After taking over three apartment complexes in Aurora, Colorado, brutal Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has now spread to a fourth property in Denver – proving why the only solution to deal with the crime ring is deportation, cops and their victims tell DailyMail.com.
Tren de Aragua members, now considered terrorists after President Donald Trump classified TdA as a terrorist organization, have fled the first three apartments they seized in Aurora, as the city and law enforcement cracked down.
Instead, they took the mayhem they cause by selling drugs and prostitution to Denver, where the mobsters are using the same criminal enterprise playbook they used in Aurora and San Antonio – where they also seized four rental properties.
DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal The Jewell in Denver, a slum infested with rats and smelling of human waste, is the latest apartment complex where the South American syndicate has total control.
‘This is why you have to deport them. If you try to just arrest them, the ones that get away will just go elsewhere and do the exact same thing,’ one federal agent who spoke on condition of anonymity told DailyMail.com.
The Jewell’s newest inhabitant are so dangerous that the Denver Police Department sent an armored vehicle carrying its SWAT on Thursday to raid the property on a drug warrant.
Six people we taken away in handcuffs out of an apartment unit described as a ‘drug den,’ where people were in the process of getting high when SWAT stormed in.
Exclusive video obtained by DailyMail.com showed several suspects being lead away as a shocked resident walking his dogs exclaimed: ‘They’re finally turning this place out. Finally, dude!’
Police raided The Jewell apartments in Denver Thursday, making several arrests
Denver’s SWAT executed a drug warrant at the Jewell, not related to immigration, officers told DailyMail.com
DailyMail.com first broke the news that TdA had crossed into the US in October 2023, but the criminal organization became a household name in August 2024 when video of the armed thugs storming a unit at the Edge of Lowry apartment in Aurora surfaced.
A national outrage erupted after the public learned TdA had overpowered three complexes in Aurora.
City leaders began an aggressive campaign to simultaneously downplay the problem while making arrests.
In December, the Aurora Police Department arrested nine TdA members after a migrant couple accused them of kidnapping and torturing them.
Federal agents stormed Edge of Lowry Wednesday, arresting one suspected gangster.
However, attempts to arrest Tren de Aragua members and drive them out of the run-down apartments they controlled in the suburbs just meant they needed to find a new landing spot.
Far from its namesake, the Jewell is TdA’s newest point of operation, but the gang is up to its same old tricks.
Members are blatantly taking over vacant apartment complexes and filling them with their own ‘tenants’ who pay rent to them, not the apartment management, sources told DailyMail.com.
Alleged TdA members moved into the back building of the Jewell about four months ago, residents tell DailyMail.com
DailyMail.com witnessed what appeared to be a drug buy, as a Venezuelan man went up to the roof of the apartment complex with a woman Thursday morning
The woman returned to the ground level appearing to be disoriented and struggling to push a red shopping cart
The Jewell Apartments is run by the same property management company that runs three other apartment complexes in Aurora where TdA seized power
Members don’t hide their criminal activity or their affiliation to TdA.
‘Before it was just regular migrants – just families trying to survive. In the last four months, the new people who have started to arrive are scary,’ one resident who asked not be identified stated.
‘I’m afraid of them,’ the male resident added. ‘They look at you some type of way, like they’re going to kill you.’
At night, they throw wild parties where prostitutes and johns are often seen climbing the steps to a roof-top party pad where ‘everything you can image happens,’ residents claimed.
Other tenants and apartment staffer say they have reported all of this to the cops but nothing ever happens.’
The Denver Police Department confirmed there have been 112 calls for service there in the last four months, including shootings.
The gang’s drug customers also often seen hanging around the parking lot, with homeless drug users seen ‘lining’ up at night to score a hit.
DailyMail.com witnessed a drug transition go down at 9am, after a blonde woman arrived and met up with a Venezuelan man.
The Edge at Lowry Apartments was the second property taken over by the South American gang in Aurora, Colorado
They walked up to the roof of the complex and she came back down looking high and pushing a red shopping cart through the parking lot.
A staffer who wanted her identity protected for fear of retribution told us the horrors she has seen, including having to clean newly-vacated apartment and finding heavy blood stains inside units.
‘These people aren’t here to work. They feel entitled to all the free things they get in this country,’ the staffer – a migrant as well – said.
‘There have been rumors ICE might be coming here and making arrests and I hope they do. I work hard for the little I have and these people are just a problem.’
Earlier this week, reports claimed federal agencies had planned a massive raid in Denver, but the enforcement was pushed back after the plans were leaked.
