Coloradans march to Aurora ICE facility to show solidarity with L.A. protests
A crowd of about 150 demonstrators marched on Monday from an Aurora park to the gates of Colorado's only Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, in an 'emergency protest' in solidarity with an anti-ICE protest movement in Los Angeles that has become the target of an escalating federal crackdown.
Outside the Aurora ICE Processing Center, operated by private prison firm GEO Group, marchers joined a weekly vigil for Jeanette Vizguerra, a prominent immigrant rights advocate and grandmother detained by ICE earlier this year, and other detainees held in the facility.
'This fight continues,' Vizguerra, speaking from inside the facility on a video call with her daughter Tania Baez, told Newsline in a brief interview. 'This is solidarity — L.A. and the same here in Colorado, the people are very progressive. I'm very proud of my community, and I'm thankful for the support.'
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Vizguerra, who has lived in the U.S. since 1997, became a high-profile figure in the immigrant rights movement during the first Trump administration. She was detained in March after the Trump administration reinstated a 2013 removal order against her that had previously been stayed. Her lawyers have alleged in federal court that her arrest was in retaliation for protected speech.
Vizguerra later addressed the crowd, telling them she wished to share the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, which she accepted from within the ICE facility last week, with all of her fellow activists. She noted that June 17 will mark three months since she was taken into custody.
Monday's demonstration came after protests erupted in Los Angeles over the weekend following a series of ICE raids targeting workers at a downtown clothing wholesaler and outside a Home Depot in the predominantly Latino suburb of Paramount. Federal agents in tactical gear shot tear gas and flash-bang grenades and arrested dozens of protesters they accused of obstructing the operations, including union leader David Huerta, who was charged by federal prosecutors Monday with a felony count of conspiracy to impede an officer.
Another anti-ICE demonstration is planned for the Colorado Capitol on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump has ordered thousands of California National Guard soldiers to be deployed to the city over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom and local leaders, the first such action by a U.S. president in 60 years. Thousands of demonstrators subsequently converged on a federal building in downtown L.A. to protest the Trump administration's attempted crackdown, where police fired tear gas and less-lethal projectiles at protesters and journalists over several hours on Sunday, and similar scenes continued into Monday evening.
Trump officials, highlighting scattered acts of vandalism like the burning of several empty autonomous vehicles near the site of Sunday's demonstration, have described the weekend's events in sensational terms. Trump has baselessly described demonstrators as 'paid insurrectionists' and signed an executive order calling the protests 'a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.'
On Monday, a detachment of roughly 700 U.S. Marines were also ordered by Trump to deploy to L.A. and tasked with 'crowd control and establishment of security perimeters' around federal property, U.S. Northern Command announced.
U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, an Aurora Democrat and Army veteran, said in a statement that Trump's move 'threaten(s) the integrity and public trust of our military.'
'Introducing military personnel into domestic law enforcement situations is an escalation and can put both the military personnel and civilians on the ground at additional risk,' Crow said. 'I urge President Trump to reverse course and allow state and local law enforcement officials to respond.'
In his second term, Trump and his advisers have laid out plans for 'the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,' vowing to deport all of the estimated 12 million people living in the country without permanent legal status.
After a relatively slow start, Trump's mass deportation program has kicked into a higher gear in recent weeks. ICE agents have begun arresting individuals and families outside federal immigration courts, reversing a longstanding policy that avoided such arrests so as not to deter immigrants from going through lawful court proceedings. A series of high-profile raids at restaurants and other workplaces have occurred in cities across the country after Trump adviser Stephen Miller reportedly pressured the agency to broaden the scope of its enforcement operations.
'Why aren't you at Home Depot? Why aren't you at 7-Eleven?' Miller asked ICE leaders on May 20, according to the Washington Examiner. In the same meeting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reportedly told agency officials they 'need to do more.'
The share of people in ICE detention with no criminal record had risen to nearly 25% as of June 1, a sharp uptick from 6% in January, according to the American Immigration Council.
In and around Denver, ICE has struggled to produce arrests of large numbers of people with extensive criminal histories. The agency launched a high-profile raid in February that it said would target more than 100 members of a Venezuelan gang, but admitted soon afterwards to Fox News that out of 30 arrests made that day, only one detainee was suspected of ties to the gang, Tren de Aragua.
Instead, ICE has resorted to arrests of otherwise law-abiding immigrants, including a family with a 1-year-old, attending hearings at federal immigration court in Denver; at least two raids on underground nightclubs in Colorado Springs and Denver that federal agents subsequently said produced no criminal charges; and the detention of Vizguerra, a well-known local figure who was taken into custody outside her workplace, Target.
Demonstrators outside the Aurora facility on Monday cheered the news of the release of Carla Medina, a Honduran immigrant and mother of two who was detained in October while attempting to deliver a DoorDash order to Buckley Space Force Base. Medina subsequently won her asylum case.
'Carla being free is a win. It represents everything that we've been chanting for the last couple months,' said Andrea Loya, director of Casa de Paz, a nonprofit that provides welcoming and support services for people released from the Aurora detention center. 'We're here standing up because what's going on with our neighbors — here, in L.A., in New York, in Chicago, all across the U.S. — that is not fair to these people.'
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