AURORA, Colo. (AP) — The city of Aurora is about the size of Tampa, Florida, before the evacuation. With 400,000 residents spread over 164 square miles, there are chic subdivisions, working-class neighborhoods and the luxury resort where Donald Trump will hold a rally on Friday to draw attention to a city that has been turned into a “war zone” by immigrants, like it’s called his campaign.

The reality is vastly different than what Trump portrayed to his rally attendees. Like with many other American citiesIn fact, the crime rate in Aurora is declining.

The issue that brought the Denver suburb to Trump’s attention took place in August in a single block of the city, in an apartment complex housing Venezuelan migrants.

At the time, a video emerged showing heavily armed men going door-to-door in the complex where the New York-based owners claimed a Venezuelan gang was extorting tenants from tenants. Around the time the video was recorded, someone was shot outside the complex, police said.

Now, two months later, authorities say they have identified the six men in the video and arrested one. Tenants of the building say police visit regularly and the area is safe.

“They left and it was nice and quiet,” Edward Ramirez, 38, said of the gunmen as he got into his car this week. He was one of more than a dozen tenants who said in interviews that the threat had abated. “It’s quiet, we can work, it’s normal.”

Trump is exploiting a local crime

Aurora’s crime rate has followed suit Downtrend A decline is being seen across the country, overlapping with the influx of Venezuelans fleeing their country and flocking to Colorado and other cities across the country.

Several studies show that this is the case among immigrants less likely to commit crimes as native Americans. But Aurora is also an example of how Trump has been able to use real but isolated episodes of violence among migrants to destroy an entire population. He uses these examples to paint a picture of a country descending into chaos due to what he regularly calls an immigrant “invasion.”

“See what they’re doing in Colorado? They are taking power,” Trump, who often warns about “migrant crime,” said of Venezuelan gang members during a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday. “They take over real estate. You will be a real estate developer from Venezuela. They have equipment that our military doesn’t have.”

Trump’s sweeping claims about Aurora – his campaign’s announcement of the rally calls the city a “war zone” and points to an article in the conservative New York Post that uses those words – have drawn sharp criticism from local residents.

“Former President Trump’s visit to Aurora is an opportunity to show him and the nation that Aurora is a reasonably safe city – not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs,” said Mayor Mike Coffman, a Republican congressman who is Trump’s occasional Republican congressman Critic was said in a statement. “The reality is that concerns about Venezuelan gang activity are completely overblown.”

Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, noted that Aurora has long struggled to shake off its reputation as Colorado’s rougher big city. It is the third largest in the state and has long been overshadowed by its neighbor Denver. A fifth of Aurora’s residents were born in another country.

“This is a safer city than ever before,” Polis said in an interview. “Things are going really great” in Aurora, Polis added, “and I don’t want this bizarre counter-narrative out there.”

Asked how the Trump campaign could justify its blanket security claims in the face of falling crime in Aurora, she responded with a statement from the Republican National Committee: “The violent gang invasion in Aurora, Colorado, is just one example of how each state presents a frontier “State,” said spokeswoman Anna Kelly. “Aurora housing complexes are war zones, fentanyl is flooding communities, and criminal migrants are raping and murdering victims.”

Trump’s rally will be held at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the apartment complexes. His daily schedule does not indicate that he plans to visit the neighborhood.

Aurora became a magnet for Venezuelan migrants

Trump’s characterization of the city and the opposition from officials and residents are reminiscent of the falsehoods made by him and his vice president, JD Vance. Spread via Haitian immigrants Stealing and eating pets Springfield, Ohio. These repeated lies led to several bomb threats targeting schools, government buildings and city officials’ homes, forcing evacuations and closures and causing the city to cancel an annual celebration of diversity, arts and culture.

Aurora saw a “slight” increase in crime that coincided with the arrival of large numbers of Venezuelans in the city in September 2023, Police Chief Todd Chamberlain said at a news conference last month. However, this increase has now declined. According to Aurora police, there were 12% fewer serious crimes in the city last month – from homicides to vehicle thefts – than in September 2023.

The migrants began to arrive Denver At the end of 2022, Colorado’s crime statistics were the culmination of a steady increase in crime in the state since the pandemic. In 2023, as Venezuelans became a fixture on some Denver street corners, selling flowers or offering quick car window washes, frustrates many voters in ColoradoCrime fell across the country.

The Aurora City Council passed a resolution opposing the resettlement of migrants in their city, but nonprofits found landlords willing to take some in anyway. Others moved independently because of cheaper rents.

In July, thousands gathered at an Aurora mall to mark Venezuela’s elections, and police reported gunfire after the event meant to celebrate the defeat of President Nicolas Maduro – who instead declared himself the winner even though the tallies showed he had lost.

It’s a rough area that’s slowly getting better

During the election campaign, Trump regularly cites specific cases of crimes committed by migrants, often dark cases like that of Sheet Riley, a 22-year-old woman from Georgia who was killed on a running trail in February. A Venezuelan citizen who entered the country illegally in 2022 has been charged with murder and other crimes in connection with the killing.

Trump has claimed Venezuela and other countries as his own empty themselves its prisons, mental hospitals and “insane asylums” to send dangerous people to the US and has claimed that Venezuela’s notoriously violent capital, Caracas, is safer than many US cities. The latter claim sparked disbelief among Venezuelan migrants, who say they feel far safer in Aurora.

“It’s a thousand times better here than in Venezuela,” said Dexe Medina, 44, as she left the Aurora apartment complex.

Numerous windows in the buildings are broken, the hallway lights don’t work and garbage and discarded mattresses are pouring out of a garbage container behind them.

The squalid conditions are one of the reasons the August episode attracted attention. Aurora has closed one of three apartment buildings owned by CBZ Management due to unsanitary conditions. Aurora said conditions in the complexes had been poor long before the Venezuelans arrived. But CBZ countered that it was unable to provide the maintenance because a notorious Venezuelan gang, Tren de Araguatook over the buildings.

The two buildings that remain open are now under receivership, and residents hope the new management will finally restore regular maintenance. Medina said conditions had improved slightly – previously, she said, the courtyards between the three-story buildings had “towers” of rubble and trash.

The neighborhood where many Venezuelans settled was long one of Aurora’s rougher sections, near Colfax Boulevard, a sometimes seedy alley that bills itself as the longest street in the country and runs west from Aurora through neighboring Denver and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. On the opposite corner of the apartment complex, a camera is mounted above the fence surrounding a daycare center and a recorded voice warns visitors: “You are under video surveillance.”

Longtime residents say they have heard occasional gunshots for years, but now the situation appears relatively calm.

“Honestly, this general area has improved,” said Diego Garcia, 18, a high school senior who lives a block from the complex where the video was filmed. “It used to be much worse.”

“We’re putting them in a terrible situation.”

Although residents feel safer, they admit the days in August when the gunmen roamed the neighborhood were frightening. Richard Rodriguez, 48, received a call from his mother in Venezuela and panicked about his safety after the video aired.

“Remember the fear that fills people’s hearts,” Rodriguez said of the video. “Imagine what it felt like for us to live here.”

Dustin Zvonek, an Aurora city councilman, also received concerned calls and text messages after the video aired, asking if he was safe.

“I’m like, ‘Dude, I live 40 minutes away,'” Zvonek said.

Nevertheless, he said the situation was serious and problems remained. It can take many months for many of the Venezuelans awaiting their asylum hearings to receive work permits, leaving them desperate in a new country with which they have few contacts.

“We’re putting them in a terrible situation and that’s impacting businesses,” he said, adding that nearby Walmart and Walgreens recently closed due to theft concerns.

Zvonek, a Republican, emphasized that Aurora remains a safe city with falling crime but cautioned against downplaying specific problems like those at the apartment complexes. He found that residents of the buildings and their immediate neighbors were not reassured when told that overall crime was declining.

“It’s always not a big deal,” Zvonek said, “until it happens to you.”