To fight “criminal migrants,” Trump announces Operation Aurora

Aurora, CO, as is Springfield, OH — the city whose Haitian community Trump targeted during the Harris debate by accusing them of “eating dogs.” […] eat cats” — has been propelled to the center of media attention since the Republican candidate unveiled what he calls “Operation Aurora”.

• Aurora is a city of 400,000 inhabitants which borders the capital of Colorado, Denver. The majority of voters there voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election — except in Douglas County, which however only includes a small part of the city.
• During a rally on Friday October 11, Donald Trump, addressing the crowd on a podium flanked by large black panels displaying the slogans “ Deport Ilegals Now » (Deport illegal migrants now) and “ End Migrant Crime » (Stop Migrant Crime), announced the launch of “Operation Aurora”.
• This would likely consist, if he is elected on November 5, of a federal program aimed at facilitating and allocating more resources to the deportation of migrants who have committed crimes, with an emphasis on “gang members”.

Trump didn’t go to Aurora by chance. It was in a residential complex in the city that a resident, Cindy Romero, filmed a video last August showing armed men trying to break into an apartment across the street from her home. The footage was subsequently relayed millions of times, portraying Aurora as a city “under siege” by “Venezuelan migrant gangs.”

Romero was among those invited by Trump to take the stage at the October 11 rally.

• The “Aurora gangs” affair quickly died down. The city’s Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, publicly rejected the idea promoted by Trump that Aurora is being “stormed” by criminal migrants.
• Unlike the fake news of Springfield taken over by Trump, where the accusations against migrants were unfounded, there is indeed organized crime in Aurora which includes individuals who do not have American nationality. This causes victims and affects the population living in the most impacted areas.
• However, nothing indicates that this crime would be more significant than elsewhere, or that “criminal migrants” would occupy a greater place. The data also point to a total absence of correlation between immigration and crime.

Romero’s video caused a shock keenly felt by the residents of Aurora and amplified by a media frenzy, particularly active on the right wing. By going there, Trump applies a well-known mechanism popularized by the American philosopher Eric Hoffer in The True Believer : Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movement. In this book published in 1951, Hoffer describes the way in which demagogues play on the feeling of insecurity of vulnerable populations feeling helpless in the face of a situation supposedly once under control.

Trump, like his running mate JD Vance, is exploiting a fear that has turned into a major electoral concern for Republican voters — and, to a lesser extent, Democrats.

• The number of illegal entries into the United States has reached historic peaks under Joe Biden: up to 2.2 million people in 2022 – more than under the entire Trump mandate (1.95 million between 2017 and 2020) .
• In 2022, approximately 11 million undocumented migrants were estimated to be living in the United States. This has been a stable figure since the beginning of the century.
• The day after the Aurora rally, JD Vance published an excerpt from an interview in which he said he was in favor of “deporting a large number of people […] around a million people per year.

The “largest national expulsion operation in the history of the United States,” in Trump’s words, is not currently based on any precise criteria. Since entering the United States illegally is a crime, 11 million people would potentially be affected by “Operation Aurora”. Experts are nevertheless skeptical about the feasibility of such an operation, and warn of the immediate cost it would represent for American finances as well as the long-term cost caused by the loss of manpower.