AURORA, Colo — After former President Donald Trump called for mass deportations of immigrants in Aurora, advocacy groups and the immigrant community are pushing back.
Residents are saying that what Trump has said on a national platform doesn't match up with reality for people who actually live in Aurora.
"They're all now in the United States, and they're now taking over cities. It's like an invasion from within. And 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 news conference Friday.
Besides referencing Aurora, the presidential candidate promised to send newly-arriving immigrants from Venezuela back to their country of origin. He also made references to immigrants capturing and eating people's pets in Ohio - a claim that has been widely criticized as untrue.
"In my opinion, I think it's the same argument he was making in 2016, when he started his first campaign, that he was going to carry out mass deportations," María Jiménez said in her native Spanish language. "I think it's the same position of creating hatred within our community."
Jiménez has lived in Aurora for 15 years and watched the debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this week.
Immigration advocates say the anti-immigrant rhetoric is reminiscent of what we've seen in years prior, including after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The state of Colorado, in the years after, passed immigration laws that were later repealed.
"We have actually lived through this in Colorado. In 2006, Colorado was one of the first states to pass a 'show me your papers' law, and we saw thousands of families be torn apart by deportation and by essentially mass deportation when people got caught in the criminal justice system," said Raquel Lane-Arellano with the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.
The impact was felt widely across the immigrant community. Jiménez said she was stopped while driving in 2011. The "show me your papers" law that was still on the books meant that the traffic stop prompted deportation proceedings.
"I was driving my car and because I did not have the lights on, a police officer stopped me and asked me for my documents, 'show me your papers,' so from there I began a deportation process, which is something that has caused havoc, not only to me physically, my mental health, but also to that of my children and our family," Jiménez said.
She lost her cleaning business at the time as a result of her situation, which still seems unfair to her -- all because of a simple traffic violation.
"In my case, many of my rights were violated with this law, 'show me your papers,'" Jiménez said.
Some of those laws stayed on the books until around 2021, when they were repealed in part due to immigrant advocacy groups and their organizing. Lane-Arellano worries about what would happen if Trump carried out a mass scale plan.
"I think Trump is very serious when he says he wants to deport everyone in our community. We take that threat very seriously," Lane-Arellano said.
The anti-immigrant sentiment, Jiménez said, has already led to more fear and worry within the community. While cleaning homes, two clients have showed her guns they purchased after hearing about gang violence in Aurora.
"They show me a gun and talk to me about my community. Well, it does have an impact on me, right? Simply having a gun in front of you creates a feeling of fear and nervousness, and these are people who talk about it because of what they see on the news, because of what they hear from Trump," Jiménez said. "So it's creating that impact of that fear that you don't know what awaits you as an immigrant community."