DENVER (AP) — The second of two men who escaped from a Colorado immigration detention center during a power outage last month was arrested Tuesday after being found on a bus in Denver, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
Originally suspected of shoplifting and resisting arrest, the 24-year-old from Venezuela had been picked up by ICE in February and is accused of ties to Tren de Aragua, a gang that gained global notoriety after U.S. President Donald Trump put it at the center of his efforts to deport immigrants accused of crimes.
Geilond Vido-Romero was caught while riding a bus on Colfax Avenue, the city’s main east-west street, said the U.S. Marshals Service in Denver, which helped in the arrest. In a social media post, the agency said he was a “suspected Tren de Aragua (TdA) associate.”
Vido-Romero apparently walked out of doors that opened during a power outage on March 18 at ICE’s privately-operated detention center in Aurora, Colorado. A man from Mexico who escaped at the same time, Joel Gonzalez-Gonzalez, 32, was found three days later in nearby Adams County where he had been previously held in jail.
A U.S. Marshals spokesperson did not immediately respond to a telephone call or email seeking more details about Vido-Romero’s arrest and ties to the gang from Venezuela, which started in a prison there.
Court and police documents show Vido-Romero had lived at the now closed apartment complex in Aurora where some armed members of the gang were seen entering an apartment on a viral video that caught Trump’s attention during last year’s presidential campaign. Some members of the gang were also later accused of kidnapping and assaulting two residents there in December.
Vido-Romero was originally arrested Feb. 26 by police at the Park Meadows mall after a running from officers in the parking garage, according to an arrest affidavit. He was suspected of misdemeanor theft for allegedly stealing a white puffer jacket and jewelry that was stuffed into one if its pockets, it said. ICE said it found him in the nearby jail and arrested him the next day.
He does not have an attorney listed as representing him in that case.
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