AURORA, Colo. — More than a dozen people taken into custody at the troubled Edge of Lowry apartments in Aurora following an armed home invasion and kidnapping are suspected of being members or associates of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Wednesday.
The individuals — who have yet to be identified by law enforcement — are all Venezuelan nationals in the U.S. and are undocumented, an ICE spokesperson said in a news release obtained by Denver7.
No other information about the arrests was released by ICE, but officials said all 16 would remain in their custody “pending removal proceedings or hearings before an immigration judge.”
Federal authorities are investigating the armed home invasion and kidnapping that happened late Monday night into the early hours of Tuesday at the Edge of Lowry apartments. The apartment complex gained widespread national media attention over claims it had been “taken over” by the Venezuelan gang earlier this year.
During a news conference Tuesday morning, Aurora Chief of Police Todd Chamberlain said two people — a man and a woman — were accosted by approximately 13 to 15 armed individuals before they were kidnapped and taken to a different unit within the same building.
Chamberlain said the victims were “bound... pistol-whipped... victimized... terrorized," and described what both endured as "torture."
He also said the Aurora Police Department had requested the help of the Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “to help identify who the suspects are and what actions they were involved in."
Denver7 was there when Chamberlain spoke to news media about the incident. You can view the full news conference in the video player below.
The victims — who were only identified as Venezuelan immigrants during Tuesday’s news conference — were being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, including a stab wound sustained by the man during the encounter, the chief of police said, as he vowed not to rest until all who were involved in the crime were taken into custody.
While he could not yet say why the two victims were targeted, Chamberlain said that “individuals involved in this type of activity, they victimize their own race and their own ethnicity, and the reason they do that is because they know, because of their status, they will not come forward to police.”
He urged everyone — whether they are authorized to be in Aurora or not — to call police if they are victims of a crime, as “there is no place in this country… in this city, where somebody should be victimized or mistreated based upon their documentation status."
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The Edge of Lowry apartments has been in the national spotlight this year because of a video that went viral showing armed men entering one of the units in the complex, sparking claims that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) had "taken over" the complex.
The surveillance video was recorded on Aug. 18, roughly 10 minutes before 25-year-old Oswaldo Jose Dabion Araujo was shot at the complex. He later died from his injuries.
In September, the Aurora Police Department deemed two apartment complexes — the Edge of Lowry and 200 Columbia — "criminal nuisances" and threatened closure over safety concerns that reportedly include "crime and deterioration."
The company that owns Edge of Lowry — CBZ Management — claims gang members prevented them from making repairs at their Aurora properties, saying it was too dangerous for their employees to be on site.
Code enforcement and inspection records dating back to 2020, however, show numerous violations prior to an influx of Venezuelan immigrants in the Denver metro, including mice infestations, ceiling damage, and dozens of unlawful vehicles parked in the parking lot.
“We have a problematic location in the city of Aurora, and it was without question these apartments that have been in the media’s attention and in the community’s attention for years, or at least a year,” Chamberlain said. “And again, we are not going to tolerate it. We are going to address it. We are going to continue to focus on it.”
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Ultimately, the chief of police said, the problems that have occurred at the Edge of Lowry apartments in Aurora are the result of the federal government’s inability to address the nation's broken immigration system, which resulted in an influx of immigrants to the Denver metro in the winter of 2023.
“We have individuals that come to a country, get dropped off into a community, they have absolutely no infrastructure, they have absolutely no support, they have absolutely no guidance from the federal government about what to do, how to live, how to survive. And this is the ramifications of that activity. This is the ramifications of not monitoring what's occurring and how it's occurring and who is it occurring to,” Chamberlain said.
Chamberlain said search warrants will continue, and police would continue bringing in “as many (people) as we have to” for questioning to determine who was involved in the kidnapping and home invasion at the Edge of Lowry apartments.
“If we go into that complex and we find contraband, if we find weapons, if we find evidence of crime, if we find individuals that have warrants, we are going to arrest them,” Chamberlain said.
What he will not do, he said, is “overenforce or overpolice… an entire community that is just trying to get along in a country that they have absolutely no idea about, no understanding about, and there is nobody from the federal government giving them any direction or any support on how to succeed, how to live, how to make it day by day.”
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Gov. Polis calls for additional public safety investments, city officials cast blame on CBZ Management
State and local government officials were quick to provide statements of their own following Chamberlain's news conference Tuesday.
Gov. Jared Polis congratulated the city of Aurora and the Aurora Police Department and added the state added staff and resources to the task force investigating Tren de Aragua's ties to Aurora back in July after convening with federal officials over the summer.
He also called for "additional public safety investments during the upcoming legislative session to crack down on crime" and urged the legislature to approve those requests "to make Colorado safer.”
Meanwhile, Aurora city officials blamed CBZ Management for what occurred at the apartment complex in a statement of their own:
The incident at the ‘Edge at Lowry’ that Chief Chamberlain discussed in detail today underscores, with painful clarity, why the city has been aggressively leading criminal and civil legal actions against the private property owners, managers and/or "investors” of CBZ Management and their various LLCs. Their chosen absence and abject neglect of their own properties for years, and their pattern of ignoring and rejecting the city’s various offers to expedite a resolution in recent months, have, in part, created an environment that has allowed criminal activity to flourish time and again irrespective of who is committing the crimes.
Earlier this month, CBZ Management and the city of Aurora agreed to close the Edge of Lowry apartment complex for safety reasons and repairs.
Exact details — including when the 60-unit complex will be closed and what happens to the people living in its five buildings — remain unclear. City attorneys and the lawyer for the apartment owner will be in court again in mid-January.
Though the timeline is uncertain, the apartments’ closure is unlikely before mid-February at the earliest. Peter Schulte, Aurora’s city attorney, told our partners at The Denver Post after the hearing that residents would be given at least 30 days’ notice before the building is closed.
Officials said the city will place a lien on the properties to recoup any costs associated with a closure and any assistance provided to people staying at the properties. The property owners would then be required to pay those costs.
"No matter how anyone tries to spin it, the truth is the truth and the truth will come out," a CBZ Management spokesperson said in a statement obtained by Denver7 on Tuesday. "These gangs have been allowed to take over apartment buildings and terrorize innocent people. We hope the message is learned so this tragedy doesn't spread any further throughout the country."
- Denver7 has been following developments at several troubled apartment complexes in Aurora since before claims that the Tren de Aragua gang had taken over one of the apartment buildings surfaced. Scroll through the timeline below to read our coverage.
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