[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

While Border Czar Kamala Harris continues to evade responsibility for helping throw open our southern border to millions of unvetted illegals, the consequences of that ongoing national security debacle are erupting throughout the United States, not just at the border. Indeed, every state is a border state now.

Exhibit A: a Venezuelan gang that is being described as exponentially more dangerous than the monstrous MS-13 gang has seized the opportunity afforded it by the Harris-Biden administration to seize control of apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado. Aurora is just east of the sanctuary city of Denver, which has received more migrants per capita than any city in the country, most of them Venezuelan. More than 40,000 migrants have arrived there since December 2022.

Tren de Aragua, or TdA, is, in the words of the Treasury Department, a “deadly criminal threat” involved in human trafficking, extortion, money laundering and drug trafficking. Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales has described TdA as “MS-13 on steroids”:

They’re extremely aggressive. It’s not as if they’re a passive group, or they want to quietly go about things. They’re coming from Venezuela, one of the most war-torn countries over the last decade. So, they’re battle-hardened in many ways. And they’ve made this trek from there to here. But they are also becoming… more organized and more brazen.

Mexican authorities reportedly have seen a large number of individuals they believe are members of TdA operating in the border state of Chihuahua and crossing the U.S. border near El Paso.

Last Wednesday, Fox Denver aired apartment surveillance video that showed an armed gang of men — later confirmed by cops as suspected members of TdA — strolling through an apartment complex in Aurora that residents say has been overrun by the gang.

One witness said “she was afraid to talk much because of the dangerous people living in the complex.”

“It’s been a nightmare and I can’t wait to get out of here,” apartment resident Cindy Romero told Fox Denver as she moved out of the building with her husband. Romero was helped to move by City Council Member Danielle Jurinsky, who was instrumental in getting access to that video and sharing it with the media. Jurinsky went to Fox News to sound the alarm on “a complete gang takeover in parts of our city”:

We currently have entire complexes under gang control — complexes where staff have been beaten up, they’ve been threatened, their families have been threatened [and] complexes where there are no staff left on the property. These complexes are being run by this Tren de Aragua gang.

They start breaking into apartments themselves when someone leaves out of fear or whatever. They go in and take pictures of the apartment themselves. Then, I’ve been told, within hours, a Venezuelan family moves in.

Parts of the city are absolutely under this gang control. The local media is downplaying this. I believe politics is being played with people’s lives.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman himself told Fox News on Thursday that “there are several buildings” that have “fallen to these Venezuelan gangs” in his city. He said he believes the buildings were used as taxpayer-funded migrant housing, which is what gave the gangs a foothold in the area.

True to Democrat form, the response of the blue state leadership has been to demonize and dismiss those who complain about illegal immigration issues. In response to Councilwoman Jurinsky and growing media shock over the video footage, a spokesperson for Colorado’s Democrat Gov. Jared Polis dismissed the video, police reports, and the mayor’s confirmation of the gang takeover as “largely a feature of Danielle Jurinsky’s imagination.”

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Jurinsky shot back: “My question back to the governor is, is this also a figment of the Romeros’ imagination? And the other resident that I helped to get out of there, and the other residents that I am going to continue to get out of there?”

Cindy Romero herself responded to Gov. Polis by saying, “You can’t fake video and Polis wouldn’t last five minutes on that property”:

They don’t want to admit that they’re part of the problem. It’s the administration who we count on to make the rules for us, to make the guidelines that we go by. I call 911. No help comes for me. No help.

Former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office director John Fabbricatore also slammed Gov. Polis, tweeting on Thursday, “So now Jared Polis believes this is all made-up theatre. Yes, Governor, we hired a Hollywood director and filmed this to make you look bad. – No, The Biden/Harris administration caused this problem, and you advocated for it.”

The governor’s spokesperson responded snidely that Gov. Polis “really hopes that the city council members in charge stop trashing their own city when they are supposed to keep it safe.”

“There are people behind this that are solely playing politics,” said Jurinsky. “That is so sad to me because they’re real human beings, just like the Romeros suffering on the other side of those doors, living behind four deadbolt locks and a door brace and living in fear every day in these complexes.”

The Denver Post editorial board published a gaslighting op-ed calling the gang threat “sensationalized.” The editors had the nerve to declare that “some… are using incidents in Aurora and Denver to fuel fear of other Venezuelans and asylum seekers.” I’m pretty sure that the fear of Venezuelans and asylum seekers is being fueled by armed gangs of Venezuelan illegals, but hey, the Post editors have a narrative to maintain.

As if to contradict their own op-ed, the editors conclude their piece by noting that “Homeland Security Investigations regional spokeswoman Alethea Smock told The Denver Post this month that the gang was an emerging threat in Denver.” Well which is it, Denver Post: are gang takeovers an emerging threat or just “sensationalized incidents”?

“This is a problem that is not just a Denver Metro area problem … [it] stems from a failed southern border,” Danielle Jurinsky told Breitbart News last Thursday, and she is right. It’s not just a Denver-area problem; it’s a national problem, and this is only the beginning. Regardless of who takes the White House this coming January, too much damage to our national security has already been wrought by the open-borders enthusiasts of the Biden administration. We are going to witness: ramped-up gun violence and savagery from foreign-based gangs; terrorism including European-style stabbing jihad; a spike in drug and human trafficking; and random crime and brutality from entitled illegals from cultures that despise Western people. And every bit of it is the design of a Left-wing regime on a mission to subvert the stability and security of the United States of America. Prepare accordingly.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior