AURORA, Colo. — Addressing thousands of supporters in a cavernous Aurora ballroom, former President Donald Trump on Friday described the migrant challenges faced by his host city in near-apocalyptic terms.

His solutions to what he portrayed as lawlessness amid a national crime wave by undocumented immigrants — by exaggerating the “limited” problems acknowledged by Aurora city officials and seizing on isolated incidents elsewhere — were equally stark. The repeat Republican presidential nominee promised to use the death penalty on migrants who kill American citizens and said he would dust off a 200-year-old law previously used to create the Japanese internment camps.

“We will send elite squads of ICE, border patrol and federal enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest, and deport every last illegal alien gang member until there is not a single one left,” the former president said to cheers, invoking authorities that included U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Trump spoke for about an hour and 20 minutes in the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center, 15 minutes from Denver’s airport on the northern edge of Aurora. The rally was 12 miles or more away from the dilapidated apartment complexes that sparked a national firestorm and drew Trump to Colorado.

Much of his speech in the mostly full ballroom, which had a capacity of 10,000, focused on illegal immigration. His lectern was flanked by mugshots of Venezuelan gang members arrested in Aurora, and the two large screens next to him recurringly played news montages describing crimes allegedly committed by migrants across America.

He promised to launch “Operation Aurora” as president. He said it would involve invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that allows the president to deport any noncitizen from a country that the U.S. is at war with. Trump said he would use it to “expedite the removal of the savage gangs.” The law previously was used to establish American internment camps in World War II, in which thousands of Japanese-Americans were detained. One of the camps, the Granada Relocation Center, also known as Amache, was located in southeastern Colorado.

As Trump spoke, members of the thousands-strong audience yelled “Deport them!” and “Send them back!” Many waved signs that read “Secure our border.”

Immigration is a key issue for Republicans this cycle as they criticize the record of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. That’s been true, too, for Colorado congressional candidates like Gabe Evans and Jeff Crank, both of whom spoke Friday; so did U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert.

Trump’s Aurora trip, the first public campaign visit by a major presidential candidate this campaign cycle, marked the zenith of his repeated exaggerations of the gang and migrant situation in the city of 400,000 people.

Some local officials and Democrats pushed back hard on Trump’s characterizations of Aurora, before and after the rally.

“I cannot overstate enough that nothing was said today that has not been said before and for which the city has not responded with the facts,” Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, also a Republican, said in a statement. “Again, the reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity in our city — and our state — have been grossly exaggerated and have unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety. The city and state have not been ‘taken over’ or ‘invaded’ or ‘occupied’ by migrant gangs.”

City officials have said a transnational Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua has “significantly affected” several neglected apartment buildings in town; they’ve also said the gang’s presence in the city is limited and that at least nine of 10 identified members have been arrested.

On Friday, Trump falsely stated that the city had been “conquered.” Tenants in the apartments, as well as years of inspection reports and lawsuits, say that neglect by the properties’ owners left the buildings infested with mold and rodents, often lacking heat and sagging from water leaks and faulty infrastructure.

In the afternoon, tenants of buildings at one of those complexes on North Dallas Street gathered with advocates and castigated Trump’s rhetoric. He and others, in targeting all migrants, are “villainizing folks because they had the audacity to seek something better for their family,” said state Rep. Tim Hernández, a Democrat.

Four hours before Trump took the stage, Gov. Jared Polis and four Democratic members of Colorado’s congressional delegation gathered at an Aurora brewery to push back on Trump’s migrant claims and criticize what Sen. Michael Bennett described as Trump’s decision to visit the city and “demonize immigrants, lie and serve his own political purposes.”

Although immigration dominated the speech, Trump touched on other favorite personal and Republican talking points. He floated pulling the broadcasting license from CBS and played a clip contrasting footage from the fictional film “Full Metal Jacket,” about Marines training for and then serving in Vietnam, with social media videos showing members of the military dressed in drag.

That prompted another wave of boos.

He repeatedly criticized Polis, to more boos, and falsely blamed the Democratic governor for a lawsuit that sought to disqualify Trump from the ballot here for his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The lawsuit was brought by a group of unaffiliated and Republican voters and aided by a liberal watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. The Colorado Supreme Court disqualified Trump, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling on the grounds it is a federal, not state-level, issue.

Trump also suggested that Colorado, a solidly blue state that backed Biden by more than 13 percentage points four years ago, could turn red in November.

“I really believe Colorado is — we’re very close. We’re very close,” Trump said. Recent public polling shows Harris with a double-digit lead over the former president.

Even if Colorado is unlikely to shake the deeper-blue coloring it has adopted since Trump entered his first presidential race nearly a decade ago, he still commanded significant support Friday.

The line to enter the ballroom snaked out of the Gaylord’s parking lot and down the street, at one point stretching more than a mile. It was still long when the rally started, and some had to watch on screen outside.

Aron Weinstock, who lives in Littleton, was excited about the rally’s turnout as he waited to enter the Gaylord building.

“In the city, you’re there by yourself,” he said. “You come to a rally like this and you see how many actually do support (Trump).”

David Leach, 18, came from Salida on Friday morning to sell Trump flags. He said he’d never seen so many people in his life.

He said he’s the son of two liberals and used to identify as liberal, too. He said “a lot” of his friends aren’t politically active yet. “There’s a lot of shaming if you’re interested in Trump,” he said. “I’ve definitely gotten a lot of people yelling at me while I’m selling flags.”

Still, not everyone outside of the Gaylord was pleased with the turnout. Protesters played drums, and Dena McClung stood among a group of Harris-Walz campaign supporters at the corner of East 64th Avenue and Gaylord Rockies Boulevard.

Four police officers were on hand nearby as interactions between Trump and Harris supporters hit intermittent boiling points. One man, holding a Trump flag, yelled homophobic slurs at the counter-protesters.

McClung, who’s lived in Aurora for 29 years, came with her roommate to protest.

“It is a much bigger turnout than I expected it to be,” she said of rally-goers.

Inside, as Trump wound down his rally on the day that Colorado clerks began mailing ballots to voters for the Nov. 5 election, he urged people to vote and — returning to previous descriptions of the state’s third-largest city as a “war zone” — promised to “liberate Colorado.”

“We will reclaim our sovereignty,” he said, “and Colorado will vote for Trump as a protest and signal to the world that we are not going to take it anymore.”

(Staff reporter Jessica Alvarado Gamez contributed to this story.)

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