Federal immigration officials are out of control, and America’s third branch of government needs to rein in the gross abuse of power on display in Colorado and across the nation.
Gregory Davies, a high-level federal official overseeing deportation arrests in Colorado, told a judge last month that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not have a warrant to arrest Fernando Jaramillo-Solano. But the agents arrested Jaramillo-Solano anyway after mistakenly pulling the Durango man over while he was on his way to drop off his 12-year-old and 15-year-old children at school. ICE officials detained all three, and they spent weeks in Durango before they were shipped to Dilley, Texas.
This is no simple mistake that is easily rectified.
ICE is causing real harm to contributing members of our community — teachers, nurses, mothers and fathers. And children are traumatized in the wake of these unjustified detainments.
President Donald Trump has upended the mission at ICE, a part of Homeland Security that was once dedicated to keeping Americans safe by deporting criminals. The president has said he plans to deport the more than 13 million people who live in the United States without legal immigration status, regardless of whether they have committed other crimes. But he has gone farther than that, and his agents are now detaining people who do have legal status. The intent is clear — push out immigrants even who are doing everything right.
Trump’s intent is that the people his agents wrongfully detain will either self-deport becasue conditions are so poor in the federal facilities or that if a judge orders their release, they will be silenced by their fear of reprisal, after all, they were detained once; who can protect these individuals from being detained again?
But Trump has calculated wrong. These brave victims of Trump’s mass deportation policy are speaking out, and have filed a lawsuit together to try and prevent ICE from terrorizing people.
Caroline Dias Goncalves, the 19-year-old college student who was detained in Grand Junction and held for almost three weeks in a detention center in Aurora because a sheriff’s deputy thought her perfect English was broken by an accent, testified that her detainment has dramatically affected her life.
She lost her driver’s license, moved back home and has reduced her course load at the University of Utah.
To Davies she might be “collateral” damage, but to us she is an injured kid trying to rebuild her life. Her arrest was completely unnecessary and likely illegal. If people like Davies don’t step up to make sure that ICE agents are doing their jobs – targeting and arresting criminals for deportation – then who will?
The answer of course is that the judicial branch must act as a strong check on the abuses of the executive branch.
Trump’s immigration enforcement squad cannot just smash and grab Coloradans because they suspect someone might be here illegally. And if these agents do, there must be legal consequences for them and their bosses, no matter how high the orders have come from.
Gonclaves was lucky. She was released.
Jaramillo-Solano and his children are still detained in Texas with no end to their nightmare in sight, despite the fact that a federal official just testified to a judge that their arrest was a mistake.
Meanwhile, a Douglas County teacher who was detained with her family by ICE under similarly questionable circumstances is also in the same Texas facility.
Marina Ortiz, who teaches fifth grade at the Global Village Academy, went for a routine check-in with ICE officials and she and her family never came home. The principal of the school says that Ortiz had work authorization to work legally in the United States. She said the school is working with immigration attorneys to see if Ortiz can be released from detention.
The sad truth is that unless the courts step up, these abuses will likely continue, and thousands of people like Ortiz and Jaramillo-Solano will never get home.
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