Former President Donald Trump announced he will visit Aurora in Colorado and Springfield in Ohio in the not-too-distant future.

“I’m going to Springfield, and I’m going to Aurora,” Trump said during a rally on Wednesday.

The two cities have become focal points of the 2024 presidential election because of the national conversation surrounding immigration.

Regarding Springfield, claims of immigrants eating residents’ pets catapulted the small Ohio city into the national spotlight when the former president mentioned this during the presidential debate on Sept. 10.

“What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country,” Trump said during the debate, “and look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk — not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Aurora also took the spotlight during the debate following reports of a Venezuelan gang’s activities in the city, with the former president blaming the Biden administration’s border policies for the presence of Tren de Aragua, which originated in the Tocorón Prison in the South American country, in some of American’s urban centers, including in metro Denver.

Meanwhile, the Aurora Police Department has scheduled a press conference this Friday to provide an update about its investigation into a shooting in August at an apartment complex and a viral video showing armed men barging into an unit.

The gang is linked to criminal activities that include human trafficking — particularly of immigrant women and girls — drug trafficking, kidnapping, and money laundering, among others. In metro Denver, the gang’s members have been accused of a jewelry heist, a beating, shootings, and barging into apartment units with rifles.

Initially, Aurora officials dismissed the assertion by a property management company that the presence of gang members precluded it from doing its work at an apartment complex and that it feared for the safety of its staffers and residents. The city called it an “alternative narrative” to the numerous code violations and the poor condition of the building.

Officials began walking back their statements after a video of armed men barging into apartment units surfaced and a cache of letters from a law firm representing CBZ Management — written a month before the federal government acknowledged TDA had extended its tentacles into Denver — became public.

Each new revelation — and there have been several — only served to raise public safety concerns and amplify election-year questions about the border crisis and illegal immigration. Notably, Aurora officials admitted that authorities had arrested people suspected — though not yet confirmed at the time of their apprehensions — of being members of the Venezuelan gang long before the media spotlight on the city.

In August, the international law firm Perkins Coie — at the behest of a lender — wrote the city to share its investigation into alleged criminal activities at Whispering Pines apartments, a 54-unit complex in Aurora. The 10-page letter outlines a gang operation that includes establishing a “lower-level” presence last year that escalated into violence and intimidation with the goal of turning the apartment complex into a steady source of income for the gang.

The law firm said once the gang was entrenched at the complex, it used the units for illegal activities, including the prostitution of minors. The gang, the law firm added, “operated in the open,” patrolled the area and “terrorized the community.”

“The evidence we have reviewed indicates that gang members are engaging in flagrant trespass violations, assaults and battery, human trafficking and sexual abuse of minors, unlawful firearms possession, extortion, and other criminal activities, often targeting vulnerable Venezuelan and other immigrant populations,” Perkins Coie, the law firm representing U.S. Bank Trust Company, wrote on Aug. 9.

Trump’s political opponents have maintained that such accusations about both cities are sensationalized and untrue.

Trump did not confirm a date for his visit to the cities. During the rally, the former president said it would happen in “two weeks.” Additionally, no details were provided about what such a visit would entail, whether it would be a political rally or some other event.

A few days ago, Trump promised to execute the “largest deportation” in American history, which he said will begin in Aurora and Springfield.

“We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country, and we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora,” Trump said at a press conference at his golf resort near Los Angeles. “We’re bringing them back to Venezuela,” the former president also said, asserting anew that a notorious gang from the troubled South American nation is “now taking over cities.”

Earlier on Wednesday, The Denver Gazette’s news partners 9NEWS asked the city of Aurora if it was prepared for a potential visit by Trump.

“We cannot speculate on the logistics of a presidential candidate’s possible visit but would work with their respective teams as we would at any other time,” city spokesperson Ryan Luby said.

Denver Gazette reporter Nico Brambila and 9NEWS contributed to this report.