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Migrants living in a tent encampment in Denver on Dec. 28, 2023. 6 Migrants living in a tent encampment in Denver. Credit-imageBROKER/Shutterstock

Denver’s decision to welcome migrants with open arms is bringing bloodshed to the suburbs next door. A notorious Venezuelan prison gang has set up shop in Aurora, Colorado.

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Aurora — a quiet bedroom community with a population of 390,000 directly east of the Mile-High City — has become a base of operations for the brutal Tren de Aragua gang, which has seized multiple apartment complexes and set off a wave of violent crime.

Denver leads the nation in new migrant arrivals per capita, with more than 40,000 arriving from the southern border since December 2022.

The city has bent over backwards to provide aid, even slashing emergency services to help foot the cost — so far estimated at over $68 million and counting.

But Aurora has made it clear it doesn’t share Denver’s desire to be the country’s leading sanctuary city.

In February, the Aurora City Council passed a resolution 7-3 emphatically stating that it will not provide resources and support to migrants or others brought into the community from neighboring cities.

“It’s been pretty tense here, we’re feeling it,” city council member Danielle Jurinsky, a sponsor of the resolution, told newsmen.

“We will not be aiding into this migrant crisis.”

The apartment complex where Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirino allegedly committed an assault and shooting. Google Maps

But Denver’s largesse has become Aurora’s problem anyway — forcing the community to grapple with increasing gang violence as Tren de Aragua has moved into town, taking whatever it can get its hands on, according to police, officials and law enforcement sources.

One local gang leader decided to set up shop in town, according to law enforcement sources. His name is Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirino, and he goes by “Galleta” — Spanish for “Cookie.”

Within months of arriving in the US, cops say, he and fellow gang members brutally beat a man at an Aurora apartment complex that the gang took over and occupied. In July, cops arrested him again — this time for a shooting at the same complex that left two men wounded.

Aerial view of Denver suburb Aurora, Colorado. 6 The peaceful city of Aurora, Colorado, is grappling with the rise of Tren de Aragua, which is taking over apartment complexes and unleashing violent crime in the city. Credit:Jacob – stock.adobe.com

Members of Tren de Aragua are accused of a slew of violent crimes across the US — including the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley earlier this year, and the shooting of two NYPD cops during an arrest in June. Leaders of the gang recently gave the “green light” for members to shoot American cops who try to interfere with their criminal activity.

One local investor in a company that owns multiple apartment complexes in Aurora said there was a “massive shootout” at one of the properties taken over by the gang.

Earlier this month, the Aurora Police Department announced it formed a task force with the Colorado State Patrol and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to counter the gang’s growing threat.