Federal agents detained 50 people, many of them connected to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, during an early-morning raid of a makeshift nightclub in Adams County, authorities said Sunday.
“It was a good day for the safety of Colorado,” the DEA’s Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Pullen told The Sun. “These people were dealing drugs and they had weapons. They are serious bad guys.”
The DEA has been investigating the infamous Tren de Aragua gang’s activity in Colorado since last summer, including infiltrating social media sites where gang members communicate, Pullen said. Members of the gang have been meeting up to party in a makeshift private nightclub, and federal agents have seen their invitations advertising DJs and beer.
About 100 agents raided the club with a federal search warrant about 5 a.m. Sunday when about 50 people were still at the party, Pullen said. They seized four weapons, cash, cocaine and pink cocaine, which is a mix of cocaine and either methamphetamine or ketamine that gang members dye pink, Pullen said.
No one was injured on either side, he said.
“You’ve seen the videos from Aurora a few months ago and how serious and violent these people are,” Pullen said. “My agents worked tirelessly to make sure this was a safe operation. We came in with a show of force.”
The nightclub is a private space along Federal Boulevard with no neon signs or public advertising, Pullen said.
“You wouldn’t drive by there on Federal Boulevard on a Friday night and say, ‘Let’s stop in there. That looks like a good place to get a beer,’” he said. “You wouldn’t do that.”
Agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as other federal and local authorities, participated in the operation. ICE agents determined that most of the people in the club were illegally in the country, and they were loaded onto a bus and taken to the ICE detention center in Aurora.
About four people in the nightclub were U.S. citizens, Pullen said.
The Denver division of the DEA has been investigating the gang since the summer, when a video showed alleged gang members trying to break into an apartment at a crime-ridden complex in Aurora. President Donald Trump made a campaign stop in Aurora and vowed to begin mass deportations of immigrants in what he has called “Operation Aurora.”
Pullen said the raid was not planned to coincide with the new president taking office.
“This is the timeline we were working,” he said. “This case started during the Biden administration and continued into the Trump. It’s what we did last week and what we will be doing tomorrow.”
The DEA announced the raid on X, formerly Twitter. “The bus took away nearly 50 illegal aliens,” the Rocky Mountain division said in a social media post in which they included a video of a bus pulling out onto a snowy road. “This was invite-only — dozens connected to the Tren de Aragua gang were there,” the DEA posted.
Denver7 reported that the television station’s cameras captured video about 5:45 a.m. near the 6600 block of Federal Boulevard in Adams County that showed agents rounding up people and escorting them onto a bus.
