Thousands of Coloradans participated in demonstrations as part of the national campaign on Friday, who walked out of school and work, closed their businesses for the day and gathered at rallies to protest the federal governmentap immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota.
Teacher absences forced schools to delay and cancel classes in Denver, Boulder, Aurora, Commerce City and Glenwood Springs, and students initiated their own walkouts. Dozens of restaurants and cafes closed across metro Denver. spoke out. An afternoon at Denver’s La Alma-Lincoln Park drew more than a thousand people.
Denver resident Kenneth Daniels, 46, and his 14-year-old daughter Violet were among the crowd gathered on the park’s grassy field at 2 p.m. Daniels, who owns Drop to Pop Records and Curio, closed his store for the day for the protest. The past few weeks have sparked feelings of horror and disgust, he said.
He and his daughter have been to several other protests, and Violet said attending helped her feel connected to the community.
“I feel happy to share their support for wanting a better future, and I’ve seen people who are from my school as well, trying to end this fascist regime,” she said.
A crowd marching past the Colorado Capitol around noon chanted “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!” Marchers carried signs calling out the recent shootings of civilians by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Hundreds of Denver-area students participated.
“Get ICE out of here,” said Charles Easley, 18, who had seen flyers posted around Northfield High School and decided to join in. Teachers, coaches, and school staffers were there, too.
“Even kids can tell this is wrong,” said Levi Caufman, 17, another student from Northfield High, referring to the stepped-up ICE tactics in Minneapolis.
The demonstrations were the latest amid widespread outrage following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis, which have heightened concern over the Trump administration’s tactics in enforcing immigration laws.
Pretti, an intensive care nurse, was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent on Saturday after a group of federal officers tackled him to the ground while he was filming ICE actions in Minneapolis. An ICE officer shot and killed , a mother of three born and raised in Colorado, after a confrontation in the Minneapolis streets on Jan. 7.
Protesters at the Capitol marched through downtown to join the demonstration at La Alma-Lincoln Park, sparking expletive-laden chants against Trump and ICE. Organizers passed out food and water to the crowd as advocates from different metro Denver groups addressed the crowd.
“Are we great yet? Cause I just feel embarrassed,” one sign read. Other signs urged people to love their neighbors or likened ICE to the gestapo.
Kelsang Virya with community group Mutual Aid Monday called for the release of all children in immigration detention centers as she spoke to the crowd, referring to the arrest of a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy and his father who are now being held in a federal facility in Dilley, Texas.
“Now is the time we must join our neighbors and fight back against a fascist government,” Virya said.
Teachers across metro Denver called out of work on Friday as part of the protests, with district officials reporting more than 1,000 teachers and other staffers saying they would not work on Friday. Another 497 teachers at called out, district officials said.
Mapleton Public Schools officials in Adams County told students they could not participate in walkouts in a Thursday letter, but did not stop them when at least 400 did walk out on Friday at Skyview and Global campuses.
“Our kids did participate in protests and nobody did stop them,” district spokesperson Melissa Johnson said. “We do support their First Amendment rights.”
District officials were concerned about students leaving campus unsupervised, but school administrators were able to monitor the protests to ensure pupils’ safety, she said.
Denver school officials announced two-hour delays at George Washington, North, South, East high schools and Joe Shoemaker and McMeen elementary schools because of staffing shortages. Early childhood education and other programs were canceled.
The and the Boulder Valley Education Association notified teachers that Friday was not “an authorized day of action,” officials said.
Aurora Public Schools and Commerce City-based Adams 14 canceled all classes because of staffing shortages.
“We always seek to keep schools open to provide critical learning, social-emotional support, mental health resources, and healthy meals for our students,” Aurora Public School officials said in a statement. “However, after closely monitoring the number of staff absences across the district for tomorrow, we have determined that APS will not have enough staffing capacity to safely operate schools.”
Adams 14 Superintendent Karla Loría declared that, because of high student and staff absences, Friday would become a “teacher and staff work day” with no classes.
In contrast, Cherry Creek Schools, the fourth-largest district in the state, didn’t have a large number of staff absent on Friday, and district spokeswoman Lauren Snell said operations were “as normal as usual.” Douglas County School District officials also reported no impact, with no school closures or delays. In Mapleton Public Schools, 66 teachers called out, and district officials were able to fill most of the absences with substitutes, Johnson said.
More than a dozen Denver-area restaurants planned to close on Friday, and owners of other restaurants said they would donate a percentage of their profits to local immigrant rights organizations. The point, Sap Sua Vietnamese restaurant chef and co-owner Ni Nguyen told the Denver Post this week, “is to grind the economy to a halt.”
Denver Police instituted rolling road closures throughout the downtown area on Friday afternoon because of demonstration and march activity, .
Colorado officials also pushed back on ICE this week, with U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper demanding ICE reforms as part of a proposed government spending package to avert a partial federal government shutdown and Denver officials supporting Minnesota’s lawsuit challenging ICE operations. Bennet on Friday condemned the Department of Homeland Security policies, and “Donald Trump’s immigration troops,” in a speech on the Senate floor.
“Alex Pretti was killed by his own government, and then his government immediately began to lie about him and what had happened,” Bennet said. “He did not attack the agents. He did not threaten them, and at no point did he pull a gun in the video of that horrific scene. It’s clear that an agent disarmed him before any shots were fired. Multiple agents held him to the ground. Three of them beat him. No reasonable person would have believed he posed any threat to the agents or anyone else at the scene, but the agents still shot him.”
Professional sports figures also commented on ICE on social media.
Nuggets coach David Adelman, who worked in Minneapolis for five years, told a reporter he watched drone images of what “looked like a war zone” and wondered how to explain what is happening to his children. decried “utterly senseless acts of violence,” referring to the killings of Good and Pretti, on X.com. “… their lives are just taken from them,” Johnson said in the post. “Itap sad, and it hurts.”
Denver Broncos football guard also called for the abolition of ICE in a since-deleted post on Instagram.
🚨BREAKING: Denver star Quinn Meinerz is calling for President Donald Trump to ABOLISH ICE.
Quinn posted this after Minnesota resident Alex Pretti was shot by US federal agents on Saturday.
Meinerz was one of one of first athletes to call for ICE to be abolished.
Wow.
— MLFootball (@MLFootball)
