NYT admits immigration ‘conspiracy theory’
The New York Times has finally admitted that what it dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” by Donald Trump during last year’s election cycle is, in fact, the truth.
In September, the Times published an article titled, “How the False Story of a Gang ‘Takeover’ in Colorado Reached Trump.” The article was referring to reports that the violent gang Tren de Aragua had taken over apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado.
Tren de Aragua is a Venezuelan crime ring whose members are among approximately one million Venezuelans who entered the United States illegally under the Biden administration. The gang maintains a presence across the United States running sex and drug trafficking rings, money laundering operations, and other criminal enterprises. It gained media attention last year after one of its members murdered Laken Riley, a nursing student at the University of Georgia.
Tren de Aragua has gained footholds in several major US cities including New York, El Paso, San Antonio, Dallas, and Miami. In August, it was revealed that Tren de Aragua gang members had placed parts of the Denver suburb of Aurora under its brutal control. Armed squads took over entire apartment buildings by intimidating residents and subjecting people to beatings and threats. One resident said a Tren de Aragua member threw scalding water on her while she was pregnant.
The denial
When Trump used the gang’s entrenchment in Aurora to criticize Joe Biden’s open immigration policies during his campaign, the Times insisted it wasn’t happening.
“Caught in the middle are a number of migrants, living in dilapidated apartments that Aurora officials now call squalor, amid ‘criminal elements,’ not widespread gang activity, and unable to find or afford better. The buildings are nonetheless at the center of a national firestorm,” the outlet said.
The paper obtained a quote from a Venezuelan migrant who reportedly lived in one of the buildings saying there were just “one or two” troublemakers.
“Because of one or two Venezuelans who wanted to do something wrong, we are now all accused of something,” Yorman Fernandez said. “We are not all the same.”
The Times backed up its false claim with quotes from then-Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, who downplayed the reports of Tren de Aragua. However, documents uncovered in September revealed that officials already knew the gang had taken over three apartment complexes when he provided his statement. The Aurora Police Department had already arrested armed Tren de Aragua members who were involved in a gunfight at one of the apartment complexes.
The admission
On July 3rd, however, the New York Times acknowledged the reports were true in an article titled, “Democrats Denied This City Had a Gang Problem. The Truth Is Complicated.”
“The more central Aurora became to Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, the greater the temptation among Democratic politicians and activists to wave away talk of gang activity in the city as a right-wing hallucination. But their refusal to acknowledge the violence that some residents were seeing with their own eyes came off not as reassurance but as erasure,” the outlet reported.
“[T]he department had suspected for many months that there might be Tren de Aragua members in the Denver area,” the Times went on. “According to The Denver Gazette, police officers concerned about recent shootings exchanged emails seeking information about the gang as early as September 2023.”
