Trump Rally in Aurora, Colo., Is Marked by Nativist Attacks

Trump Rally in Aurora, Colo., Is Marked by Nativist Attacks

The former president continued to make claims about the city that have been disputed by local officials, including its Republican mayor.

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By Michael Gold and Jonathan Weisman

Michael Gold reported from Aurora, Colo.

Former President Donald J. Trump escalated the nativist, anti-immigration rhetoric that has animated his political career with a speech Friday in Aurora, Colo., where he repeated false and grossly exaggerated claims about undocumented immigrants that local Republican officials have refuted.

For weeks, Aurora has been fending off false rumors about the city. And its conservative Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, said in a statement on Friday that he hoped to show Mr. Trump that Aurora was “a considerably safe city.”

But Mr. Trump has made debunked claims about Aurora, a Denver suburb, such a central part of his stump speech that he took a campaign detour to Colorado, which has not voted for a Republican in a presidential election since 2004, to make the case in person at a rally at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center.

And during a meandering 80-minute speech Mr. Trump repeated claims, which have been debunked by local officials, that Aurora had been “invaded and conquered,” described the United States as an “occupied state,” called for the death penalty “for any migrant that kills an American citizen” and revived a promise to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without due process.

That law allows for the summary deportation of people from nations with which the United States is at war, that have invaded the United States or that have engaged in “predatory incursions.” It was far from clear whether the law could be used in the way that Mr. Trump was proposing.

The false tale that Aurora, Colorado’s third-largest city, was occupied by armed Venezuelans stemmed from a dispute over housing conditions.

An out-of-state landlord, CBZ Management, was being pressed by the City of Aurora over the deplorable conditions in three of its apartment complexes. The landlord told the city in July that its property managers were unable to make the repairs that tenants and city officials were demanding because armed leaders of Tren de Aragua had taken over the complexes and violently expelled the managers. The claim was amplified by news reports and politicians, and took on a life of its own, especially after Mr. Trump began making it a regular part of his stump speech — even after city officials said the claims had been overstated and were not true.

The city put out a statement on Friday pre-emptively fact-checking the former president ahead of his rally.

“A gang has not ‘taken over’ the city,” it said. “The overstated claims fueled by social media and through select news organizations are simply not true. It is tragic that select individuals and entities have mischaracterized our city based on some specific incidents.”

Major crimes, it continued, are down more than 17 percent in Aurora. And “the city is actively deploying every legal tool to ensure CBZ Management is accountable for its properties and meets its responsibilities.”

After the rally, Mr. Coffman, the mayor, said that he was “disappointed that the former president did not get to experience more of our city for himself” and that “the reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity in our city — and our state — have been grossly exaggerated and have unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety.”

“The city and state have not been ‘taken over’ or ‘invaded’ or ‘occupied’ by migrant gangs,” he said. “The incidents that have occurred in Aurora, a city of 400,000 people, have been limited to a handful of specific apartment complexes, and our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns and will continue to do so.”

Mr. Trump’s visit to Aurora comes as he has ramped up his harsh language on immigration and continues to claim falsely that undocumented immigrants are fueling a “migrant crime” wave. Available national crime statistics do not support that assertion. But Mr. Trump relies on anecdotal evidence to make his case.

Mr. Trump’s nativist message was echoed by other speakers at the rally, including Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado. Shortly before Mr. Trump’s remarks, Stephen Miller, his top immigration adviser, made anti-immigrant language central to his appeals to the crowd to vote.

“You have the right to want a country that is of, by and for Americans and only Americans,” Mr. Miller said.

His false assertions extended to another city, Springfield, Ohio, where he continued to insist falsely that Haitian migrants who are in the country legally were “really illegal,” as he persisted in stretching the bounds of what he described as unlawful entry into the country.

Many of the Haitian migrants in Springfield have Temporary Protected Status, which gives people from a country in crisis — typically after a natural disaster or political upheaval — the opportunity to remain in the United States legally, regardless of how they entered the country. (In the presidential debate last month, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the migrants there were eating household pets.)

At the rally, Mr. Trump continued to use dehumanizing rhetoric, referring to violent immigrants as “animals,” “barbaric thugs” and “sadistic monsters.” At one point, he falsely claimed that Ms. Harris had “infested” buildings in Aurora with gang members.

Though immigration dominated Mr. Trump’s speech, he digressed to attack the news media, demean Ms. Harris and stray to other topics. At one point, he seemed to mix up his namesake company with his presidency. “On Day 1 of the Trump Organization — the Trump Organization, when I founded it, it was nice, but now it’s great,” he said. “But I want to get back to the Trump administration, because the Trump administration is going to do things.”

Mr. Trump during his speech acknowledged that his trip to reliably blue Colorado was meant to draw attention to his message on immigration.

The Aurora rally was one of several stops in blue states he will make as the election closes, in a period when campaigns would typically be more focused on battleground states. On Saturday, he will hold a rally in Coachella, Calif., and he will hold a rally in Manhattan at Madison Square Garden later this month.

Michael C. Bender and Jazmine Ulloa contributed reporting.