President Trump and Senator Vance are on a tour across the country highlighting their promise to commence the “largest deportation operation” in American history, but they’re doing so to the dismay of their fellow Republicans. The two have been “grossly” exaggerating the problem, one mayor has said. 

On Saturday, Trump traveled to Aurora, Colorado, to talk about what he says is a crisis in the city, referring to members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua harassing residents at their apartment complexes. The former president says he will name his deportation force “Operation Aurora” to get rid of the vast majority of the estimated 20 million undocumented immigrants currently living in America. 

The mayor of Aurora, however, is not too happy about the name. 

“Former President Trump’s visit to Aurora is an opportunity to show him and the nation that Aurora is a considerably safe city — not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs,” the city’s Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, said ahead of Trump’s remarks Saturday. “My public offer to show him our community and meet with our police chief for a briefing still stands.”

“The reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity have been grossly exaggerated. The incidents were limited to several apartment complexes in this city of more than 400,000 residents,” the mayor said in a statement on Facebook. 

Trump seemed to pay no mind to the mayor’s message, saying in his speech that Aurora was nothing less than a “war zone” worthy of mass deportations. 

“Kamala has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world,” Trump claimed. “And she has had them resettled, beautifully, into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens, that’s what they’re doing. And no place is it more evident than right here.”

Mr. Vance on Sunday tried to clean up the messaging during an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week,” where he said even one migrant crime is too many. 

“Do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris’s open border?” Mr. Vance told host Martha Raddatz. “I really find this exchange, Martha, sort of interesting because you seem to be more focused [on] nitpicking everything Donald Trump has said rather than acknowledging that apartment complexes in the United States of America are being taken over by violent gangs,” Mr. Vance said. 

“I worry so much more about that problem than anything else,” he added. “When you let people in by the millions — most of whom are unvetted, most of whom you don’t really know who they are — you’re going to have problems like this.”

Mr. Coffman’s frustrations with Trump and Mr. Vance’s mischaracterization of his city’s problems put him in a fraternity of other Republicans who have pushed back on the presidential ticket. 

After Mr. Vance helped spread the lie that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, earlier this year, his own governor, Mike DeWine, had to take to the pages of the New York Times to hit back against the accusations. That was just after Mr. Vance claimed he sometimes had to “create” stories in order to get the press to cover certain issues. 

Mr. DeWine was not happy with those assertions. 

“I was born in Springfield, Ohio. My wife, Fran, and I have lived our entire lives less than 10 miles from this city,” the Ohio governor wrote in September. “Springfield is having a resurgence in manufacturing and job creation. Some of that is thanks to the dramatic influx of Haitian migrants who have arrived in the city over the past three years to fill jobs. They are there legally. They are there to work.”

Trump — at a Pennsylvania rally just days after Mr. DeWine’s opinion piece was published — decided to turn his eye to another city experiencing an influx of Haitian migrants: Charleroi, Pennsylvania. 

Citing no evidence, the former president claimed the town had been overrun by “lawless gangs” during an appearance in Pennsylvania on September 24. 

The Republican state senator who represents Charleroi, Camera Bartolotta, was quick to point out that the former president’s claims were untrue. 

“These Haitians are working hard, sending their children to school and opening businesses. They are here legally. They did not cross our border. Many are professionals who escaped horrific conditions in their home country,” Ms. Bartolotta wrote on X. 

She went even further, however, saying that the infusion of 2,000 Haitian nationals in Charleroi — a city of 4,000 — has been great for the community

“There was no workforce in Charleroi a few years ago when a business owner desperately needed them. He advertised and looked for workers for a long time. Before shutting down completely, he hired an agency that connected immigrants who were vetted and LEGAL to work in his facility. Instead of closing, he now has three shifts working around the clock,” Ms. Bartolotta wrote.