07 21 25 Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman Responds to Mayor Johnston on Migrants

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Or are Mayor Mike Coffin. We appreciate you joining us
this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Good morning, very good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
I want to talk with you because we've been wanting
to catch up with you because of this kerfuffle, of course,
with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. I know you both joined
and had the same stage on Wednesday at an event
to joint appearance. I don't know if it's the first
time you'd seen or engage with the mayor since then.
But what was that like? Initially?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, you know, Sean Boyd CBS four was a moderator
and so she went on a script and ask a
question about you know, the differences, you know, the hostility
if you can put it that way, between myself and
Mayor Johnston. And so I really didn't feel if that

(00:45):
was the right form to probably go to the corey
Is shoes and so I've talked about some things, but
really didn't get into it because I don't think that
the audience was there for that purpose.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Mayor Johnston was on our ear on Friday, which of
course is post and you guys were there on Wednesday,
and he says that he's always open to a dialogue
with you, and that the talk about meeting with you quarterly.
It was your idea, at least initially to stop them.
Was that the case, because he said he's happy to
start them again, and if you like, did.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
He express that, Yeah, it was absolutely the case to
stop him. And the reason why is because the purpose
of these meetings was to inform each other about what
we were doing, and particularly if it would have an
impact on the other city. And so during that time
I found out later on, and we're still investigating this,

(01:34):
that Mayor Mike Johnson was involved in really what I
would call a covert operation to systemic, systematically move migrants
from Denver to Aurora, and without telling me. He had
asked me before if he could do that, I said no,
then without telling me, without telling our county partners that

(01:57):
do human services, what he was doing. And so not
only did he compromise the public safety of the city
of Aurora in doing so, but he caused us a
lot of reputational and economic damage because that viral video

(02:18):
of those Venezuelan gang members in an apartment building in
the city of Aurora has his fingerprints all over it.
And so I'm trying to get down to the bottom
of it he's not being forthright with me. We've done
a lot of core request of odd that I think
probably in the history of this state, I don't think
one municipality has ever done that against another municipality, where

(02:41):
under state law you have to turn over documents that
are requested in a legal manner, you know, And so
we are in the process of doing that. I'm reaching
out to the Attorney General's office because I saw a
story last week where he's CBZ managed was the the owner,

(03:01):
the out of states plumb lord that had the ownership
of these three apartment buildings that were problematic in our city.
Uh that that Minke Johnson moved Venezuelan migrants into under
his program using a third party nonprofit, and so it's
just inappropriate what he did hurt my city is not
he's not forthcoming about it, and so and so of

(03:24):
course I suspended those meetings because the purpose of those
meetings was to share what he was doing that he
didn't share. So we're trying to figure out a path
to move forward with us. But at the same time,
I really, you know, got to get down to what
was done and so what we know so far through
our core request is yes. In fact, he did use
third party nonprofits to move people systematically into the city

(03:49):
of Auroral migrants. What we know about Venezuelan migrants is
they're generally very good people. I think the problem is
they're leaving Venezuela because it's a failed state. Under Maduro,
criminalities just rampant. The role of the police there is
to defend the government against the people. It's not to
defend the people against criminality. And so unfortunately, some of

(04:10):
these criminal elements have followed up, followed them up to
the United States. And whenever you have a concentration of
Venezuelans that that we had in those three apartment buildings
thanks to Denver, you you you invite that criminal element
to super impose itself over them, and that gave us
that viral video that has done so many stamily Story City.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
I want to split two things up here. So, so
you say you have proof that the mayor was doing
this via via these nonprofits literally moving inventory. You have
you have documented proof that that was happening. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
I think what we know is that he did do it.
We don't know how many. And I think it's it's
and and why I need help from the Attorney General
is is I need to know that those It's not
conclusive whether though, I mean, they were very career native
and how they did this because they wanted to be

(05:03):
a COVID operation and so we just don't And I
get that he was under a terrible amount of pressure
that he had reached out to, you know, mayors of
all the different cities or in the metro area and
everybody said no, and he was desperate, and so this
seemed to be like a good strategy only had backfired

(05:25):
in a really big way. It's funny you saw it
really hurt my city, and.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
I apologize interrupted you. It's funny you took about being
under pressure because Mayor Johnson said, we asked, well, why
do you think there's this disconnect with the dialogue and
Mayor Coffin is doing that. Mayor Johnson and I'm paraphing
here says, well, maybe he was a lot of an
a pressure to deal with the issues that are going
on his city regarding those so so, but let me
let me follow up with this though however, whoever, what
it stems from the whole issue, was there a Venezuelan

(05:52):
gang problem in Aurora? From your take because I think
your police chief said, no, there was a gang problem,
but it wasn't necessarily tied to the Venezuelans. What has
been sussed out? What's three with that?

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Well, I think they did. I mean it's evolving over time.
But I think clearly we did have a problem. I mean,
it wasn't I mean the problem. Let me tell you
that by not telling us what he was doing, we didn't.
It took us a while to figure out the extent
of the problem. So, I mean, first of all, it
was unfair to the residence of Aurora what he did,

(06:24):
because he compromised our public safety. But it was unfair
of the people that he pushed over into Aurora where
he only gave him From what we can tell in
our core request, they just got a security posit in
two months rent And so he was able and he
got a lot of money from the Biden administration to
take care of these people. And I think he was

(06:46):
able to concentrate those resources on the people that he kept.
And what we don't know too, what was the criteria
for the people he decided not to keep him push
into Aurora versus the people that he kept. But I
think the fact that he's not. I confront him about
this when I found out about it. We were tipped
off by a story that was published in the City Journal.

(07:08):
It's a it's an online you know, publication, and the
title is Chaos and Aurora, And we were tipped off
by that. And then I confronted him on it, and
he just you know, taught in circles to where he
didn't say he did it, didn't say it'd into it.
And so it's and that's why we've had to go through, uh,
spend the money, uh to do these CORPS requests which

(07:29):
are color out Open Records Request Act based on that,
and so it's it's you know, it's it's been tough.
I think the better thing he could have done is
just said when when you know, when we found out, look,
I made a mistake, I'm sorry I did it, uh
and moved on. But the fact that he doesn't do that, uh,
and he's and we're going to have to going through

(07:50):
all these hoops to find out what happened because I
think it's important for the people of Ara to know. I
think it's important for the people who stay of Colorado
to know because there is no law that's says a
one city can't move either migrants or homeless individuals systematically
into another city without the permission of that city. There's

(08:11):
no law that says you can't do that. There really
ought to be, and I hope that the outcome and
all this is that there is a law to do this.
And I look forward with my discussions with the Attorney General.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
I want to get to a couple other things with
the limited amount of time that we have. One So
are you willing to meet with the mayor? But will
you meet with will you have counsel with you? Because
I know.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Thee so what I'm proposing and what we're working on,
because we have a number of issues to resolve. I
think one outstanding issue is that during the Joys flood
riots in twenty twenty, we had a mutual aid agreement
with Denver and we sent our officers into Denver with

(08:50):
the understanding of that under state statue provides a framework
for this and it says, look, you the receiving jurisdiction
has to uh indignify the officers officers that are that
are going to buy provide assistance. Then and then we
there were lawsuits involved and Denver did not identify our

(09:14):
officers and came up with some creative, you know, theory
about why they didn't do it. And so we've been
in litigation with them, and so they won an off
ramp to that litigation because quite frankly, they're in a
financial crisis and they don't have the money to fund
the litigation. They're going to lose the case, but you know,
their strategy I think is just to delay it as
long as long as they can. But now they want

(09:36):
an off ramp, and so as part of that off ramp,
I think we're going to negotiate some other things. And
so quartterally means, but the quartterally means will never again
be between myself and Mike Johnston. The quartally meetings will
be with there. There will be six parties present, plus
based on the agenda anybody else. Let's say, if we're
talking about law enforcement, then we'll want the respective chiefs

(10:00):
of police there, but that will be myself, Mike Johnson
and his chief of staff and his city attorney, and
it will be my UH city manager and my city attorney.
So the six of us will be present. And because
there I see no value after what I've gone through,
with Mike Johnson to have him one on one meeting

(10:21):
with him. But what we will it's important that we
have a good relationship despite what's happened, and that we
figure out how to move forward in the interest of
both of our cities. And so I think this communicator,
but I think, uh, I've got a different, you know,
strategy in terms of doing communications, because I'm concerned that,

(10:43):
I mean, Diver has already done this to us with
our migrant population, and in this covert manner. Are they gonna, uh,
They're they're in desperate financial traits. Are they gonna, you know,
do this time with the homeless population? So I think
we need to have those discussions. But but again I
think I can look, I want to I want it
with three people sitting a guards the day with me

(11:04):
and not just one person.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
How soon will they happen? And then a quick follow up?
And it's not necessarily germane to the question, but I'm
just curious, from one hundred thousand foot level, had the
mayor come to you, and you're alleging that he didn't
he pushed them in any ways, had he come to
you and say, hey, Mayor Kaufin, I've got a problem.
Will you take some of these people on. What would
your response been to that had.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
He asked you, no, he did that initially, I mean
he did that, and but we've never been in a
city of war, has never been a sanctuary city, and
I just didn't feel that and I think we'd get
a lot of pushback, you know, from a residence. And
so I said no. And but absolutely he was And
there's no question, but the the you know, I don't

(11:43):
think that the the means justifies the end, so to speak,
that not being forthright, not being honest, and doing it
in a way that I think not only that that
I think was unfair to the people he pushed over
because they didn't get the resource. Is that the people
that he kept and and that we we're Denver is

(12:05):
a city in a county, so they have human services
capability as being a county government and a city government.
We're a municipality where where we rely on our part
our county partners to do provide human services when we're
in three counties. And they were not only were we
not notified, but they were never notified that these people
were pushed over to where they could have provided some

(12:26):
assistance to these people, and they were just abandoned. Me.
It was a form of human dumping, and so it
was just wrong. I get the desperation, you know, and
I think that he in his mind, he probably thought, well,
it's the it's so what he did was he changed
his contracts to instead of saying put them in Denver,

(12:50):
put them in Denver in the surrounding communities. And nobody
noticed it that he that he did that, and it
just got through I think city council on consent calendar,
so there was no debate on it, never informed us
of it. And so then what I think in his mind,
I thought, well that it's the it is the these
are nonprofit, these that we're contracting with that are making

(13:11):
the decision, is not we're not making the decision. But
I think that that's not I don't buy that. I mean,
I think that he if he's giving them the money
and he says put them anywhere, well, you know, guess what,
you're responsible.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
We'll have to continue to follow up on this. I
appreciate your time on this. Look forward to when you
have an actual meeting set up between the two you
mayor Mike Coffin, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Hey, thanks between the six of us, Thanks