A streaked pane of glass separated Lucie Donovan and her husband’s palms.
The couple sat in a vestibule inside the Aurora immigration detention facility on a Saturday in March, staring at each other through the glass barrier separating the incarcerated from the free. A dozen vestibules side by side contained the stories of immigrants and those who loved them.
Donovan, a 25-year-old U.S. citizen, and her husband Juan clutched wall-mounted telephones, transporting their weekly dispatches, daydreams and flirtations across the barrier. (The Denver Post agreed to identify Juan only by his first name so he could speak freely about his experience in the U.S. immigration system without fear of retaliation.)
The husband and wife traced shapes on their palms and tapped their fingertips together, the reverberations against the glass as close to holding hands as they’d come in more than a year.
“I need time with you very badly,” Juan said in Spanish, his eyes rarely straying from Donovan’s during the hour-long visit. “I can’t wait to hug you and kiss you.”
Juan has been held at U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement’s Aurora detention facility since being picked up on Feb. 5, 2025, during Denver’s most high-profile immigration raid since President Donald Trump returned to office — a day that altered the course of Juan and Donovan’s lives in unimaginable ways.
For months, The Denver Post followed this couple ensnared in Trump’s unprecedented mass-deportation push to show its impact on those targeted and their loved ones. While their experience shows the pitfalls of fighting against an unprecedented legal effort, this is also a story about the lengths a couple will go to fight for their love.
Juan has no criminal history. He came to the United States legally on a work visa in 2018 and overstayed that visa — a common situation that would not have warranted detention in the past, said Anya Lear, Juan’s immigration attorney.
“That’s something that wouldn’t happen in prior administrations,” Lear said. “They would not target people who just overstayed their visas. They would definitely not detain them. It’s very unprecedented.”
The vast majority of undocumented immigrants — more than 12 million in 2023 — entered the U.S. illegally or overstayed their visas, .
Since last year, Juan and Donovan have explored an array of legal avenues — including filing a habeas corpus petition — to fight for his freedom and a path to U.S. residency, even as the Trump administration’s overhaul of the immigration process has driven them to consider giving up entirely.
The couple has grown so jaded by their experience that they say Juan might agree to voluntarily deport himself to Mexico — an increasingly common outcome as immigrants across the nation are pushed to their limits by the federal government’s mass-deportation policies.
Juan is not currently under a deportation or removal order, Lear said, because the federal immigration court is awaiting the outcome of Donovan’s petition to establish their family relationship — the first step toward Juan being able to apply for a permanent resident card, or “green card.”
“He entered the country legally, we are in the green card process, we’re trying to do everything the ‘right way’ and it just simply doesn’t matter,” Donovan said.
Laura Lunn, director of advocacy and litigation for the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, said the idea that there is even a right way to immigrate to the United States is a myth in a complex, restrictive immigration system that does not provide court-appointed legal counsel to those entangled in it. The scant paths to U.S. citizenship that exist have become even fewer and ever-changing under this federal administration, she said.
ICE representatives did not respond to questions from The Post for this story.
The Department of Homeland Security, in its efforts to remove Juan from the U.S., has opposed his requests to be released on bond. Following an August hearing, an immigration judge issued a one-sentence order denying bond, stating that Juan “did not meet his burden to establish that he would not be a flight risk.”
‘I just want to be with her’
Donovan grew up in Missouri and considered herself the quintessential all-American girl. She was voted prom queen. She organized anti-gun protests at her school.
In 2020, Donovan moved to Colorado and became a special education teacher at a school for children with behavioral needs. She lives in southeast Denver.
She and Juan met through mutual friends toward the end of 2024.
She practiced Spanish with him and found his gentle, easygoing presence a balm to her anxiety and feisty disposition.
“He’s just so mellow,” Donovan said. “He’s literally wrongfully imprisoned right now, and he’s still so mellow.”
Donovan is talkative, bubbly and outgoing, while Juan is more of a listener. Juan is a self-professed workaholic — a roofer — who likes to stay active.
Juan took Donovan seriously, she said. When she shared her aspirations of going to law school, he asked how he could support her dreams.
“His responses are real and meaty,” Donovan said. “And I like that. Our entire relationship has been yapping, yapping, yapping.”
Each day felt like a new opportunity to learn more about each other, talk more, laugh more.
But after a few months of getting to know one another, Donovan was dumbfounded when the attentive, sweet guy she knew went radio silent.
Following worrisome days with no contact, Donovan received a call from a number she didn’t recognize. Via voicemail, Juan confirmed he wasn’t ignoring her. ICE agents had detained him while he was at a friend’s place in the Cedar Run Apartments in Denver.
Armed federal agents broke down the door while executing a warrant for someone else, and rounded up the people inside without properly determining whether Juan was a flight risk or a danger to the community, said Lear, his immigration attorney.
“I am just a middle-class white woman, so I naively didn’t think at the time there was a reality in which I was going to be affected very much by Trump’s insane policies, especially right off the bat,” Donovan said of the raid, which took place less than three weeks after the president’s inauguration. “Obviously, I was wrong.”
Juan was one of 4,750 people without legal status who were arrested by federal immigration authorities in Colorado during Trump’s first year back in office, new data shows, reflecting a near-quadrupling of the prior year’s arrest numbers.
The number of immigrants arrested who have criminal convictions has plummeted, the data shows, while deportations of those with no criminal history have skyrocketed.
The changes have made it difficult for even seasoned professionals to navigate, Lear said.
“It’s very hard to maneuver,” she said. “It’s very, very emotionally hard for me, even as their attorney. I feel like I’m trying to do everything I can, but I’m feeling like, ‘Am I missing something?’ I’m doubting myself. It’s wrong on so many fronts. He should not be detained, especially for this long. Ultimately, he’s been punished for the delays of the system.”
While Donovan and Juan’s attorney fight for his freedom, Juan languishes in the Aurora detention facility, spending his days picturing a future where he and his wife can wake up in the same house and eat breakfast together.
“I just want to be with her,” he said during a recent visit.
A difficult decision
Donovan didn’t know about Juan’s immigration status before he was detained. He came to Denver in 2018 on a work visa and was employed as a roofer. His work was his life, she said, along with his three young children from a previous relationship.
After receiving the voicemail about Juan’s detention, Donovan found herself in an awkward situation.
She had only been seeing this guy for a couple of months. Should she stick with him through his detention?
Donovan grew up visiting family in prison, so she knew the toll of watching a loved one endure incarceration and dealing with the legal ramifications it could have on a person.
But, man, he seemed like he could be the one.
“I knew that, were he to be deported, that wouldn’t even be a dealbreaker for me,” Donovan said. “I just really, really liked him, and he felt the same. I am hellbent and determined to not cave to this system, but also not (expletive) up my life completely in the process.”
Even before Donovan made up her mind on staying with Juan, she couldn’t stop visiting him in the detention facility. She had grown too accustomed to his company and their conversations.
From the beginning, she visited him every Saturday — a tradition she continues. When she’s not visiting, Donovan spends about $200 a month on an app that lets the couple text, call and video chat. They talk every day, she said.
It wasn’t long after Juan’s initial voicemail that Donovan decided she was all in on their relationship.
Both grew up Catholic, so the idea of an early marriage wasn’t taboo, Donovan said. Matrimony while detained seemed less than ideal, though. But as the months passed without an end in sight to Juan’s detention, the couple wondered whether they should just go for it.
“I’ve never been one to let the government tell me what to do,” Donovan said.
During a visitation last August, Juan asked Donovan to marry him.
What the location lacked in romance, it made up for in practicality — it was their only option.
The visitation room at the Aurora detention center is small. Visitors have to get to the facility early in the morning to sign in and are given a time later in the day to return. They must hand over anything on them and pass through a metal detector before their one-hour time slot.
Donovan isn’t fluent in Spanish, but she knows enough to be conversational. During a visit, She tried to ask Juan whether he thought ICE would give him an ankle bracelet if they let him out. She didn’t know the Spanish word for “ankle bracelet,” so she hoisted her foot up and pointed. Through giggles and miming, the couple eventually figured out what she meant.
“Sometimes we have to play charades,” Donovan said.
Visitors are separated from detainees by glass barriers. Families pile in with kids decked out in their Sunday best — bows in their hair, fluffy dresses, cowlicks gelled down. The adults settle into seats facing each other while children from different families run behind them, squealing, playing, crying. People talk about their legal cases, their loved ones, the conditions of the detention facility.
And sometimes they propose marriage.
“It was not a get-down-on-one-knee moment,” Donovan said.
In September, the two married. Donovan cried all day, she said. They weren’t happy tears.
No flowers. No first dance. The couple didn’t even get to see each other on their wedding day.
Donovan took off work to get all the paperwork signed in a process her attorney called “a nightmare.”
The couple needed to fill out a document to account for Juan’s absence when applying for their marriage license. An administrative error meant Donovan had to drive back and forth between the Adams County marriage license office and the Aurora ICE facility, waiting for their attorney, who was scheduled to have a face-to-face legal visit with Juan, to be able to bring him the papers to sign.
Dressed in an all-white skirt, top and heels, plus a ring she bought herself online, Donovan said she cried off all her makeup by the end of the hectic day.
“One day, we are actually going to get married the way we want to,” she said.
Denials, appeals and habeas corpus
Juan and Donovan’s emotions swing wildly between hope and despair, depending on the day.
On good days, the hope feels electric. The couple tries not to spook hope away with too big of a reality check. They allow themselves to fantasize about Juan being free. They’d eat tacos, drink beer and hold each other. They’d make tortillas by hand. They’d walk the dog together. They’d go mountain biking.
“We want to find ways we can have a stable life and do things we want to do, but reverse some of the damage we feel has been done to immigrants in this country,” she said.
But immigration judges have denied Juan bond multiple times, according to court documents. He appealed his most recent bond denial, in October, to the . That appeal remains pending, court documents show.
Lear, though, believes there’s not much hope with the Board of Immigration Appeals. Since the beginning of the year, she said, the board has issued 71 published decisions. Of those, 97% favored the federal government, she said.
During the entire four-year span of the Biden administration, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued 76 published decisions and 60% favored the federal government, Lear said.
Federal authorities have made it harder for people to even request bail in immigration cases, keeping immigrants without criminal records detained indefinitely and left to petition federal judges for habeas corpus, a way of legally challenging detention or incarceration.
Habeas petitions have become the predominant path for immigrants seeking release from detention. Colorado has seen an explosion of habeas cases as other avenues of relief have been cut off under the Trump administration.
While the array of legal challenges is a lot to manage, Donovan understands the privilege of even having legal representation.
Colorado has among the lowest rates in the nation of immigrants with legal representation, with about 85% of immigrants in the state representing themselves in court, according to a
Detained immigrants who had legal representation were four times more likely to be released from detention, according to a
“We do know how lucky we are despite all of this,” Donovan said.
Proving their relationship is real
Donovan also has a pending I-130 petition, which allows a U.S. citizen to establish a “qualifying relationship” with an immigrant so they can seek a green card for permanent residency.
In December, interviewed Juan and Donovan separately as part of the I-130 application process. The federal agency is trying to determine whether their marriage is legitimate or fraudulent.
Violeta Chapin, an immigration law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said immigrants are often forced to prove their love in ways U.S. citizens don’t have to consider.
“You have to provide evidence of love because the immigration system has always been concerned about fraud,” Chapin said. “Certainly, under the Trump administration, there is a lot more scrutiny.”
Evidence of love can vary depending on the couple, Chapin said. Some couples might show they live together or purchased property or a car together. Younger couples who might have different relationship milestones might show they have a dog together or share a Netflix password, Chapin said.
Juan and Donovan’s relationship was interrupted by his detainment early on, so their evidence wasn’t as easy.
After waiting hours for her appointment to begin, Donovan stared at a gray wall while strangers asked her to prove her love for Juan was real, she said. She wished she had taken more photos together at the start of their relationship. She wished she could show them the sleepless nights. The crying outbursts. The number of times she drove to the detention facility just to be closer to him. She goes to therapy twice a week to deal with her declining mental health.
“During my interview, I felt like I was just floating above my body because I was sitting there thinking it’s so hopeless,” Donovan said. “None of these people give a (expletive) about my life or his… but I have to put stock into these people’s opinions of me. I didn’t know I was going to have to present evidence of my relationship. That’s not something you think about.”
As proof of their relationship, Lear submitted screenshots of Juan and Donovan’s communications over the past year.
Immigration judges have cited doubts about the validity of the couple’s marriage in denying Juan bond, Lear said.
“They are a real couple navigating a very, very difficult situation created by his detention and the uncertainty of his case,” she said. “The fact that they married while he was detained makes it very unique, but it does not make it fraudulent or wrong in any way. I don’t have any doubts about their relationship being sincere. I wouldn’t be working on the case if I thought it was some kind of scheme. She wouldn’t be fighting this hard for somebody who isn’t dear to her heart.”
The decision on Donovan’s I-130 petition is vital, Lear noted. Should Citizenship and Immigration Services approve it, Juan will be able to seek lawful permanent residency. But if it’s denied, she said, “the court would likely issue a removal order at that time.”
‘There is nothing’
When Donovan is having a particularly hard day, all she wants is to be near her husband. Sometimes she craves Juan’s presence so bad, she drives to the detention facility and sits outside the building.
Juan used to be confined to a different room in the facility that had a frosted window with a small patch scratched out at the bottom, just big enough for his eye to peek through. Donovan used to bring her longboard to the facility, call her husband and skate back and forth in front of the window, watching her husband’s eye follow her.
“I am so sick of not being able to be near him,” she said.
Despite his limited resources, Juan finds creative ways to show his affection for his wife. He crafted a tiny shoe ornament by weaving together scraps of ramen noodle wrappers from the commissary and fibers from his clothing. He slipped Donovan the trinket during one of his court hearings. She keeps it on her bedside table — a prized possession — and turns it over in her fingers to touch something her husband’s hands made.
One Monday evening in March, Donovan sat on the floor of her apartment after a long day making art with students. She spent the evening the way she does most nights — calling Juan over and over as they battled technology difficulties, poor service and the facility occasionally shutting off phone lines.
When the call finally went through, Donovan’s face lit up.
Throughout March, the couple was hopeful a judge would rule in their favor on their habeas petition, granting Juan release from the detention facility — though not settling the government’s deportation case against him.
During the phone call, they discussed the logistics of his potential discharge. What if it happened during the school day? How would they get a hold of each other?
The conversation drifted, as it often did, to the conditions in the detention center.
When it snowed, icy water cascaded from the ceiling, Juan said. The living quarters were freezing in cool weather and scorching in warm weather, he said. He told her how the meat they were fed was rotten to the point of making detainees sick and how the beans had rocks in them.
“It’s bad,” Juan said of his time in the detention center. “It’s just very bad. I don’t know the effect on my mental health. There is nothing to do here. There is nothing.”
Resignation and plans for self-deportation
To keep him going, Juan said he daydreams about his wife.
He loves the shape of Donovan’s mouth when she smiles, he said. He loves her independence. Her sense of humor keeps him laughing through hard times, he said.
“I love you because you’ve been through the good and bad,” he told her via text. “You’ve supported me in everything. I love your personality. I love your craziness and that’s why I want to be with you to build a beautiful future and have a stable life together.”
Juan knows his circumstances contribute to his wife’s worsening mental health, she said.
“I’m feeling desperate,” Donovan said. “I know Juan worries about me because of my mental health and doesn’t want to leave me alone, and then I feel guilty because I’m not the one detained. He’s the one really suffering.”
By mid-April, hope over Juan’s release had all but dwindled entirely.
Juan’s detention seemed endless. His odds of winning an appeal of his bond denial seemed low. Each morning, Juan wakes up in the detention center instead of beside his wife, his resolve crumbles that much further. Everybody he was originally arrested with has already been deported, he said.
The couple has reached their limit.
If nothing changes by the end of the month, they said they plan to request voluntary departure. Juan would be deported to Mexico. Donovan intends to follow him.
The couple and Lear said they know they’re operating within an immigration system intended to break them — to make the conditions so untenable that they choose to give up on the American dream altogether.
They’re willing to admit it worked.
Their dreamy conversations about hiking Colorado mountains together and which Denver neighborhoods they’d like to call home have now evolved into plans to move to Mexico.
“We try to just keep it positive,” Donovan said, sounding defeated. “We will be able to build some sort of life together. But obviously, we would have to take pay cuts. We would have to figure out how to maintain a relationship with his kids, figure out how to maintain relationships with our families, because we’re going to be in a different country than them. …
“We try not to stress right now. As long as we’re together. We just want to be together.”
