Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain said Wednesday that the city of Aurora had put the final nail in the coffin of the troubled Edge at Lowry apartment complex.

“We have turned the corner,” Chamberlain said during a news conference in one of the units.

The media field trip to a third-floor apartment — Chamberlain said — was to show the utter squalor Venezuelan immigrants had been living in.

A swath of blue Christmas wrapping paper with pictures of Santa partially covered a hole in the wall.

A rigged electrical hung precariously in the bedroom.

Holes punctured the floors.

A stick figure drawn on a wall in the living room suggested a child may have lived in the unit once.

Despite having unleashed a bug bomb in the apartment before the event, cockroaches scurried about the filth and grime.

“This is not humane. This should never be normalized by anybody,” the police chief said.

“This has been drastically cleaned up,” Chamberlain added.

Aurora officials had spent more than $360,000 on repairs to make the property more habitable.

A 700 square-foot, one-bedroom apartment — like the one in which Aurora police held Wednesday’s news conference — could house up to 17 immigrants, Chamberlain said.

Aurora officials have adopted the strategy of shutting down apartment complexes as a way to control the footprint of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua in Aurora, something a Colorado University at Boulder gang expert has called “very rare.”

While acknowledging that Tren de Aragua or TdA had operated out of the complex and terrorized its residents, Chamberlain also blamed its owners and managers, who, he said, “allowed this crisis to unfold unchecked.”

“They used an influx of vulnerable populations and vulnerable migrants to maximize profits, from the substandard living conditions, by failing to provide basic safety and oversight,” Chamberlain said.

“Again, the reports confirm the residences faced severe neglect, intimidation, and in some cases, financial extortion, by both the management and a criminal element that took over this location.”

The attorney representing The Edge did not respond to a phone call and email seeking comment.

‘A perfect storm’

The move marked the second shutdown of a troubled apartment complex owned and operated by CBZ Management that became the focal point of America’s debate on illegal immigration, particularly after the reach of the Venezuelan prison gang into Colorado cities like Aurora and Denver came to light.

Last month, Aurora Municipal Court Presiding Judge Shawn Day issued an emergency order shutting down The Edge of Lowry.

At that time, about 85 individuals lived in the complex, Chamberlain said. City officials paid $94,375 to relocate residents, some outside of Colorado.

Chamberlain noted that the shutdown was not the result of a singular act.

“This was kind of a perfect storm that led to this crisis,” he said.

Chamberlain blamed the response from state and federal officials who allowed immigrants to be “just dropped here” with little concern about their care. The immigrants had arrived in Colorado after illegally crossing the border.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman has criticized Denver Mayor Mike Johnston for using nonprofit organizations, such as Papagayo, for placing immigrants in Colorado’s third most populous city.

Their beef started in November 2023, when Johnston asked to use an extended-stay Quality Inn hotel in Aurora to temporarily house immigrants coming into Denver. In an op-ed that ran in The Denver Gazette last fall, Coffman regretted saying yes after realizing Johnston “had no plan for them other than leaving them homeless in Aurora.”

Johnston’s administration denied the allegations, insisting his administration had been “transparent” about the issue.

The gang nabbed national headlines and the attention of President Donald Trump, who argued during the presidential campaign that TdA represents the failures of the Biden administration to secure the border and protect American citizens.

Tren de Aragua, which has been seeking to entrench its tentacles in American cities Denver, is linked to various criminal activities. Authorities said TdA gang members have been involved in a multitude of criminal activities that include drug and human trafficking — particularly immigrant women and girls and money laundering — kidnapping and extortion.

Police recently arrested gang members who had kidnapped and tortured a couple on the property.

Following the news conference, city officials boarded up the last unit at the Edge on Wednesday.

The move marked the second apartment complex shutdown. Officials in August also shuttered Aspen Grove — a 99-unit apartment complex on Nome Street — citing a litany of health and safety violations that included rodent infestations, sewage backups and trash pileups.

‘Not let you take root’

Chamberlain described the gang’s activities at the complex as extensive, with a sex trafficking and narcotics operation in the basement. He did not know, however, how many TdA gang members had made The Edge at Lowry home.

Since deploying officers to address crime at the complex, Chamberlain said calls for service have dropped drastically from 382 in 2024 to 22 to date this year.

Chamberlain offered this message to the gang: “The Aurora Police Department will not let you take root in the city of Aurora.”

What has made identifying TdA members so tricky, among other things, is that the gang embeds itself with immigrants fleeing the political and economic collapse of Venezuela.

Over the past two years, more some 43,000 immigrants — mostly from South and Central America — have made their way to Denver. Plane, train and bus tickets purchased by Denver taxpayers suggest about half have stayed in Colorado.

Those that remain equates to a city roughly the size of Golden.

Aurora city officials filed a criminal nuisance case against CBZ’s Zev Baumgarten in December.

According to the city’s petition, the Edge at Lowry had been plagued with violent crimes and quality of life issues since September 2023, when the Tren de Aragua first established a presence in the Denver metro area.

In defending the request , Chamberlain said in a sworn affidavit that the unmitigated violence at the property had “reached a breaking point.”

“Without intervention, I believe the criminal behavior will flourish, making living conditions untenable for any law-abiding residents in this neighborhood,” Chamberlain said in court documents.

The petition for the emergency order also cited a home invasion that involved the kidnapping and torture of a Venezuelan couple. The Arapahoe County District Attorney’s Office has charged a dozen individuals involved in the incident.

Aurora police believe gang members were behind the kidnapping.

The Edge at Lowry apartment complex is owned by Five Dallas Partners LLC, a subsidiary of CBZ Management, a Brooklyn-based company that owns 11 properties in Colorado, including three in Aurora.