A video this week shows a woman being removed from a jetway at by federal agents, then led out a door onto the tarmac as onlookers shout, “Help us! ICE is here!”
agents arrested 27-year-old Chantal Alejandra Morales Rojas, who is from Ecuador, on Monday, the confirmed to The Denver Post. The agency said she entered the U.S. on Oct. 20, 2024, and overstayed her visa, which allowed her to remain in the country until Jan. 4, 2025.
She remains in ICE custody “pending removal proceedings,” an unidentified DHS spokesperson said in an email to The Post on Wednesday.
Woman is abducted by ICE at the Denver airport when trying to return home to Oakland. She’s detained by ICE at the Denver airport (Southwest Airlines), taken from the jetway and hustled into an unmarked van on the tarmac
— Sigurdur Nordal (@essenviews)
A created to pay for Morales Rojas’ legal fees said she lives in Oakland, California, and has a work permit. The crowdfunding campaign had raised more than $99,000 by Wednesday evening.
Alicia Dantzker, who lives in California and started the GoFundMe campaign, told The Post that she has known Morales Rojas since 2023. Dantzker is close friends with the family who hosted Morales Rojas as an au pair.
Dantzker was in Colorado with ultimate Frisbee players from across the country for the in Aurora. Morales Rojas was an au pair for a family in the ultimate community, and came to Aurora to be with the kids and family she used to live with, Dantzker said.
Dantzker and Morales Rojas were booked on the same flight back to Oakland on Monday. Dantzker said she went to fill her water bottle at the Southwest gate and came back to find Morales Rojas terrified. A man had approached her and asked her to discuss her visa status, Dantzker said.
“We did not realize they were there targeting her specifically,” Dantzker said Wednesday. “We thought they were just asking her about her visa because she is a Latina woman. We thought she would be safe on the plane.”
More men showed up at the airport gate, staring at Morales Rojas but standing a short distance away, Dantzker said. When it was time to board, Dantzker said an alarm sounded when Morales Rojas scanned her boarding pass.
“Two men rushed up to us and corralled us into the jetway, and someone behind us started pushing us into the door to trap us inside,” Dantzker said.
Dantzker said she told the men to show their arrest warrant to a lawyer who was outside the door at the gate, but they did not. She began filming the incident and decided she should make as much noise as she could.
“I was thinking about how to make the most difference,” Dantzker said.
The video begins with Morales Rojas and Dantzker in the Southwest jetway being confronted by federal agents in plain clothes. Dantzker tells the agents that Morales Rojas’ lawyer is outside and advises Morales Rojas not to speak to ICE.
“We’re going to be very nice to you,” the agent says to Morales Rojas in the video before threatening to charge Dantzker with interfering with their proceedings.
that the Trump administration is increasingly using a once-obscure statute, , to charge people with impeding or assaulting federal officers. The ICE agent cites that statute in the Denver airport video. Punishments for the federal crime range from a fine to 20 years in prison.
In the video, Morales Rojas is led through a door out to the tarmac while Dantzker shouts, “Help us! ICE is here!”
Other people waiting at the Southwest gate begin crowding around, pulling out their phones to film and looking out the windows onto the tarmac while Morales Rojas was placed into a van and taken to the ICE detention facility in Aurora.
The federal agent says, “We’re being very nice. We’re being very respectful.”
Dantzker says: “(Expletive) you. This is (expletive) evil. You should be ashamed of yourself. Who gives a (expletive) if you’re being polite? (Expletive) you.”
A Southwest gate agent steps in and tells Dantzker, “If you are on this flight and you speak to them like that, you will not board this flight.”
“I don’t understand why Southwest needed to get involved with my involvement with ICE — to defend them,” Dantzker said.
Southwest Airlines told The Post on Wednesday that the company cannot comment on the details of law enforcement activities, but that DHS and the have access to all passenger information as part of their responsibilities to clear travelers at airport security checkpoints.
The airline may deny boarding to customers it deems disruptive or who otherwise display behavior that could threaten the safety of others, the airline said.
“Southwest complies with applicable state and federal law when asked to share information about customers,” Lynn Lunsford, a Southwest Airlines spokesperson, said in a statement. “The airline has provided guidance to employees to help ensure appropriate legal documentation is presented by law enforcement agencies prior to interactions in the gate areas. Southwest is committed to providing a safe travel experience for all customers and employees.”
The airline told The Post that Dantzker got to her destination that evening on a later flight. Dantzker said Southwest offered her another flight later that day, but that she did not feel comfortable flying that airline and took a different flight the next day.
“When I went back to the airport the next day to go to a different terminal, I could feel my heart racing,” Dantzker said. “It was scary, but I’m free and not in an ICE facility, so it’s nothing compared to what Chantal is going through.”
Dantzker said the Oakland nanny community was horrified after hearing about Chantal’s detention.
“No one took their kids to the park today because they’re just so afraid,” Dantzker said.
Dantzker described Morales Rojas as kind, helpful and gentle.
“She loves the outdoors, she’s incredibly smart and so wise,” Dantzker said. “She’s a magical caretaker and just a really wonderful, thoughtful, incredibly calm person.”
When asked whether Morales Rojas had a work permit and a pending immigration case, the unnamed ICE representative responded that work permits or pending legal cases do not confer “any type of legal status in the United States or prevent ICE from arresting or deporting an illegal alien from the country. … Each illegal alien receives due process.”
The GoFundMe page said Morales Rojas was taken to an ICE detention facility. It was not immediately clear whether Morales Rojas was being held at the run by .
Andrea Loya, executive director for local immigrant rights organization , said the group is worried about reported ICE activity at the airport as people wait for domestic flights.
“We have confirmed that this has been taking place since at least Wednesday night with a different woman being abducted outside of a Frontier flight,” Loya said. “ICE is showing that they will meet their number quotas by any means necessary.”
Denver airport officials, in an unsigned statement, acknowledged that “a number of federal agencies lawfully operate and have jurisdiction” at DIA and “are not required to inform the airport of their activity.”
Dantzker said it was clear the government has known where Morales Rojas has been at every moment.
“There is no secrecy to how she’s living, and the idea they had to wait to trap her in a jetway in a Denver airport just reeks of cruelty and trying to terrorize people,” she said.
