The removal of three flags and desecration of the American flag at the Aurora immigration detention facility last week detracted from the message the protesters were trying to send, immigration advocates said on Tuesday.
Jeanette Vizguerra, a Colorado immigration activist seeking sanctuary at First Unitarian Society of Denver, addressed members of the media at a news conference Tuesday outside the church. Vizguerra spoke through a translator from the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.
“We don’t want to look back. We want to look forward,” she said.
Vizguerra and Cristian Solano-Córdova, the coalition’s communications manager, called for continued unity and peaceful action. The groups have been holding rallies outside the GEO facility for years and they have been peaceful, Vizguerra said.
Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post
About 2,000 protesters — concerned about possible federal immigration roundups in Denver rally at an ICE detention facility in Aurora on July 12, 2019.
Advocates received an apology from the one of the organizers of the Lights for Liberty vigil outside the Aurora detention facility, run by private company The GEO Group.
Patty Lapman, one of the organizers, apologized for miscommunication and for taking the microphone away from a speaker who was talking about his mother who had been imprisoned for the last year and a half, following the commotion with the “rogue” protesters, Vizguerra said.
Solano-Córdova also apologized on behalf of one of the coalition members who called for prosecution of the protesters for violent acts at the rally.
“That is not the message that our community stands for and we unequivocally will not pursue that action,” he said.
Advocates said they don’t condone the protesters’ actions but that they also can’t control what individual people do.
The immigrant community is already being criminalized by the immigration system, Vizguerra added, so they are not advocating for people to be even further criminalized. Aurora police on Tuesday released images of the protesters and asked for help identifying them, offering an up to $4,000 reward.
I’m at a press conference organized by the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition and other groups at the First Unitarian Society of Denver where Jeanette Vizguerra is seeking sanctuary. pic.twitter.com/OvakbWTXnO
— Saja Hindi (@BySajaHindi) July 16, 2019
Immigrant groups in Colorado are upset that the focus was on this one incident, rather than the hundreds of peaceful protests across the country that came in response to President Donald Trump’s announcement of immigration roundups.
“We want to call for unity and focus the message back to what it was in the first place,” Vizguerra said.
That message includes “subhuman conditions” at for-profit prison systems, children being kept in cages at the border and separated from their families, and raids affecting thousands in Colorado, speakers said on Tuesday.
Yessenia Martinez, an immigrant from Mexico who crossed the border at 16 with her family, also spoke at the event.
She feels the message was misrepresented and she wanted to speak out because those who receive the backlash after incidents such as Friday’s are the immigrant communities who are already affected.
Martinez’s husband is facing deportation, and if he is deported, she is at risk, too. After the announcement of the potential raids, she told The Denver Post that she hasn’t been able to leave the house much and neither has her young son.
“We are afraid,” she said. “Even our son, a U.S. citizen, is deprived of his liberty.”
Vizguerra called on the city of Aurora to hold the GEO facility to higher standards and more regular inspections and for Gov. Jared Polis to ensure Colorado’s for-profit immigration prisons comply with higher standards.
