Federal law enforcement agencies conducted a large-scale immigration raid across Denver and Aurora on Wednesday, with masked agents targeting apartment complexes and individual addresses, where they deployed flashing smoke grenades, zip-tied detainees and took an unconfirmed number of people into custody.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Denver office said on social media that it was working with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs and Border Protection, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Marshals Service to search for more than 100 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Officials have not said how many of those gang members they located. ICE officials in Denver have not responded to questions about how many people have been taken into custody or where they are being processed or detained.
The raids, part of an ongoing pledge from President Donald Trump to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, drew widespread condemnation from immigrant rights groups and state Democratic lawmakers.
“I don’t think this is the way for a nuclear-armed superpower to be operating in the world in 2025,” said state Sen. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat, adding that he’d seen pictures of armored vehicles in the streets and federal agents on rooftops in Aurora.
During his campaign, Trump dubbed his promised nationwide mission “Operation Aurora,” falsely claiming the city had been overrun by Venezuelan gang members.
“We’re here today to conduct an at-large enforcement operation looking for Tren de Aragua, the gang members here from Venezuela,” an unnamed ICE spokesperson said in a video the agency shared on social media.
“Unfortunately,” he added, “we have to come to the communities because we don’t get the cooperation we need from the jails. It would be so much easier and so much safer for our officers and agents if we could take these people into custody from a safe environment, but if we have to come out into the community to do this, that’s what we’re gonna do.”
Since 2019, Colorado lawmakers have passed laws that block ICE from arresting people at certain locations, such as courthouses, and bar county jails from holding inmates solely at the request of ICE. Some Colorado sheriff’s offices do contact immigration authorities about upcoming inmate releases, though others shy away from the practice.
U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, the newly elected Republican representing Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, cited ICE’s comments Wednesday in calling on Gov. Jared Polis to change state laws that prevent local police from working with federal immigration enforcers.
“Cracking down on criminal illegal immigrants is an all-hands on deck situation and it’s time for Colorado Democrats to get on board,” Evans wrote on social media.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, in a statement Wednesday, said the city has confirmed that there had not been any ICE activity at schools, hospitals or churches. Denver police and city authorities have not participated in the raids, he said.
A spokesman for Aurora said neither the city nor its Police Department was involved in Wednesday’s federal raids. “We focus on enforcing state and local law,” Ryan Luby said.
The raids, which had first been expected last week, took place just minutes from schools. Denver Public Schools buses couldn’t pick up students Wednesday morning because of ICE activity at Cedar Run, district spokesman Scott Pribble said. Five buses were re-routed, he said.
‘People are afraid to leave. They’re afraid to be outside’
Agents were reported at the Edge of Lowry, Whispering Pines and Cedar Run apartment complexes on Wednesday morning, among other locations.
At Cedar Run, at 888 S. Oneida St. in Denver, agents from the FBI, ICE and Homeland Security Investigations were on scene Wednesday morning. People were apprehended and loaded onto a waiting bus.
One resident, Hannah Strickline, said she opened her door to “six heavily armed officers demanding ID,” who then asked which of her neighbors might be undocumented. She said she was infuriated by the question.
“They just don’t deserve that,” Strickline said of her neighbors.
In Aurora, the Edge of Lowry apartments, at 1218 Dallas St., entered the international spotlight last year after a video of six heavily armed men forcing their way into multiple apartment units went viral.
In December, a Tren de Aragua gang-related home invasion and violent kidnapping at the apartment complex led to the arrest of 16 people on immigration violations and other charges. Aurora officials said two apartment residents were taken against their will to a vacant unit and were bound, pistol-whipped, threatened and tortured for hours.
Authorities arrived at the Edge of Lowry at about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday and were banging on apartment doors trying to get people to open them to talk, said Yamid Rey, a resident, in Spanish. He said he saw many ICE officers, and they closed down the street.
Rey said that only his family left the building. Nobody else did. Agents appeared to mark doors where nobody answered with tape, he said.
“People are afraid to leave. They’re afraid to be outside,” Rey said.
The complex has many residents who are recent immigrants. Often, he said, they have visas or other authorization allowing them to work. He said he wasn’t sure if any have criminal records.
“But they’re afraid to be taken away by immigration, so they’re not opening their doors,” Rey said.
Jannet Valenzuela, the stepdaughter of a man who was swept up in the raids, stood near the Whispering Pines apartments, located a few blocks from the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, at East 13th Avenue and Helena Street, at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
She said she received a call around 6:30 a.m. from her mom, who heard from her stepfather that immigration officials had arrived.
“He was scared, so he hid on the roof,” Valenzuela said. She saw several men up on the roof before they were taken into custody. A video shared with The Denver Post by a witness showed five people standing on the roof at one point while authorities were in the parking lot below.
In Denver, a section of a commercial parking lot at South Colorado Boulevard and East Mexico Avenue hosted a police special reserve team vehicle, two white unmarked buses, and a gaggle of law enforcement officers.
A group of men clad in camouflage uniforms with HSI El Paso patches on their arms identified themselves to the Post as Texans, but they directed all further questions to the ICE media team.
Lamine Kane, an organizer at the Colorado People’s Alliance, stood in the parking lot at 11 a.m. and assessed the situation he saw that morning.
“There are no warrants,” he said. “I mean, would there be a warrant to be in this parking lot? This is a shopping center parking lot.”
Kane said his organization has visited buildings where people were detained Wednesday. He’s not sure if the white buses parked in the lot were being used for those purposes, but, “I know we saw a bus similar to that — a little bigger — earlier that took some people.”
He said some have been taken to a facility in Centennial. His group’s hotline is ringing “off the hook right now,” Kane said.
In Aurora, a group of neighbors gathered in front of their apartment building on Macon Street around 12:30 p.m. Their attention was focused on a dozen officers — HSI, U.S. Marshals and more — two doors down. An unmarked black Nissan Armada flashing red-and-blue lights sat in the middle of the road.
Pradev Subba, who lives nearby, said law enforcement took two people — a man and a woman — from their respective apartment buildings.
“It’s like scary,” he said.
Officers quickly left the scene in their vehicles. As bystanders dispersed, strong afternoon winds blew open the front door of the apartment building where the woman was allegedly taken.
‘Instilling fear in our communities’
The news of immigration raids Wednesday morning broadly seemed to take many — even elected officials and lawyers — by surprise. Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky said she wasn’t aware of any raids as of around 8:20 a.m. Ashley Cuber, an immigration attorney, also hadn’t heard word until the Post reached out.
Representatives of organizations supporting immigrants in Colorado and Democratic state legislators were quick to speak out against the federal raids.
“We as a Latino service provider categorically condemn these raids that are intended to sow fear, division, pain and suffering among our communities,” said Rudy Gonzales, president and CEO of Denver’s Servicios de la Raza.
Andrea Loya, executive director of Casa de Paz, said Wednesday’s immigration enforcement was “instilling fear in our communities.”
“What I know from people on the ground is that there appear to be no warrants and again another instance of collaboration with agencies,” she said. “This isn’t making anyone safer.”
Colorado Senate President James Coleman, a Denver Democrat, said the party’s caucus has been educating its members about what resources are available to their communities and how they might help local officials. He also noted a planned rally at the Capitol on Wednesday in response to the Trump administration, including its stepping up of immigration sweeps.
“I am horrified to see this approach,” said House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat. “Our immigrant community is critical, not just to the health of thriving communities but to our workforce in this state. I am deeply worried about families being torn apart.”
A group of state senators — most of them from Denver and Aurora — condemned the raids from the Senate floor Wednesday morning. Two lawmakers, state Sens. Iman Jodeh and Julie Gonzales, both Democrats, spoke in Arabic and Spanish, respectively, to give advice and encouragement to community members.
Weissman, whose Aurora district includes some of the CBZ-owned properties raided Wednesday, said school board members and superintendents were scrambling for information, and he said some school board members visited the raid locations to try to get more information about what had happened.
Gonzales, who called the operations “callous” and “lazy,” then described immigrants’ rights, including the right to speak to an attorney and to see copies of a warrant.
After he finished speaking, Weissman told the Post that “this is not how the United States of America is supposed to operate.” He said he didn’t know if warrants had been issued for the raids.
“It’s harmful and it’s shameful, and people should be outraged,” he said.
Polis, who said last month that he supported ICE expanding its presence in Colorado in targeted ways, said through a spokeswoman Wednesday that he’s asked for an update from federal authorities. He supports the arrest of “dangerous criminals,” the statement said, but his office expressed concern about how little information had been released.
“The governor asks the federal government to be more transparent about the enforcement actions they are taking in Colorado as fear continues to grow in our community, including more information on detention and deportation, what happens to those with legal status, children and American citizens, as well as the overall cost of these operations,” spokeswoman Shelby Wieman wrote to the Post.
Immigration action nationwide
Over the last few weeks, immigration officials have ramped up their efforts across the country.
So far, states with publicized actions include Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. Some reports depicted large-scale enforcement efforts, although others included individual arrests that appear to be in line with past ICE operations.
They appeared to take place at workplaces, residences and other sites, and some actions aimed primarily at arresting immigrants with criminal backgrounds. But at times, ICE has been detaining others they encountered in the course of such operations.
On Jan. 26 in Adams County, authorities arrested or detained 41 people, including some they said were associates of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, at a party taking place in a vacant warehouse off North Federal Boulevard. Officials said a monthslong investigation resulted in the operation.
The military’s U.S. Northern Command also said last week that it would allow ICE to use Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora as a site to process and temporarily hold detainees, but U.S. Rep. Jason Crow walked back that claim Monday.
The Aurora Democrat said Buckley “is being used for Homeland Security operations, for ICE operations — that there is a footprint of federal law enforcement operating out of this facility,” but current plans for the base don’t include housing immigrants or detainees. It will mainly operate as a staging location for law enforcement and coordination center for ongoing operations, he said.
Immigration advocates at Casa de Paz — a group that visits immigrants at a separate ICE detention center in Aurora and provides aid upon their release — also noticed preparations were recently being made at that facility for new arrivals.
Loya said before the new ICE raid began that people had been released from the detention center — an occurrence that hadn’t taken place in a couple of years, she noted. It signaled to her that the facility was potentially making room for incoming detainees.
“This will not stop people seeking asylum,” Loya said.
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Source: American Military News
