DENVER — A soldier present at an after-hours nightclub where more than 100 immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally were taken into custody appeared in court Thursday to face charges that he distributed cocaine.
Staff Sgt. Juan Gabriel Orona-Rodriguez, who is assigned to Fort Carson, an Army post near the illegal club in Colorado Springs, was arrested Wednesday evening, the FBI said.
He allegedly sold cocaine to an undercover agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration days before the raid and is accused of working with others to distribute the drug since around September, according to his arrest affidavit.
Orona-Rodriguez — a member of the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team in the 4th Infantry Division — was dressed in camouflage pants and a khaki T-shirt and held court documents in his handcuffed hands during his brief court hearing. He listened as the magistrate judge explained his rights and agreed to appoint a public defender to represent him.
At the request of Assistant U.S. Attorney Garreth Winstead, Orona-Rodriguez will continue to be held until a hearing to discuss his detention on Tuesday. His lawyer, Josh Lilley, did not address the allegations against him during the hearing and declined to comment after the hearing, citing the public defenders’ policy against speaking to the media.
More than 300 law enforcement officers and officials from multiple agencies participated in Sunday’s operation at the nightclub, which had been under investigation for months, said Jonathan Pullen, special agent in charge of the DEA’s Rocky Mountain Division.
Cocaine was among the drugs found, Pullen said at a news conference in Colorado Springs, whose leaders have declared that it is not a “sanctuary city” for migrants.
Orona-Rodriquez was one of about 17 active-duty U.S. Army service members who were at the club, known as Warike, when it was raided early Sunday, the affidavit said.
He appears to have held a leadership role in a business that provides armed security at nightclubs, including at Warike, according to the document. However, it did not say whether he was working security there at the time of the raid. It notes that he had been warned by his commanding officer this spring that he could not work for the security company.
According to the arrest affidavit, police received 911 calls related to the club “citing a wide variety of alleged crimes, including weapons violations, assault, narcotics, and other violent crime.”
Two people wanted in connection with criminal misdemeanor cases were also arrested during the raid, Colorado Springs police said.
Colorado Springs mayor Yemi Mobolade, a political independent and Nigerian immigrant, has expressed support for the operation, which he said was the “result of clear evidence of serious criminal conduct.”
“Our residents deserve to live in a city where the rule of law is upheld and where illegal behavior is met with firm and decisive action,” he said in a statement.
President Donald Trump posted a link to the DEA video of the raid on his social media site, Truth Social. “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,” the president wrote.
Rodriguez received more than a dozen Army awards during his almost nine years in service, including an Army Commendation Medal with combat device, which is earned during a deployment where the soldier was “performing meritoriously under the most arduous combat conditions,” according to Army descriptions of the award.
Of the 17 soldiers who were at the venue at the time of the raid, 16 were patrons and one was working there in a security role, a U.S. official said on the condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public. Sixteen of the soldiers there were assigned to Fort Carson, the official did not know where the seventeenth was assigned.
Investigators suspect Orona-Rodriguez was getting cocaine from an unidentified Mexican citizen who is “unlawfully present in the United States without admission,” according to the affidavit.
Orona-Rodriquez was charged with distributing cocaine and other charges.
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Associated Press writer Tara Copp in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.