I wrote for the New York Times Magazine about immigration and politics in Aurora, Colorado—a suburb where years ago I worked as a newspaper intern. Back then, I wrote a feature about an “outstanding immigrant”—a senior citizen from Finland! These days Aurora is much more diverse. Colorado’s third-largest city, it’s about half non-white and the kids in its public schools speak 160 languages.

In Fall 2024, right before the presidential election, doorbell cam video from inside a rough apartment complex went viral. It featured a number of young men with guns, apparently hunting somebody—another immigrant they found and killed about ten minutes later. The left-leaning powers-that-be denied there could be a major gang problem, while right-leaning politicians, and a certain MAGA candidate, played it up as evidence of a “criminal invasion” of our cities. The truth, predictably, lay in the middle, but the way it all came down makes for a pretty fascinating story.

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