Armed federal agents conduct immigration raids at Denver, Aurora apartment complexes

Federal agents raided apartment buildings in Aurora and Denver on Wednesday morning, pounding on doors and taking an unknown number of immigrants into custody on a bus with bars on the windows.

At Cedar Run Apartments in Aurora, residents said more than 100 armed federal agents with 30-40 vehicles and tanks surrounded the complex shortly after 4 a.m. They pounded on doors, used smoke grenades and pushed doors open, residents said. Residents watched, taking videos and photos, as people were boarded onto a bus with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

Deicy Aldana was in bed when agents pounded on her door around 6 a.m., she said. When her father-in-law opened it a crack, agents pushed it open and asked what country they were from. When Aldana’s husband and his father answered that they were from Venezuela, they were taken away in plastic handcuffs, said Aldana, who is Colombian.

Both men have work permits and have applied for asylum to stay in the United States, she said. Neither are connected to any gang, she said. Her husband has been fixing air conditioners and her father-in-law works at a recycling facility, Aldana said. “They said that if all their papers are in order, they would be released in three to five hours,” Aldana said in Spanish as she stood on an apartment balcony. “They just took them without asking if they had documents.”

Ronald Sanchez, who is from Venezuela and arrived in Colorado just over a year ago, said he was awakened before dawn to his phone buzzing. People in the complex were messaging each other, saying, “Federal agents are here! Do not open your doors!”

Sanchez, who has a work permit and has applied for asylum, did not open the door when agents pounded on it. “I am not a legal resident, so I didn’t answer,” he said in Spanish.

He said he saw six men and two women boarded onto the bus, their hands cuffed behind their backs. Others said there were more.

Authorities did not confirm a number of people taken into custody. 

In a video posted Wednesday morning by the Rocky Mountain division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, two agents are seen outside an apartment building serving a warrant under what DEA officials called U.S. Department of Homeland Security operations. The department includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The video did not include a location, but it appeared to be one of the apartment complexes in Aurora that authorities have said was the site of Venezuelan gang activity. In the video, the officers are using what appeared to be smoke grenades.

In a separate video posted from the ICE Denver Field Office X account, acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello is speaking from the parking lot of an apartment complex and says the at-large action was focused on looking for “Tren de Aragua, the gang members from Venezuela. He referenced Colorado’s laws that prohibit local law enforcement agencies from keeping people in jail based on ICE holds.

“Unfortunately we have to come to communities because we don’t get the cooperation we need from the jails. It would be so much easier and so much safer for our officers and agents if we could take these people into custody from a safe environment. But if we have to come out to the community to do this, that’s what we are going to do,” he said, noting that officers from the U.S. Marshall, FBI, DEA, ATF and Customs and Border Protection are involved.

A spokesperson for the DEA Rocky Mountain division said they would not release any more information about its post due to the ongoing investigation.

The raids signaled the start of what President Donald Trump has called “Operation Aurora,” his plan to round up and deport immigrants who have committed crimes.

“We are aware of immigration enforcement at one apartment complex in Denver. We are in contact with Denver Public Schools and other city partners, and have confirmed that there has not been any activity in schools, hospitals, or churches,” Mayor Mike Johnston said. “Denver Police and city authorities were not involved in these actions, nor were we given prior notice. We will continue to monitor these activities throughout the day.”

Aurora city officials said their police force was not involved in the raids. “As we have said numerous times previously, Colorado state law prohibits local governments from engaging in typical immigration-specific enforcement and detention,” the city said in an emailed statement. “We focus on enforcing state and local law.”

At The Edge at Lowery apartment complex in Aurora, witnesses saw federal agents from multiple agencies knock on apartment doors between 6-7 a.m. No one opened their doors and witnesses didn’t see anyone from The Edge was taken into custody. Later in the morning, the complex was silent — no one was outside, besides security officers who have been guarding the complex for weeks. Cardboard covered many of the apartment windows.

At Cedar Run, the raid lasted almost five hours and residents were rattled. Many children in the complex didn’t attend school because their families were holed up in the apartments as agents went door to door. David Lobo said his 8-year-old daughter and seven-month-old baby were startled and scared when agents knocked on the door around 7 a.m.

His apartment door was cracked around the knob. Lobo said agents tried to bust through. Pieces of what looked like a drill bit lay on the cement sidewalk around the apartment, and Lobo said agents had used slide hammers or some other tool to try to break open doors.

Brenda Soto, who is white, said she opened her apartment door to find four agents. “Are you a resident of this apartment?” they asked. When she told them she lived there with her children, they apologized for disturbing her and left as she called, “Is there a fire?” No one answered her, she said.

In the parking lot, a group of civil rights attorneys were talking about how they could help the residents.

Another resident said he woke up about 5 a.m. to see the complex surrounded. No one knocked on his door, but he watched as one man was walked to the bus in handcuffs, he said.

Across the country, federal agents have posted video or photos of raids, part of an effort to encourage people to “self deport.” 

Confusion and fear about raids has run rampant the past few weeks.

Last week, federal immigration agents were setting up a “temporary holding” and “processing” center at Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora. NBC News, citing anonymous sources, said that raids were imminent in Aurora, but then said the raids were postponed because media leaks could create a security risk for federal officers. 

Federal immigration agents were setting up the Buckley base as a staging area Wednesday to detain and process “criminal aliens,” according to a statement from U.S. Northern Command. 

Northern Command said the request from the Department of Homeland Security asked for ICE to have a “temporary operations center, staging area, and a temporary holding location for the receiving, holding and processing of criminal aliens.” But then U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Centennial Democrat whose district includes Buckley, visited the base and said he had been assured that it would not be used as a detention facility. 

On Jan. 26, the DEA conducted a raid in Adams County just north of Denver. Federal agents detained about 50 people, many of them connected to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, during an early-morning raid at a makeshift nightclub along Federal Boulevard, according to the regional DEA office.

The DEA’s special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain region, Jonathan Pullen, told The Sun the raid was not part of Trump’s deportation efforts and that agents had been investigating the gang for months when they planned to raid a gang party. They seized four weapons, cash, cocaine and pink cocaine, which is a mix of cocaine and either methamphetamine or ketamine that gang members dye pink, Pullen said.

This is a developing news story that will be updated.