, has long taken pride in its diversity. It calls itself “the World in a City,” and the school district boasts that its students speak 160 languages. It has rough areas with high crime, particularly in the East Colfax corridor near the now-boarded-up apartments. But it is also home to tony residential neighborhoods, major hospitals and a Space Force base, as well as a controversial immigrant detention center.
Police say major crimes have declined significantly over the past year, a point Jurinsky and other conservatives — whose official platforms did not center on immigration — cited as evidence of their effectiveness.
The winning candidates said they focused their campaigns on door-knocking, phone-banking and community forums, promising to put “people first.”
The current council, whose 11 members regularly engaged in what the Aurora Sentinel called “dysfunctional slap-fests,” suspended in-person meetings in June after repeated protests over the 2024 police shooting of an unarmed Black man, Kilyn Lewis. That incident deepened distrust of a department that has operated under a consent decree with the state since 2021, following an investigation that found a pattern of racially biased policing and excessive force.
“We were out talking to people, and it was just such a stark difference when city council is removing ‘public invited to be heard,’” said one of the winning progressives, Gianina Horton, referring to the council’s restrictions on public comment. “So the people decided which one they’d rather have.”
The progressives said they heard lots while campaigning about bread-and-butter municipal issues: traffic, trash, unaffordable housing, and desires for either more police presence or less police violence. Horton said her future constituents complained of speeding and roaming animals. Wiles said a major issue in her ward is the abundance of gas stations and dearth of grocery stores — a problem she worried was made worse by the anti-immigrant rhetoric.
“We all can’t live off hot dogs from the rolling grill,” Wiles said, referring to convenience store offerings. “How are we going to attract new retail or new businesses … when they’re hearing from leaders that we’re overrun with gangs?”
Voters they talked to, by contrast, hardly mentioned migrant gangs, the winning candidates said.
Alli Jackson, a 30-year-old social worker, said she heard about them only from immigrants who wanted her to know they were “not all bad.”
Jackson captured one of two at-large seats; the other was won by Rob Andrews, a onetime organizer for former president Barack Obama who now runs a nonprofit that works with underserved communities. They unseated Jurinsky and fellow conservative Amsalu Kassaw, who works for the private prison contractor that runs the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
The incoming council members boast distinctively progressive credentials. Jackson, who is employed by the county library system, said she does “DEI trainings for a living” and calls the democratic socialist mayor-elect of New York, Zohran Mamdani, an inspiration. Horton works on efforts to reduce racial and ethnic disparities for the state’s criminal justice division.
But the bloc’s members have promised to find common ground with the remaining four conservatives on the council and Mayor Mike Coffman, a former Republican congressman. Coffman, who has spent much of the past year trying to repair the city’s image after initially fanning the notion that gangs had overrun parts of Aurora, endorsed Jurinsky.
“It’s about us. It’s about America. It’s about being kind to each other, and that’s what we have to restore,” Andrews told a group of Democrats who gathered this week for their regular “coffee klatch” at a Panera Bread. After several years in the political woods, they were buoyed by the results.
But at least one of them was not surprised. Kirk Manzanares, 61, a longtime Democratic volunteer, said he decided a year ago that liberals would take control of the council. Manzanares said he spent months pounding the pavement, texting, calling, going to every gathering he could.
“I was out to prove them wrong,” he said of naysayers. “We are a very vibrant, very diverse, very energetic, beautiful city, and we want the rest of America to know that.”
Ruben Medina, the sole incumbent on the progressive slate, managed to get the vote of die-hard Trump fan Susan Tabacheck, 77, by responding while in office to her concerns about issues like car racing. But Tabacheck said she also voted for Jurinsky, whose “tough” stance on migrants she liked. She worries the new majority will simply ram through its priorities.
“I think we’re going to be in a world of hurt,” Tabacheck said.
Over on Dallas Street, another resident said she hoped otherwise. Her house is just a few doors down from the empty Edge at Lowry apartment complex, which became embroiled in the national immigration debate in 2024 when a video went viral of armed men trying to enter a unit. Months later, two residents were kidnapped and tortured, authorities said, by 12 suspected Tren de Aragua gang members. The police said last month that all are now in custody.
The criminal activity at the complex was vivid and terrifying, said Rose, 67, who spoke on the condition her last name not be used out of fear of retaliation. She said she called the city twice weekly to report code violations at the complex when it was open. When a stray bullet hit her son’s window, police took hours to appear, then never followed up, she said.
The city closed the complex in February, citing unlivable conditions, and has pursued civil and criminal cases against its owners.
The street is calmer now, said Rose. She declined to say whom she voted for in the city council elections, but she said she is optimistic.
“I’m just hoping for the better,” she said. “Regardless of what side they’re on, come to the middle for the people. Just work for the people.”
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