President Donald Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations of immigrants has sparked fear and outrage among some Coloradans since he took office on Jan. 20. It’s drawn approval from others. Most of all, his pledge has brought uncertainty to many across the state.
The administration’s underlying goal, according to reporting by national media outlets: To deport 1 million people without proper legal status within a year.
But U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not on track to meet that target thus far. In late April, the agency reported about 66,000 arrests and a similar number of deportations in the first 100 days of the president’s second term. The daily pace has been increasing, however — by early June, according to data obtained by CBS News, the number of arrests had risen to over 100,000.
An escalation in ICE enforcement tactics and rapidly changing immigration policies, along with roadblocks put up by the courts, have defined Trump’s first five months back in office. So have public protests. This month, after ICE began broader-scale actions in Los Angeles, including raids of Home Depot parking lots, the president ordered the National Guard and the Marines to the streets of that city to help respond to demonstrations there — a directive that spurred more protests nationally.
In Colorado, immigrant-rights advocates have been surprised at the administration’s fast pace as it has moved to implement Trump’s agenda. Even if the state has largely not seen the workplace raids conducted elsewhere so far — and legal roadblocks and limited resources have slowed ICE down — it’s been aggressive here in other ways.
Several advocates say they doubt the agency will be able to remove 1 million immigrants by early next year, but ICE’s recent tactics concern them. They’re preparing for enforcement activities to intensify.
“Many people in the immigrant community have realized over the last four or five months that Trump means what he says,” Denver immigration attorney Hans Meyer said. “He is trying to enact a full-scale deportation machine.”
To take stock of Trump’s impact so far, The Denver Post interviewed elected officials, immigrant-rights advocates, legal experts, attorneys, immigrants of varying legal statuses and U.S. citizens who hold differing opinions on the president’s immigration strategy.
Denver has been in ICE’s crosshairs since large-scale raids first began in February. Trump has derided Colorado’s capital as a “sanctuary city,” targeting it along with dozens of others around the country. Last month, the Justice Department sued elected officials in Denver and Colorado over state and local laws limiting cooperation with ICE.
Federal agents have also made arrests near courthouses in downtown Denver, moved enforcement inside the federal courthouse where immigration cases are heard, and detained nationally recognized immigrant-rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra, who remains in ICE custody.
“There’s no small moves here by the Trump administration,” said Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a professor of law at the University of Colorado Boulder.
State and local officials have turned to the courts to fight several of the president’s actions. Attorney General Phil Weiser has filed or joined federal lawsuits that argue against the government’s withholding of funds for states that don’t submit to Trump’s immigration policies. Denver, too, has sued the Trump administration over decisions to hold back millions of dollars in promised grants.
As Denver trudges forward with its legal challenge and contends with ICE activity, Mayor Mike Johnston says he’s committed to keeping it a welcoming city for all.
“We will not shepherd anyone from the law if they’ve broken the law,” he said in an interview. “But we’re also not going to have people be subject to raids in hospitals or churches or schools, which just makes the whole city unsafe.”
Johnston also said: “We will continue to fight in these places where we think that federal action is illegal or unfair and is hurting Denver residents, because we think that’s beyond the scope of what the president can or should be able to do.”
Is deporting 1 million an ‘impossible’ task?
In Colorado, the number of people affected by immigration enforcement activities is still unclear due to a lack of federal transparency.
ICE has published statistics online only through last December. In March, the agency said it was working toward posting monthly enforcement stats, but those have yet to come to fruition. Local ICE spokesperson Steve Kotecki did not respond when asked how many people had been detained, deported or released by the Denver field office since Jan. 20.
TRAC Reports — an independent and nonpartisan database — has noted that, from the start of the 2025 fiscal year in October through April, almost 9,000 new deportation cases were filed in Colorado’s immigration court. That was well below the pace of the 2024 fiscal year, when close to 47,000 new proceedings were recorded for the entire year.
Information on local detainments has been piecemeal, with ICE posting on social media about dozens of arrests. It’s also conducted several large-scale enforcement actions in recent months that drew broad media coverage.
Those included a series of raids in a single day in early February across metro Denver at apartment complexes and homes. ICE had set out with a goal of arresting more than 100 gang members but netted just 30, according to Fox News, including one confirmed gang member. Officials complained about interference by activists on the ground.
Other Front Range communities have attracted enforcement activity, too. A multiagency raid of an underground nightclub in Colorado Springs in late April resulted in the detentions of 104 people who were illegally present in the country, ICE said. In early February, a similar raid of a club in Adams County resulted in arrests that included 41 people on immigration holds.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado has confirmed that at least 11 people were taken from Colorado to El Salvador’s CECOT prison as of April. The Trump administration, in a much-challenged move, has used the Alien Enemies Act against suspected gang members, but advocates have disputed the gang ties of some detainees.
Across Colorado, academics, elected officials and immigration advocates are skeptical the Trump administration will come close to deporting 1 million people in its first year.
Gulasekaram at CU Boulder considers it unlikely, particularly if ICE is focused solely on migrants who’ve committed crimes and pose national security threats.
On top of that, “the only way in which the Trump administration could even approach what it’s talking about is, on the first instance, they would need the manpower, the human power to get there,” Gulasekaram said. “Currently, they don’t have that.”
ICE would need congressional approval for billions of dollars to boost the number of agents in what’s already the largest federal enforcement arm, the Department of Homeland Security, Gulasekaram said. Without that, he added, it would require either turning to local law enforcement for help — a practice that is limited by Colorado law, as well as local policy in places like Denver — or using the military domestically.
As for the latter, “that is not something that is done,” Gulasekaram said. However, he says he fears Trump may be laying the groundwork for that use through his activation of military forces in Los Angeles.
Former President Barack Obama’s administration set the annual record by deporting over 438,000 immigrants without legal status in the 2013 fiscal year, according to the Pew Research Center. In comparison, the most immigrants removed from the United States during Trump’s first term was about 267,000, in the 2019 fiscal year, according to ICE’s annual report.
In the district of state Rep. Ryan Gonzalez, a Greeley Republican, illegal immigration has been a top concern for voters, he said, pointing to polling conducted last year.
Even so, Gonzalez describes Trump’s deportation goal as an “impossible” task that would cost too much money.
“I don’t really see that happening, to be honest with you,” he said. “He’s well under the projections of where he should be at this point in time for deportations.”
Gonzalez said he had reached out to local law enforcement to discuss ICE activity. He was assured that federal agents were arresting only immigrants without legal status who have severe criminal records, he said — a move that he supports. “We’re not trying to deport, like, the abuelitas,” Gonzalez said, using a Spanish word for grandmothers.
But a recent report by Reuters cites detention statistics showing that, while the number of people arrested by ICE who had other criminal charges or convictions nearly doubled between January and June, arrests of people with no charges or convictions — other than an immigration violation — increased by 800%.
Colorado U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans and five other congressional Republicans raised concerns to ICE’s acting director in a letter this month, inquiring about the agency’s enforcement priorities — and questioning whether the deportation of criminals was still the priority.
“Every minute that we spend pursuing an individual with a clean record is a minute less that we dedicate to apprehending terrorists or cartel operatives,” they wrote.
Amid such questions, Raquel Lane-Arellano, the communications manager for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, also doubts that the Trump administration will hit its mark.
“I also don’t think you reach those kind of numbers without breaking the rules,” Lane-Arellano said.
Groups respond to pivots on enforcement
The coalition is contending with a detainment process that Lane-Arellano depicted as increasingly militarized. During raids, ICE has partnered with federal agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI — “all these agencies that have, frankly, better work to do than target immigrants,” she added.
At groups like hers, “burnout is especially high right now,” Lane-Arellano said, with overextended staff scrambling to keep up with Trump’s moves.
But the coalition has experienced a jump in donations from citizens and foundations.
“I’m so proud to be a Coloradan right now,” Lane-Arellano said.
Jennifer Piper, the program director at the American Friends Service Committee in Denver, also doesn’t see ICE hitting 1 million deportees this year unless it gets help from other law enforcement or a funding boost. At the same time, in recent weeks, she’s witnessed the escalation in immigration enforcement tactics at courthouses.
She said at least eight people were detained at Denver’s federal immigration court from May 29 through June 5, as her group raised the alarm about the new practice.
For these impacted migrants, “you’re following the rules; you’re showing up” to hearings, Piper said. “Now, when you’re showing up, there’s this risk that you will be detained — and that once detained, you’ll have to fight your deportation case from inside detention.”
In Aurora, the ICE detention center that’s run by a government contractor, the GEO Group, is the hub of local immigration enforcement activity. The agency lists the facility as its only detention center in the state.
As of June 6, the facility housed 1,020 people — more than 90% of them men, according to the latest accountability report published by U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat whose district includes the center.
The top five countries of origin among detainees were Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras and India, the report says. Information was unavailable on the number of people brought into or released from the facility around that time. However, a previous report from May 16 said 131 people left the center during the prior week — 124 deported from the U.S. and seven released from the facility.
Near the end of former President Joe Biden’s administration, about 15 to 20 people were released from the GEO facility each week, estimated Andrea Loya, the executive director of Casa de Paz, an Aurora-based organization that works with detained immigrants directly.
Now, several months into Trump’s new term, she says the average has fallen to just five to 10 per week.
Trump’s approach draws some support
Some Coloradans back Trump’s removal efforts to varying degrees, including those who argue for changes to the federal immigration system.
They’re not alone: Just over 50% of American adults want to see some immigrants without legal status deported, and another 32% would like to see all of them removed from the country, the Pew Research Center reported in March. But other national polling results have differed, with only 43% of Americans approving of Trump’s approach to immigration as of June in a Quinnipiac University poll.
The Colorado Polling Institute found in March that 53% of likely voters in the state believe Trump “has gone too far” in his deportation efforts, while 26% believe the administration has been “about right” in its approach.
In Castle Rock, Juan Candil supports Trump’s strategy.
“I feel that not a lot of Latinos or immigrants would agree with me. I feel that things are changing for the better” under Trump, said Candil, 24.
The Colombian immigrant applied for asylum almost a decade ago, arguing that he had much to fear in his home country. However, he’s still waiting for his turn with an asylum officer.
Candil depicted some recent migrants as very good people, while others are “bad actors,” he said. Candil agrees with the administration’s encouragement of self-deportation, in particular.
“That is relieving pressure from the system — which, hopefully, also means that we get on the docket of some immigration judge sooner than later,” Candil said.
Though he and his parents left Bogotá, Colombia, in 2016 after he said cartels threatened their safety, they still have yet to progress through the asylum process, he said: “It’s been nine years. We’re still waiting on an answer.”
His family continues to shell out cash for attorneys and work authorization renewals, but “that money could kick-start our American dream of owning a house or starting our own business,” Candil said.
Scott Shamblin, 23, also wants to see reforms in the nation’s immigration system, including a streamlined process for immigrants with proper legal status to gain citizenship.
“I’m very pro-immigration, as is basically any Republican you talk to, including Trump,” said Shamblin, who serves as the chair of the Arapahoe County Young Republicans. “It’s just, they should do so legally.”
He said Americans should have a say in who can stay.
“We should know who is in our country, and especially if they are criminals,” Shamblin added.
James Wiley, the executive director of the Libertarian Party of Colorado, described his party, which has the most affiliated voters of any minor party in the state, as historically conflicted on immigration.
“Oftentimes, we consider any acts of the state to be violent and, therefore, any enforcement of borders to be an expression of that violence,” Wiley said.
However, that sentiment has narrowed in recent years, particularly within the state’s party, as Libertarians take an interest in some immigration restrictions. Now, they tend to welcome newcomers to the country — if they align with American values.
“Let anybody come here who actually values the same things that Americans value: liberty, freedom, personal responsibility, personal sovereignty,” Wiley said.
In his view, Mexico and Canada do not share those values, though he’d favor open borders with Argentina.
“What I’m seeing from the administration over the last five months is good in the element of a reduction of immigration, but it’s not necessarily for the right reasons,” Wiley said. “It’s based on fear.”
Worries mount in immigrant communities
Among many in Colorado’s immigrant communities, the Trump administration’s methods have inspired the kind of fear that Wiley is talking about.
“I, unfortunately, will say I think the Trump administration has been very effective,” said state Rep. Yara Zokaie, a Fort Collins Democrat, “and that they are ignoring court orders and that they are using military force to enact their policies.”
She argues that ICE is targeting migrants beyond violent criminals and that family separation has already occurred in her district, with parents deported and children left behind.
As an Iranian-American legislator, Zokaie also hears from the state’s Middle Eastern community. She said some of those Coloradans are worried about the new travel ban, which went into effect June 9.
According to the presidential proclamation, immigrants and nonimmigrants alike from 12 countries — including Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen — cannot enter the United States.
“There’s a lot of concern over whether folks who live here can travel,” Zokaie said.
On top of that, she added, “we have people who are fleeing from majority-Muslim and African nations — that are fleeing violence and persecution and authoritarian regimes — and this puts their lives in danger.”
In Colorado, Zokaie says American citizens who are Brown are opting to carry their U.S. passports with them on a regular basis.
But on the Western Slope, Vanessa, a 25-year-old immigrant, doesn’t have that option as a grantee of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. She declined to use her last name, citing concerns about potential changes to her legal status under the Trump administration.
Vanessa was only 6 months old when her parents brought her across the southern U.S. border from Guerrero, Mexico. “My parents decided to come over here for a better job opportunity, education and for safety,” she said.
At 16, Vanessa was accepted as a DACA recipient during Obama’s administration. Since then, she’s used it to work and attend college. But Vanessa’s uncertain about the fate of the program under Trump.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen to DACA,” she said. “My whole life is based on this. My career is on this.”
She also worries about workplace raids sweeping up her loved ones who are undocumented.
Still, “my parents have never been the type where they will stop doing what they are going to do because of this,” Vanessa said. “If we’re not doing anything wrong, we shouldn’t be scared.”
At Meyer’s Denver law firm, he’s helping clients without legal status prepare their families for the possibility of ICE apprehension and is familiarizing them with how to fight to stay in immigration court.
A few clients have approached the attorney to discuss self-deportation. But even more have conferred with him about how to seek legal protections or apply for green cards or citizenship, he said.
“For most immigrants, I think self-deportation is not a viable option,” Meyer said. “The longer people have been here, the deeper their ties. And the deeper their ties, the more things they have to fight for.”
‘I see their horror and their fear’
A Denver-based organization is contending with another aspect of the Trump administration’s approach to curtailing immigration: the president’s indefinite suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.
The decision has left the Ethiopian Community Development Council’s African Community Center of Denver grappling with how it can fulfill its mission as a nonprofit refugee resettlement agency.
Rhossy Ouanzin Gbebri, the development and communications manager, says he’s unsure when the halt will be lifted. The agency typically serves 1,000 to 1,200 people annually.
“If we don’t receive refugees, we don’t get the money that we’re supposed to get to be able to help them,” Ouanzin Gbebri said. “Everything that is happening at the federal level impacts our work.”
When the State Department ordered agencies to cease work under certain grants, the center was forced to let go of 15 staff members. The people it serves — particularly those who haven’t mastered English yet — continue leaning on staff for help.
“Over the past five months, I’ve seen all sorts of emotion,” Ouanzin Gbebri said. “A lot of people were scared. A lot of people were coming to the office to get help.”
But volunteers have stepped up and lawyers are teaching refugees about their rights — making for a silver lining for Ouanzin Gbebri.
“This work matters,” he said. “Refugees here still need our help.”
Other Coloradans have supported immigrants facing insecurities under Trump, including U.S. citizens motivated to respond after seeing the impact of the president’s policies on their neighbors.
In Aurora, the Rev. Wayne Laws of the United Church of Christ is handling fears among the devout in the local faith community.
“Some pastors are reporting a drop-off in the congregation because immigrants, migrants are afraid to come to worship services,” said Laws, 70.
But he says he’s also seeing a greater level of activism. Laws and other local faith leaders are working together to launch Mutual Aid Sanctuary, an organization that would provide crisis care to vulnerable populations.
Denver resident Roz Heise, 82, says she knows many immigrants without full legal status.
“I see their horror and their fear,” Heise said. “I feel helpless and sad and frustrated and ashamed.”
The octogenarian said that, over the course of her life, she hadn’t heard such negative rhetoric about immigrants until Trump’s first term. She’s written letters to her elected officials and attended protests.
“If they want to arrest me for something, go right ahead,” Heise said. “I mean, I’m 82. What are they gonna do? Kill me?”
As Trump’s approach on immigration evolves — and he puts more pressure on ICE to increase arrests — she’s among immigrant-rights advocates, lawyers and officials in Colorado who say they will be ready to respond.