Named after a Colorado town besieged by Venezuelan gang members who entered the country illegally, former President Donald Trump announced “Operation Aurora,” a plan to arrest and deport them through the power of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
“We will take back our country, and we will do it very quickly,” Trump said after ticking off a list of young women raped and murdered by illegal aliens let into the country under his November opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
According to Trump, the Tren de Aragua is a prison gang of about 5,000 members peddling drugs, women, and guns in all 50 states. He promised to “Liberate America” from what he labeled, “Biden Migrant Crime,” after the president who canceled nearly 100 of Trump’s executive orders sealing the border.
The gang’s operation in Aurora burst into the headlines when its members took over apartment complexes in the small community outside Denver. “Men armed with rifles and handguns were caught on camera as they forced their way into an apartment and threatened the tenant at gunpoint,” Trump told a crowd of thousands at a rally in the community. “Ten minutes later, they opened fire on a 25-year-old man outside the building, fatally shooting him. Of the three identified barbaric thugs, all are illegal aliens who were in Border Patrol custody but released into the U.S. by Kamala Harris."
Trump called for a mandatory 10-year jail sentence for anyone who was deported and then tried to reenter the country illegally, as well as the death penalty for an illegal alien who commits a murder in the U.S.
Making his fight against immigrant crime a cornerstone of his campaign to take back the White House, Trump memorializes many of the women who were murdered by illegal aliens and has their heartbroken family members speak at his rallies. Stopped by Border Patrol and then released into the country under the Biden-Harris policies were the alleged killers of Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student who was attacked during a morning run; Jocelyn Nungaray, a Texas girl whose strangled body was found in a creek near her home; and Kate Steinle, shot while walking with her father on a San Francisco pier. In New York, Trump talks about the schoolgirls in Brentwood who were hacked to death by machetes and police officers targeted by illegal aliens.
“You have a radical Left governor who’s afraid,” Trump says of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. “He doesn’t want anything to do with it. He’s chicken s&@t,” Trump said of the Democrat, part of a list of Progressive governors and mayors, including vice president candidate Tim Watz, the Minnesota governor, who invited the aliens in under their sanctuary policies. “If l were president, these criminals would be out of here before you left the room,” the Republican told a cheering crowd of more than 10,000 at his Aurora rally.
As of mid-2024, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data show that nearly 650,000 criminal noncitizens are currently on ICE’s non-detained docket, meaning they are not in detention and are residing in communities throughout the country. Of these, around 13,000 have been charged with or convicted of homicide, over 20,000 with sexual assault, and more than 105,000 with assault. Other categories include 60,000 for robbery and burglary, over 126,000 for traffic offenses, and nearly 17,000 for weapons offenses.
The 1798 law referenced by Trump, approved by the nation’s Fifth Congress as part of the Alien and Sedition Acts, gives the president the power to remove undocumented foreigners he deems a threat to the country.