In the weeks since President Trump threatened mass deportations, immigrants living illegally in Colorado have been consumed with fear as they explore options to protect themselves and their families from any coming roundups.
Meanwhile, advocacy groups are training immigrants about their civil rights and teaching concerned U.S. citizens on what to do when they see agents trying to arrest someone. The threats also have triggered political protests in Denver, Boulder and Aurora.
“People are so afraid because they think immigration and ICE are going to show up anywhere, in schools, hospitals, churches and schools,” said community organizer Gina Millan of the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights.
The Trump administration has said it will target those who have deportation orders.
Jesus, who is one of those with a deportation order, said the fear of being forced to leave has become all-consuming as he worries about being separated from his fiancee and two children. The Denver Post has chosen to use only his first name because of the pending deportation order.
Like many people living in the country illegally, Jesus’ story is complicated, and he has been struggling to obtain legal status for years. One hindrance — he pleaded guilty several years ago to driving while ability impaired.
For awhile, Jesus, who was brought to the United States from Mexico by his parents when he was 11, was protected by President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status, which prevented the immediate deportation of people brought into the country as children. But he was unable to renew in 2015 because of his driving record, said Hans Meyer, a Denver immigration lawyer who represents Jesus.
He also had benefited from an Obama administration decision to put a low priority on deporting people who it deemed were not a danger to their communities, Meyer said.
The Trump administration switched gears, and Jesus’ deportation case was back on the books.
However, Jesus was never notified of his court hearing because of a series of errors, Meyer said.
After he failed to appear, Jesus, 27, was arrested by ICE agents earlier this year as he was getting into his car outside his home. He was detained for two months at the private ICE detention facility in Aurora before he was released on bond.
Immediate deportation orders were handed down and then delayed once Meyer intervened.
Now, Jesus waits.
His entire family lives in Colorado, and he has almost no contacts in Mexico. He worries how his fiancee and children — all U.S. citizens — will get by without him and the income he earns as a handyman. He also is concerned about his parents, who are living in the country illegally.
He doesn’t want to be deported to a country where he likely wouldn’t be able to find work and would worry about violence from cartels — the same reasons his parents left the country more than a decade ago.
“We’re trying everything so they can stop the voluntary departure,” Jesus said.
Although President Trump first tweeted on June 17 that he wanted to deport “millions of illegal aliens” the mass roundups have not happened.
At the White House on Friday, Trump said increased ICE enforcement will “be starting fairly soon.”
“I say, they came in illegally, and we’re bringing them out legally,” the president said.
Two days later, acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli told CBS that ICE agents are prepared to handle the task of arresting and removing about 1 million immigrants.
“They’re ready to just perform their mission, which is to go and find and detain and then deport the approximately one million people who have final removal orders,” he said Sunday.
ICE typically has focused its deportation efforts on individuals with criminal histories. According to data released July 1, its agents arrested 685 people in the Denver area during the first three months of 2019 and deported 740 people from the metro area in those three months. Most of those who were removed, 476, were convicted criminals, according to ICE statistics.
Alethea Smock, a spokeswoman for ICE’s Denver field office, said the enforcement operations maintain the integrity of U.S. immigration laws and improve public safety by removing “criminal aliens” from local communities.
“However, ICE deportation officers carry out targeted enforcement operations daily nationwide as part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to protect the nation, uphold public safety, and protect the integrity of our immigration laws and border controls,” she said in an emailed statement.
The ICE field office in Denver did not have available the number of people with final deportation orders in Colorado. Neither did the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which operates the nation’s immigration courts.
Meanwhile, the threat of mass deportations has mobilized immigrant rights advocates and supporters.
Millan, a host of a Latino radio show, has been hearing concerns about the ICE raids as people call in to the station. People are even afraid to go to work, she said.
“The fear in the rural communities is even stronger,” she said. “In all of the 21 years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen the fear this high.”
Millan recommends families come up with emergency plans and attend civil rights training. Her advocacy group is promoting the Colorado Rapid Response Hotline, which allows anyone to report incidents that they believe are potential raids or abuses.
When Trump first tweeted about the raids, the ACLU of Colorado didn’t expect Denver to be one of the cities on the list, said Ana Temu, the immigration campaigns coordinator. The president wanted to focus on large cities with an influx of Central American migrants. After finding out Denver was one of the targets, it “just sparked the urgency to start scheduling trainings,” Temu said.
“We have no idea of how big or small the raids are going to be,” Temu said.
The ACLU of Colorado is ramping up its “Know Your Rights” program, especially in Spanish. The agency is working with other nonprofits and community organizations to offer the training. Last week, Temu taught a class at the Mexican consulate in Denver.
Temu has been involved in immigrant rights advocacy work since 2010. But this is the first time she’s seen so much engagement from people to proactively learn their rights and legal options.
“Doing these ‘Know Your Rights’ trainings, I see people come in with doubt and fear in their eyes — which is hard to see — but the best thing and what has been extremely therapeutic for me is when we’re going through ‘Know Your Rights’ training, I can see individually in people’s eyes the moment when it clicks,” she said.
The political pressures also are mounting.
On July 2, roughly 500 protesters gathered outside a downtown Denver federal building that holds an immigration court and an office for U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Yuma Republican.
They chanted and carried signs calling for the closure of migrant detention camps, especially those that house children. Some told stories of their run-ins with ICE – adults deported without their children, newborns raised by grandparents – and criticized GEO Group, a private company which operates the ICE facility in Aurora.
“Both of my sons are having a really hard time in Mexico, due to the violence and insecurity there,” said a woman named Juanita, whose adult sons have been deported. One of the sons chose to leave his children, who are American citizens, in the United States; the other did not.
Gardner, who has voiced opposition to a Trump policy separating families at the southern border, was not at the Denver office when protesters arrived but agreed in a statement released Wednesday that conditions at the border are unacceptable.
On Monday, U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, an Aurora Democrat, called for a ban on private companies operating immigration detention facilities, calling them “a stain on our American values.”
“We have an immigration detention system that is driven by corporate greed. This system has allowed corporations like GEO Group to cut corners on necessary medical care and safety to benefit their bottom line,” Crow said in a statement.
For Meyer, the immigration attorney representing Jesus, all of this is a sign of a broken system. Jesus is one of many immigrants living in the country illegally who is caught up in a complicated system and now has a deportation order because of an error.
“These are people who have final orders of removal because they didn’t get a fair day in court, because of bad lawyering or failure of the court to provide them notice of hearing or some sort of mistake in the legal process,” Meyer said.
Meyer, along with other advocates, called Trump’s raid announcement propaganda. The announcement is meant to terrorize immigrants and to gather political support, he said.
Even with possible deportation looming, Jesus remains determined to stay.
Some families have emergency plans and bags packed.
Not Jesus.
“I’m going to fight and fight … I don’t have a Plan B, I don’t see a Plan B,” he said. “I don’t have anything over there, so I’m just going to fight until it’s over,” he said.
