The DEA arrested more than 100 at an ‘underground’ club in Colorado Springs over the past weekend.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Monday that the Colorado nightclub targeted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) over the weekend had been the subject of more than 150 calls to 911 during the Biden administration. The DEA said the weekend raid netted “114 illegal aliens.”
“During the Biden administration, they received 170 911 calls to that club alone. That club we were just watching—170 calls. Wouldn’t you think that would have been a red flag?” Bondi said in an interview with Fox News. She added that she believes the United States ”is safer” after the nightclub bust.
The DEA said on Sunday that officials also found drugs, firearms, and evidence of prostitution at the club.
“Part of busting up the underground nightclub in Colorado Springs included the arrest of 114 illegal aliens,” the DEA
wrote on social media platform X. “Drugs and weapons have also been seized at this underground nightclub in Colorado Springs.”
In a later post, it said more than 200 people were inside the “underground nightclub” that federal agents entered at around 3:45 a.m. local time.
Bondi said in a Sunday
post on X that officials believe the club, which was not named, was frequented by suspected Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members, adding that two of the people who were detained were arrested on existing warrants. In February, the Trump administration designated both groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
On Sunday, President Donald Trump hailed the arrests in a Truth Social post.
“A big Raid last night on some of the worst people illegally in our Country—Drug Dealers, Murderers, and other Violent Criminals, of all shapes and sizes, and Judges don’t want to send them back to where they came from,” Trump
said in the post. “If we don’t win this battle at the Supreme Court, our Country, as we know it, is FINISHED!”
A DEA
video posted online showed agents announcing their presence outside the building and ordering patrons to leave with their hands up. Other videos showed dozens of people fleeing the building via the entrance after federal agents smashed a window. Later, dozens of suspects were shown in handcuffs standing on the sidewalk waiting to be transported.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Colorado temporarily blocked the deportation of illegal immigrants facing possible removal under Trump’s invocation of an 18th-century law known as the Alien Enemies Act. Some who were subject to Trump’s use of the law were sent to El Salvador and housed in its mega-prison, CECOT.
The Supreme Court earlier this month blocked the government from deporting any Venezuelans held in northern Texas under the law. Justice Samuel Alito wrote a sharp dissent that castigated the majority of justices who issued the ruling.
The justices’ brief order
directed the government not to remove Venezuelans held in the Bluebonnet Detention Center “until further order of this court,” prompting the Trump administration to
submit a petition to have the high court remove its administrative stay.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
