Aurora City Council Member Danielle Jurinsky introduced a proposal approved by the City Council 6-2 on Monday that authorizes the Aurora City Attorney’s Office to submit a series of Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) requests to the Governor’s Office, the Colorado Office of New Americans, the Mayor’s Office for the City and County of Denver, and the Denver Pathways to the Integration of New Americans for any emails and contracts related to providing assistance to immigrants in order to relocate them to the city of Aurora.
“I believe that Governor Polis and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston conspired to sneak potentially thousands of migrants into our city, using several nonprofits in the metro, that ultimately put the safety of our citizens at risk,” said Jurinsky.
Aurora gained national media attention after a video went viral showing armed men inside an Aurora apartment building in the 1200 block of Dallas Street appearing to break into apartment units. The video was recorded minutes before a shooting occurred outside the building on Aug. 18.
At this time, none of the six suspects have been connected to any criminal organization. However, that piece of the investigation is ongoing. Operation Safe Haven investigators are actively searching for the wanted suspects with the assistance of local, state, and federal law enforcement partners, and they are working to determine and confirm if the suspects have a connection to Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua (TdA).
“I think that it’s incredibly insulting to think that Governor Polis and Mayor Mike Johnston could covertly push migrants into our city without even having the courtesy to warn us about what they were doing,” said Jurinsky.
Jurinsky said she hopes the CORA requests will help the people of Aurora and the city understand how many migrants were sent to Aurora, what promises were made to the migrants in terms of support, and whether the migrants were vetted to intentionally send those with criminal backgrounds and/or gang affiliations to Aurora.
Jurinsky first learned of the migrant relocation effort from reading an article that appeared in the City Journal at https://www.city-journal.org/article/chaos-in-aurora entitled “Chaos in Aurora.”
“We need to know what Governor Polis and Mayor Johnston did to our city so that we fully understand the magnitude of the challenges that we are facing in the short run and in the long run, and protect our city from this ever happening again,” said Jurinsky.