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TRUMP’S WAR ON VENEZUELANS: FROM OPERATION AURORA TO OPERATION
SOUTHERN SPEAR  
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Isabel María Villalón
December 3, 2025
NACLA
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*
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*
*
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_ How a Colorado slumlord’s lie about Venezuelan gangs was
leveraged by the Trump administration to detain thousands, deploy
warships, and rewrite the rules of immigration enforcement. _

mural in downtown Caracas depicting some of the many Venezuelans
deported from the United States to El Salvador's CECOT., (Isabel
María Villalón)

 

On October 11, 2024, Donald Trump stood before a rally in the Colorado
suburb of Aurora, flanked by mug shots he labeled “Illegal immigrant
gang members from Venezuela.” Following an introduction
[[link removed]] by his current senior
advisor, Stephen Miller, who gestured to the posters and asked the
crowd if “these are the neighbors you want,” Trump took the stage
[[link removed]] to announce a campaign
promise he dubbed “Operation Aurora.” Under the plan, he pledged
to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime law that authorizes
deporting noncitizens from nations at war with the United States, to
conduct mass deportations if re-elected.

The choice to name his mass deportation agenda after the Colorado
suburb was a direct nod to a pervasive right-wing narrative that the
Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had taken over Aurora apartment
complexes housing primarily Venezuelan migrants. The claim, sparked by
a viral video [[link removed]], was
immediately refuted by tenants
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and local authorities
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who instead pointed to CBZ Management—a multi-million-dollar
property firm—as the criminal culprit that had circulated the false
narrative to deflect blame for its own neglect.  Nevertheless, a year
later, the Aurora myth continues to play
[[link removed]] a key role in a larger
feedback loop
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in which local police bulletins, uncritically disseminated by federal
agencies and right-wing media, create boogie men to serve as the
ideological scaffolding for an ethnonationalist agenda.

As promised, on March 15, Trump invoked
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the Alien Enemies Act, claiming that the Tren de Aragua is operating
“in conjunction” with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to
“invade” our borders in a “plot against America.” Though
unsupported by evidence—and rejected by
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the United States’ own intelligence community—the claim has now
become the legal pretext for the sweeping suspension of due process
rights and the criminalization of Venezuelans at home and abroad. This
reality was made manifest in
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the detention, deportation, and eventual torture
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migrants sent to El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del
Terrorismo (CECOT) mega prison. 

Since then, the same security paradigm has been deployed to
Venezuela’s Caribbean waters as the political justification of what
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently dubbed
[[link removed]] “Operation
Southern Spear.” The operation, pushed atop thinly veiled
accusations
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of drug trafficking, has led to the deployment of the largest
concentration
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of U.S. naval and air assets in the region in 20 years and
extrajudicial strikes
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against alleged drug traffickers that have killed at least 83 people
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across the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. 

Situated within this same security paradigm, the case of Aurora
exposes how the architecture of U.S. imperialism seeps into the fabric
of domestic life and reveals the contradictory nature of U.S.
expansionism. Venezuelan migrants—caught at the nexus of the War on
Terror, the War on Drugs, and the War on Migrants—are both created
and criminalized by U.S. policy, while media hysteria dictates who
belongs, who is dangerous, and who can be disappeared without
notice.  

A Slumlord’s Scapegoat 

The narrative of a Venezuelan gang takeover in Aurora was seeded prior
to the viral videos that fueled it. On July 28, 2024, then Aurora City
Council member Danielle Jurinsky falsely claimed
[[link removed]] that a public
Venezuelan election watch party, held at a local Target parking lot,
ended in “assaults, theft,” and a “shot up police car.”
Although the Aurora Police Department immediately released a statement
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debunking her claims, Mayor Mike Coffman amplified the rhetoric,
stating that
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“residents were owed an apology from the Venezuelan immigrant
community.”

As this political firestorm ignited, a quieter crisis was culminating
for New York-based CBZ Management. The corporate landlord, which owns
three Aurora complexes, was facing legal repercussions from the city
over rampant code violations, including mold, pests, broken utilities,
and unsafe conditions documented as far back as 2020
[[link removed]].
By mid-2024, facing mounting fines and possible criminal penalties,
the company was on the brink of legal reckoning.

In reality, while tenants had suffered from violent crime and unsafe
conditions, there was no evidence that the complexes were “taken”
by gangs—let alone the Venezuelan group.

On July 29th, just one day after the election watch party, city
attorneys emailed CBZ’s lawyers
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a proposed settlement that included a 60-day jail sentence for company
owner Zev Baumgarten, citing chronic neglect. Within a week, CBZ
retained a PR firm
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that spun the narrative by pushing a sensational story
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to local news: their properties had been “taken over by Tren de
Aragua.” 

In reality, while tenants had suffered from violent crime and unsafe
conditions, there was no evidence
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that the complexes were “taken” by gangs—let alone the
Venezuelan group. There was one telling link in the story, however:
every viral claim of a Tren de Aragua “takeover” that emerged
during this period could be traced back to CBZ-owned properties.
“You see a similar pattern emerging here where they own multiple
properties within 10 minutes of each other,” said Nate Kassa, a
tenant organizer who assisted the residents placed at the center of
the Tren de Aragua takeover story. “All of them are essentially
slums.”

It was the tenants that ultimately had to answer for their
slumlord’s misdeeds. In August 2024, as many as 200 residents were
evicted
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from one CBZ property in Aurora with as little as 24-hours notice,
while tenants at the two other properties—The Edge at Lowry and
Whispering Pines apartments—were offered a $1,200 buyout
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to leave under threat of eviction. In a pattern that would be repeated
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across the country, those that choose to stay, citing the financial
difficulties
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of relocation, saw armed federal agents essentially carry out the work
of eviction in Aurora. 

Aurora ICE Raids and Community Resistance

In the pre-dawn hours of February 6, 2025, a militarized convoy of
dozens of ICE, DHS, ATF and DEA vehicles descended on residences
across Denver and Aurora, including the Edge at Lowry and Whispering
Pines. The operation, launched two weeks after Trump’s inauguration,
was designed for flashy spectacle. Federal agents armed with rifles
and battering rams descended on the apartment complexes, accompanied
by an embedded Fox News crew
[[link removed]] that aired the raids in
real-time on social media. Using flash grenades and rubber bullets,
officials claimed [[link removed]]
they were targeting over 100 alleged members of the Tren de Aragua
gang. 

Even still, for those swept up in the crackdown, the consequences were
severe. Some residents, branded as “gang members” based upon
flimsy evidence that largely conflated their Venezuelan nationality
with criminality, were ultimately arrested and deported to CECOT.

Yet according to community organizers, on the ground a different story
unfolded. With the Trump administration publicly promising mass raids
at the apartments for months, a robust organizing network of activists
with the Colorado Rapid Response Network (CORRN) were already on high
alert. At the Edge at Lowry, activists slept in their cars. “We knew
ICE was targeting that building, so we got to know people that lived
there and came up with an organizing strategy” explained Sophia
Morrow*, a teacher, parent, and member of CORRN for five years. As
federal agents went door-to-door, protesters with bullhorns fanned
out, shouted “Know Your Rights” information in English and
Spanish, and informed residents they were not obligated to open their
doors without a judicial warrant. 

The result was a dramatic failure
[[link removed]]. Although ICE was
reluctant to share [[link removed]] any
official arrest figures, FOX later reported
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that only 30 individuals were detained across the entirety of the
massive operation.  Speaking in front of the White House, border czar
Tom Homan falsely
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blamed
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the failure on media leaks and threatened
[[link removed]] the activists, saying
“they may find themselves in a pair of handcuffs very soon.” The
truth, however, was much simpler: a coordinated community defense
network proved stronger than the force of hundreds of armed federal
officers. 

Even still, for those swept up in the crackdown, the consequences were
severe. Some residents
[[link removed]],
branded as “gang members” based upon flimsy evidence that largely
conflated their Venezuelan nationality with criminality, were
ultimately arrested and deported to CECOT
[[link removed]]. 

The Raids Continue

While the February raids—and the resistance against them—caused a
media firestorm, the machinery of immigration enforcement has
continued. It has done so in ways both more mundane and more
insidious. 

For Jorge*, a young Venezuelan granted Temporary Protected Status
(TPS) in 2023, this reality struck when a routine delivery to drop off
a television landed him at the Fort Carson Army Base in Colorado
Springs. Though his heart pounded as he approached the military
installation, he had a valid work permit and driver’s license while
his asylum case was pending.

At the entrance, a guard took his ID, handed him a visitor form, and
told him to wait while the paperwork was processed. Jorge did as he
was told, but was surrounded by eleven armed soldiers soon after
sitting down. Confused, he asked if he was being detained. “We just
need to revise your paperwork,” an officer assured him in Spanish.
Moments later, Jorge was handcuffed, placed in an unmarked vehicle,
and taken to the Aurora GEO ICE facility to face removal
proceedings—all while the soldier who had ordered the television
arrived to casually collect it. The transaction continued around this
unfolding nightmare.

Speaking with Jorge at the GEO ICE facility through the wall-mounted
phones of our no contact visit, he struggled to make sense of what had
transpired. Sophia later explained his detention. “It is a
misconception that ICE needs a reason to detain people,” she said.
Indeed, section 237 (a)(4) of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act
[[link removed](a)(4)%20of%20the%20Immigration%20and%20Nationality,will%20note%20related%20inadmissibility%20grounds.]
gives ICE the authority to arrest and detain noncitizens
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pending immigration hearings, even if they have committed no crime.

Jorge’s community has fallen into a state of suspended terror.
Within a month, another friend was detained at a mandatory ICE
check-in, leaving his roommates—including one who cares for a young
child—prisoners in their own home, terrified that a trip to the
grocery store could be their last moment of freedom. 

The Imperial Playbook 

Venezuelans are punished at home by U.S. policies that cripple their
nation with bombs and sanctions, punished for fleeing the crisis under
U.S. narratives of security threats, and punished on U.S. soil as
scapegoats for deteriorating living conditions.

Jorge’s story encapsulates the vicious, circular logic of U.S.
imperialism. Fleeing Venezuela’s economic and political turmoil
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crisis exacerbated by [[link removed]] years of U.S.
foreign policy and sanctions—he was encouraged to move north under
the promised shield of TPS. Told the city “would be a safe place,”
he finally settled in Denver as one of some 40,000
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Venezuelan migrants who arrived in Colorado between 2022 and 2024. Yet
for many of these migrants, TPS proved to be a Faustian bargain. 

This precarious situation was shattered on November 7
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when TPS was formally eliminated by the Trump administration for an
estimated 250,000 Venezuelans
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[[link removed]]aided
in part by a recent Supreme Court ruling
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Overnight, people who had been protected were now reclassified as
“illegal” and targeted accordingly. Now they are being deported
back to their home country, which faces renewed threats of U.S.
military intervention—a move that brings with it the threat of a new
cycle [[link removed]] of mass
human displacement. 

This pattern of suffering is not random nor new, but has been erected
through bipartisan consensus and forged by a coalition of U.S. hawks
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and right-wing Venezuelans. While studies show
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U.S. sanctions are a root cause of the Venezuelan migration crisis,
this reality is routinely omitted from media reports. As a result, the
exodus itself is weaponized
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to criminalize the mobility of migrants and undermine Venezuela’s
political sovereignty. 

Trapped in this never-ending feedback loop of imperial violence,
Venezuelans are punished at home by U.S. policies that cripple their
nation with bombs and sanctions, punished for fleeing the crisis under
U.S. narratives of security threats, and punished on U.S. soil as
scapegoats for deteriorating living conditions. 

_Editor’s note: the names of Jorge and Sophia have been changed to
protect their identities._

_ISABEL MARÍA VILLALÓN is an independent scholar and Latin
Americanist currently pursuing a master’s degree in Latin American
Studies at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Her
recent work focuses on the intersections of neoliberalism, labor, and
migration in Central America._

 

_T__he North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) is an
independent, nonprofit organization founded in 1966 to examine and
critique U.S. imperialism and political, economic, and military
intervention in the Western hemisphere. In an evolving political and
media landscape, we continue to work toward a world in which the
nations and peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean are free from
oppression, injustice, and economic and political subordination._

* Venezuela
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* deportations
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* U.S. intervention
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* immigrant rights
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* refugees
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