Christopher F. Rufo and Christina Buttons
Chaos in Aurora
Aurora, Colorado, is normally a quiet, nondescript suburb 30 minutes outside Denver. In recent months, however, the city has been at the center of a national scandal.
Beginning last year, a large influx of Venezuelan migrants, some of them members of the notorious Tren de Aragua street gang, reportedly had “taken over” a series of apartment buildings in Aurora—and unleashed terror. Last month, Venezuelan migrants were allegedly implicated in an attempted homicide, an arrest of purported gang members, and shocking security footage that showed heavily armed men forcibly entering one of the apartments. In response to the chaos, police mobilized en masse and vacated one of the complexes after the city, alleging code violations, deemed it uninhabitable.
An obvious question: How did members of Venezuelan gangs suddenly find themselves in suburban Colorado? To answer this, we have conducted an exclusive investigation, which leads to a troubling conclusion: the Biden administration, in partnership with Denver authorities and publicly subsidized NGOs, provided the funding and logistics to place a large number of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora, creating a magnet for crime and gangs. And, worse, some of the nonprofits involved appear to be profiting handsomely from the situation.
The story begins in 2021, when the Biden administration signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) into law, allocating $3.8 billion in federal funds to Colorado. The City of Denver, which had declared itself a “welcoming city” to migrants, drew on this reservoir of money to launch its Emergency Migrant Response resettlement program, with the goal of housing and providing services to a massive flow of migrants.
Denver, in turn, signed multimillion-dollar contracts with two local NGOs, ViVe Wellness and Papagayo, to provide housing and services to more than 8,000 predominantly Venezuelan migrants. These NGOs are run, respectively, by Yoli Casas and Marielena Suarez, who, according to professional biographies, do not appear to have previous experience in large-scale migrant resettlement.
Nevertheless, the city flooded them with cash. According to public records, between 2023 and 2024, ViVe Wellness and Papagayo received $4.8 million and $774,000, respectively; much of this funding came from the Migrant Support Grant, which was funded by ARPA. Then, in 2024, ViVe secured an extra $10.4 million across three contracts, while Papagayo received $2.9 million from a single contract to serve migrants; two of those five contracts were awarded to implement the Denver Asylum Seekers Program, which promised six months of rental assistance to nearly 1,000 migrants.
With this funding in hand, the two NGOs began working with landlords to place migrants in housing units and to subsidize their rent. One of these organizations, Papagayo, worked with a landlord called CBZ Management, a property company that operates the three apartment buildings at the center of the current controversy: Edge of Lowry, Whispering Pines, and Fitzsimons Place, also known as Aspen Grove.
We spoke with a former CBZ Management employee, who, on condition of anonymity, explained how the process worked. Last summer, the employee said, representatives from Papagayo began working with CBZ Management to place Venezuelan migrants in the company’s Aurora apartment complexes. When a Venezuelan individual or family needed housing, the NGO would contact the regional property manager, who then matched them with available apartments.
It was a booming business. According to the employee, Papagayo arranged hundreds of contracts with the property manager. The NGO provided up to two months of rental assistance, as many migrants did not have, or were unable to open, bank accounts. Within six months, according to the employee, approximately 80 percent of the residents of these buildings were Venezuelan migrants. The employee also noted that the buildings saw gang activity and violence.
The employee, however, alleges that these agreements were made on false pretenses. To convince the hesitant employee to accept the migrants, Papagayo made assurances that the tenants had stable jobs and income. With limited English and facing a minimum six-month wait for work permits, though, many migrants were ineligible for legal employment, struggled to find stable jobs, and ultimately fell behind on rent.
This was only the beginning. As the Venezuelan migrants settled in the apartments, they caused lots of trouble. According to a confidential legal report we have obtained, based on witness reports, the apartments saw a string of crimes, including trespassing, assault, extortion, drug use, illegal firearm possession, human trafficking, and sexual abuse of minors. Each of the three apartment complexes has since shown a localized spike in crime.
Volunteers who spoke with us on condition of anonymity said they were initially eager to assist with migrant resettlement but grew disillusioned with the NGOs running it. “I am passionate about helping migrants and I have been honestly shocked at the way the city is sending funds to an organization that clearly is not equipped to handle it,” one volunteer said.
The City of Denver, for its part, appears to be charging ahead. It recently voted to provide additional funding for migrant programs and, according to the right-leaning Common Sense Institute, the total cost to Denver could be up to $340 million, factoring in new burdens on schools and the health-care system. And the city also appears to have no qualms about exporting the crisis to the surrounding suburbs, including Aurora, which, in 2017, had declared itself a non-sanctuary city.
The truth is that there is no sanctuary for a city, a county, or a country that welcomes—and, in fact, attracts—violent gang members from Venezuela. This is cruelty, not compassion. Unfortunately, it might take more than the seizure of an apartment building, a dramatic rise in crime, and a grisly murder for cities like Denver to change course.
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This article was originally published in City Journal.
