The administration’s underlying goal, according to reporting by : To deport 1 million people without proper legal status within a year.

But U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not on track to meet that target thus far. In late April, the agency and a similar number of deportations in the first 100 days of the president’s second term. The daily pace has been increasing, however — by early June, according to , the number of arrests had risen to over 100,000.

An escalation in ICE enforcement tactics and rapidly changing immigration policies, along with roadblocks put up by the courts, have defined Trump’s first five months back in office. So have public protests. This month, after ICE began broader-scale actions in Los Angeles, including raids of Home Depot parking lots, the president ordered the National Guard and the Marines to the streets of that city to help respond to demonstrations there — a directive that spurred more protests nationally.

In Colorado, immigrant-rights advocates have been surprised at the administration’s fast pace as it has moved to implement Trump’s agenda. Even if the state has largely not seen the workplace raids conducted elsewhere so far — and legal roadblocks and limited resources have slowed ICE down — it’s been aggressive here in other ways.

Several advocates say they doubt the agency will be able to remove 1 million immigrants by early next year, but ICE’s recent tactics concern them. They’re preparing for enforcement activities to intensify.

“Many people in the immigrant community have realized over the last four or five months that Trump means what he says,” Denver immigration attorney Hans Meyer said. “He is trying to enact a full-scale deportation machine.”

To take stock of Trump’s impact so far, The Denver Post interviewed elected officials, immigrant-rights advocates, legal experts, attorneys, immigrants of varying legal statuses and U.S. citizens who hold differing opinions on the president’s immigration strategy.

Denver has been in ICE’s crosshairs since large-scale raids first began in February. Trump has derided Colorado’s capital as a “sanctuary city,” targeting it along with dozens of others around the country. Last month, the Justice Department sued elected officials in Denver and Colorado over state and local laws limiting cooperation with ICE.

Federal agents have also made arrests near courthouses in downtown Denver, moved enforcement inside the federal courthouse where immigration cases are heard, and detained nationally recognized immigrant-rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra, who remains in ICE custody.

“There’s no small moves here by the Trump administration,” said Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a professor of law at the University of Colorado Boulder.

State and local officials have turned to the courts to fight several of the president’s actions. Attorney General Phil Weiser has filed or joined federal lawsuits that argue against the government’s withholding of funds for states that don’t submit to Trump’s immigration policies. Denver, too, has sued the Trump administration over decisions to hold back millions of dollars in promised grants.

As Denver trudges forward with its legal challenge and contends with ICE activity, Mayor Mike Johnston��says he’s committed to keeping it a welcoming city for all.

“We will not shepherd anyone from the law if they’ve broken the law,” he said in an interview.��“But we’re also not going to have people be subject to raids in hospitals or churches or schools, which just makes the whole city unsafe.”

Johnston also said: “We will continue to fight in these places where we think that federal action is illegal or unfair and is hurting Denver residents, because we think that’s beyond the scope of what the president can or should be able to do.”

Is deporting 1 million an ‘impossible’ task?

In Colorado, the number of people affected by immigration enforcement activities is still unclear due to a lack of federal transparency.

ICE has only through last December. In March, the agency said it was working toward posting monthly enforcement stats, but those have yet to come to fruition. Local ICE spokesperson Steve Kotecki did not respond when asked how many people had been detained, deported or released by the Denver field office since Jan. 20.

TRAC Reports — an independent and nonpartisan database — has noted that, from the start of the 2025 fiscal year in October through April, were filed in Colorado’s immigration court. That was well below the pace of the 2024 fiscal year, when close to 47,000 new proceedings were recorded for the entire year.

Information on local detainments has been piecemeal, with ICE about dozens of arrests. It’s also conducted several large-scale enforcement actions in recent months that drew broad media coverage.

ICE raids and their uncertainty scare off workers and baffle businesses

Those included a series of raids in a single day in early February across metro Denver at apartment complexes and homes. ICE had set out with a goal of arresting more than 100 gang members but netted just 30, according to Fox News, including one confirmed gang member. Officials complained about interference by activists on the ground.

Other Front Range communities have attracted enforcement activity, too. A multiagency raid of an underground nightclub in Colorado Springs in late April resulted in the detentions of 104 people who were illegally present in the country, ICE said. In early February, a similar raid of a club in Adams County resulted in arrests that included 41 people on immigration holds.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado has confirmed that were taken from Colorado to El Salvador's CECOT prison as of April. The Trump administration, in , has used the Alien Enemies Act against suspected gang members, but advocates have disputed the gang ties of some detainees.

Across Colorado, academics, elected officials and immigration advocates are skeptical the Trump administration will come close to deporting 1 million people in its first year.

Gulasekaram at CU Boulder considers it unlikely, particularly if ICE is focused solely on migrants who've committed crimes and pose national security threats.

On top of that,��"the only way in which the Trump administration could even approach what it's talking about is, on the first instance, they would need the manpower, the human power to get there," Gulasekaram said. "Currently, they don't have that."

ICE would need congressional approval for billions of dollars to boost the number of agents in what's already the largest federal enforcement arm, the Department of Homeland Security, Gulasekaram said. Without that, he added, it would require either turning to local law enforcement for help -- a practice that is limited by Colorado law, as well as local policy in places like Denver -- or using the military domestically.

As for the latter, "that is not something that is done," Gulasekaram said. However, he says he fears Trump may be laying the groundwork for that use through his activation of military forces in Los Angeles.

Former President Barack Obama's administration set the annual record by deporting over 438,000 immigrants without legal status in the 2013 fiscal year, according to . In comparison, the most immigrants removed from the United States during Trump's first term was about 267,000, in the 2019 fiscal year, according to .

In the district of state Rep. Ryan Gonzalez, a Greeley Republican, illegal immigration has been a top concern for voters, he said, pointing to polling conducted last year.

Even so, Gonzalez describes Trump's deportation goal as an "impossible" task that would cost too much money.

"I don't really see that happening, to be honest with you," he said. "He's well under the projections of where he should be at this point in time for deportations."

Gonzalez said he had reached out to local law enforcement to discuss ICE activity. He was assured that federal agents were arresting only immigrants without legal status who have severe criminal records, he said -- a move that he supports. "We're not trying to deport, like, the abuelitas," Gonzalez said, using a Spanish word for grandmothers.

But cites detention statistics showing that, while the number of people arrested by ICE who had other criminal charges or convictions nearly doubled between January and June, arrests of people with no charges or convictions -- other than an immigration violation -- increased by 800%.

Colorado U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans and five other congressional Republicans raised concerns to ICE's acting director in a letter this month, inquiring about the agency's enforcement priorities -- and questioning whether the deportation of criminals was still the priority.

"Every minute that we spend pursuing an individual with a clean record is a minute less that we dedicate to apprehending terrorists or cartel operatives," they wrote.

Amid such questions, Raquel Lane-Arellano, the communications manager for the , also doubts that the Trump administration will hit its mark.

"I also don't think you reach those kind of numbers without breaking the rules," Lane-Arellano said.

Groups respond to pivots on enforcement

The coalition is contending with a detainment process that Lane-Arellano depicted as increasingly militarized. During raids, ICE has partnered with federal agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI -- "all these agencies that have, frankly, better work to do than target immigrants," she added.

At groups like hers, "burnout is especially high right now," Lane-Arellano said, with overextended staff scrambling to keep up with Trump's moves.

But the coalition has experienced a jump in donations from citizens and foundations.

"I'm so proud to be a Coloradan right now," Lane-Arellano said.

Jennifer Piper, the program director at the in Denver, also doesn't see ICE hitting 1 million deportees this year unless it gets help from other law enforcement or a funding boost. At the same time, in recent weeks, she's witnessed the escalation in immigration enforcement tactics at courthouses.

She said at least eight people were detained at Denver's federal immigration court from May 29 through June 5, as her group raised the alarm about the new practice.

For these impacted migrants, "you're following the rules; you're showing up" to hearings, Piper said. "Now, when you're showing up, there's this risk that you will be detained -- and that once detained, you'll have to fight your deportation case from inside detention."

In Aurora, the ICE detention center that's run by a government contractor, the GEO Group, is the hub of local immigration enforcement activity. The agency as its only detention center in the state.

As of June 6,��the facility housed 1,020 people -- more than 90% of them men, according to published by U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat whose district includes the center.

The top five countries of origin among detainees were Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras and India, the report says. Information was unavailable on the number of people brought into or released from the facility around that time. However, a previous report from May 16 said 131 people left the center during the prior week -- 124 deported from the U.S. and seven released from the facility.

Near the end of former President Joe Biden's administration, about 15 to 20 people were released from the GEO facility each week, estimated Andrea Loya, the executive director of , an Aurora-based organization that works with detained immigrants directly.

Now, several months into Trump's new term, she says the average has fallen to just five to 10 per week.

Trump's approach draws some support

Some Coloradans back Trump's removal efforts to varying degrees, including those who argue for changes to the federal immigration system.

They're not alone: Just over 50% of American adults want to see some immigrants without legal status deported, and another 32% would like to see all of them removed from the country, the reported in March. But other national polling results have differed, with only 43% of Americans approving of Trump's approach to immigration as of June in a .

The found in March that 53% of likely voters in the state believe Trump "has gone too far" in his deportation efforts, while 26% believe the administration has been "about right" in its approach.

In Castle Rock, Juan Candil supports Trump's strategy.

"I feel that not a lot of Latinos or immigrants would agree with me. I feel that things are changing for the better" under Trump, said Candil, 24.

The Colombian immigrant applied for asylum almost a decade ago, arguing that he had much to fear in his home country. However, he's still waiting for his turn with an asylum officer.

Candil depicted some recent migrants as very good people, while others are "bad actors," he said. Candil agrees with the administration's encouragement of self-deportation, in particular.

"That is relieving pressure from the system -- which, hopefully, also means that we get on the docket of some immigration judge sooner than later," Candil said.

Though he and his parents left Bogotá, Colombia, in 2016 after he said cartels threatened their safety, they still have yet to progress through the asylum process, he said: "It's been nine years. We're still waiting on an answer."

His family continues to shell out cash for attorneys and work authorization renewals, but "that money could kick-start our American dream of owning a house or starting our own business," Candil said.

Scott Shamblin, 23, also wants to see reforms in the nation's immigration system, including a streamlined process for immigrants with proper legal status to gain citizenship.

"I'm very pro-immigration, as is basically any Republican you talk to, including Trump," said Shamblin, who serves as the chair of the Arapahoe County Young Republicans. "It's just, they should do so legally."

He said Americans should have a say in who can stay.

"We should know who is in our country, and especially if they are criminals," Shamblin added.

James Wiley, the executive director of the Libertarian Party of Colorado, described his party, which has the most affiliated voters of any minor party in the state, as historically conflicted on immigration.

"Oftentimes, we consider any acts of the state to be violent and, therefore, any enforcement of borders to be an expression of that violence," Wiley said.

However, that sentiment has narrowed in recent years, particularly within the state's party, as Libertarians take an interest in some immigration restrictions. Now, they tend to welcome newcomers to the country -- if they align with American values.

"Let anybody come here who actually values the same things that Americans value: liberty, freedom, personal responsibility, personal sovereignty," Wiley said.

In his view, Mexico and Canada do not share those values, though he'd favor open borders with Argentina.

"What I'm seeing from the administration over the last five months is good in the element of a reduction of immigration, but it's not necessarily for the right reasons," Wiley said. "It's based on fear."

Worries mount in immigrant communities

Among many in Colorado's immigrant communities, the Trump administration's methods have inspired the kind of fear that Wiley is talking about.

"I, unfortunately, will say I think the Trump administration has been very effective," said state Rep. Yara Zokaie, a Fort Collins Democrat, "and that they are ignoring court orders and that they are using military force to enact their policies."

She argues that ICE is targeting migrants beyond violent criminals and that family separation has already occurred in her district, with parents deported and children left behind.

As an Iranian-American legislator, Zokaie also hears from the state's Middle Eastern community. She said some of those Coloradans are worried about the new travel ban, which went into effect June 9.

According to the , immigrants and nonimmigrants alike from 12 countries -- including Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen -- cannot enter the United States.

"There's a lot of concern over whether folks who live here can travel," Zokaie said.

On top of that, she added, "we have people who are fleeing from majority-Muslim and African nations -- that are fleeing violence and persecution and authoritarian regimes -- and this puts their lives in danger."

In Colorado, Zokaie says American citizens who are Brown are opting to carry their U.S. passports with them on a regular basis.

But on the Western Slope, Vanessa, a 25-year-old immigrant, doesn't have that option as a grantee of the . She declined to use her last name, citing concerns about potential changes to her legal status under the Trump administration.

Vanessa was only 6 months old when her parents brought her across the southern U.S. border from Guerrero, Mexico. "My parents decided to come over here for a better job opportunity, education and for safety," she said.

At 16, Vanessa was accepted as a DACA recipient during Obama's administration. Since then, she's used it to work and attend college. But Vanessa's uncertain about the fate of the program under Trump.

"I don't know what's going to happen to DACA," she said. "My whole life is based on this. My career is on this."

She also worries about workplace raids sweeping up her loved ones who are undocumented.

Still, "my parents have never been the type where they will stop doing what they are going to do because of this," Vanessa said. "If we're not doing anything wrong, we shouldn't be scared."

At Meyer's Denver law firm, he's helping clients without legal status prepare their families for the possibility of ICE apprehension and is familiarizing them with how to fight to stay in immigration court.

A few clients have approached the attorney to discuss self-deportation. But even more have conferred with him about how to seek legal protections or apply for green cards or citizenship, he said.

"For most immigrants, I think self-deportation is not a viable option," Meyer said. "The longer people have been here, the deeper their ties. And the deeper their ties, the more things they have to fight for."

'I see their horror and their fear'

A Denver-based organization is contending with another aspect of the Trump administration's approach to curtailing immigration: the president's indefinite .

The decision has left the Ethiopian Community Development Council's ��grappling with how it can fulfill its mission as a nonprofit refugee resettlement agency.

Rhossy Ouanzin Gbebri, the development and communications manager, says��he's unsure when the halt will be lifted. The agency typically serves 1,000 to 1,200 people annually.

"If we don't receive refugees, we don't get the money that we're supposed to get to be able to help them," Ouanzin Gbebri said. "Everything that is happening at the federal level impacts our work."

When the State Department ordered agencies to cease work under certain grants, the center was forced to let go of 15 staff members. The people it serves -- particularly those who haven't mastered English yet -- continue leaning on staff for help.

"Over the past five months, I've seen all sorts of emotion," Ouanzin Gbebri said. "A lot of people were scared. A lot of people were coming to the office to get help."

But volunteers have stepped up and lawyers are teaching refugees about their rights -- making for a silver lining for Ouanzin Gbebri.

"This work matters," he said. "Refugees here still need our help."

Other Coloradans have supported immigrants facing insecurities under Trump, including U.S. citizens motivated to respond after seeing the impact of the president's policies on their neighbors.

In Aurora, the Rev. Wayne Laws of the United Church of Christ is handling fears among the devout in the local faith community.

"Some pastors are reporting a drop-off in the congregation because immigrants, migrants are afraid to come to worship services," said Laws, 70.

But he says he's also seeing a greater level of activism. Laws and other local faith leaders are working together to launch , an organization that would provide crisis care to vulnerable populations.

Denver resident Roz Heise, 82, says she knows many immigrants without full legal status.

"I see their horror and their fear," Heise said. "I feel helpless and sad and frustrated and ashamed."

The octogenarian said that, over the course of her life, she hadn't heard such negative rhetoric about immigrants until Trump's first term. She's written letters to her elected officials and attended protests.

"If they want to arrest me for something, go right ahead," Heise said. "I mean, I'm 82. What are they gonna do? Kill me?"

As Trump's approach on immigration evolves -- and -- she's among immigrant-rights advocates, lawyers and officials in Colorado who say they will be ready to respond.

“I was totally heartbroken at the fact our nation had chosen someone like Donald Trump to be the face of our country,” said Ramirez, founder and executive director of , a Colorado nonprofit that helps low-income, Latino high school students access college.

When Trump, ousted by voters in 2020, secured a second term by defeating Vice President Kamala Harris this week, Ramirez said he knew he must step up and help.

“The very safety of some of our students and families is going to depend on people like me,” the 43-year-old, first-generation Mexican-American said. “They’re relying on us. They’re looking to us, and they need us. We have to be those people for them at this moment where this is so much uncertainty.”

With Trump’s re-election, Colorado’s immigrant communities and advocacy organizations are preparing for what they fear will be a new level of federal hostility that could endanger the hundreds of thousands of foreign-born people who call the state home.

Trump, who has referred to immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the United States, promised to carry out mass deportations of people who are here illegally. His plan — “Operation Aurora” — is named after the culturally diverse Colorado city of 400,000 that drew national attention after the former president repeatedly exaggerated claims that violent Venezuelan gangs had taken over.

He has said he would pursue the death penalty for migrants who kill American citizens and invoke the , a 1798 law previously used to create Japanese internment camps during World War II. Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser, has said sympathetic Republican governors could activate National Guard troops and deploy them to nearby states that refuse to participate in deportations.

“We will send elite squads of ICE, border patrol and federal enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest and deport every last illegal alien gang member until there is not a single one left,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Aurora last month.

In Denver, a deep-blue city that long has held so-called sanctuary policies, Mayor Mike Johnston said the second Trump administration should not expect cooperation with any kind of mass deportation program.

“We would not participate in anything of that nature and I think they would find a great majority of the country would not partner on something like that,” Johnston said in an interview Wednesday.

Denver already bars local law enforcement from cooperating with federal officials seeking to deport undocumented immigrants who may be in city custody. Under Johnston, the city has also launched a program dedicated to supporting asylum seekers — mostly migrants from Venezuela — with housing, food, job training and other services while they await federal authorization to work.

“We’re not planning to change any part of our approach to this issue,” Johnston said. “We will continue to be a welcoming and warm city connecting people to the service they need including housing.”

Gov. Jared Polis, through a spokesperson, declined an interview request Wednesday about Trump’s plans for immigrants in Colorado. The spokesperson, Shelby Wieman, instead referred to a statement in which Polis congratulated Trump and affirmed Colorado’s commitment “to protecting freedom, choice and the opportunity for everyone to build the life they want in our great state.”

Colorado nonprofits “prepared to stand up”

At in Aurora, owner and founder Ashley Cuber said 90% of her client base are Venezuelan migrants who arrived in the past year or so – mostly families applying for asylum.

She expects complications under Trump for not only her clients, but also people with and recipients of DACA, or , status.

Temporary Protected Status is extended to foreigners from select countries undergoing armed conflict, natural disasters and other conditions — a temporary immigration status that protects migrants from deportation and grants them authorization to work. Current eligible nations include Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela.

Meanwhile, DACA is an Obama-era immigration policy that provides protection from deportation and work permits to people who were brought to this country without documentation as children.

Alberto Bejarano, a Venezuelan who resettled in Denver in March 2018 and secured Temporary Protected Status, isn’t worried. He backs the incoming Trump administration and its plan for deportations. Bejarano compared the Democratic Party to the socialism of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

“Trump has never said that he’s anti-immigration,” Bejarano said Wednesday. “He’s like most of us: anti-illegal immigration.”

During his first term, Trump dramatically curtailed the use of Temporary Protected Status and tried to end DACA. He pledged on the campaign trail to in Springfield, Ohio, and deport them.

“He’s planning on stripping Temporary Protected Status or other types of status like DACA away from people to make them now eligible for deportation,” Cuber said. “There’s going to be lawsuits.”

She described her friends who are DACA recipients as “terrified.” Cuber estimates that mass deportations would impact hundreds of thousands of people across Colorado. There are an estimated 11 million people in the country illegally.

“It would harm the United States to deport the numbers he’s saying,” Cuber said. “And it would take decades for the U.S. economy to recover, if ever.”

Around 9.5% of Colorado’s residents are foreign-born, according to ��Nearly half of Colorado’s immigrants are naturalized citizens. About 5.8% of the state’s U.S.-born residents live with at least one immigrant parent.

Immigrants account for 11.4% of Colorado’s labor force and make up 12.2% of the state’s entrepreneurs, 11.2% of STEM workers and 8.3% of nurses, according to the data.

Nita Gonzales, a board member of , said she doesn’t doubt Trump will act on his proposed mass-deportation plan.

“This plan is not just about immigration policy,” Gonzales said in a phone interview. “It’s about targeting families, neighbors and individuals who contribute daily to the strength and diversity of our communities.”

She referenced the legacy of former Colorado Gov. Ralph Carr, a Republican who spoke out against Japanese-American internment camps during World War II.��Gonzales pressed Colorado’s mayors, congressional delegation, state legislature and Polis to push back against the president-elect����ap immigration policies in the near future.

“We have to work to ensure our cities are places of safety and not targets for political agendas,” Gonzales said. “We are prepared to stand up against this in Colorado.”

State Rep. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat who comfortably leads in his bid for a seat in the state Senate, likewise leaned on the election results to show Colorado’s values – even if Trump has explicitly targeted his district.

“Last night, unfortunately, the country chose Trump and Trumpism,” he said Wednesday. “I think it’s important to point out that Colorado did not choose Trump and Trumpism.”

Weissman promised to fight any unlawful actions in court and highlighted existing caselaw preventing things like the detention of immigrants purely based on federal immigration detainers.

“Any efforts the federal government attempts to pursue in the state of Colorado that are not legal will be met with a reminder that we are a country where we still follow the rule of law,” Weissman said.

“Feeling like there’s a target on their back”

Henry Sandman, managing director of the , said the organization has already started hearing from immigrant community members who are scared and sad.

“Just the pain of feeling like there’s a target on their back — like they’re not wanted,” Sandman said.

Sandman said the coalition will continue its work of making sure Colorado is a state welcoming to immigrants.

The organization was born out of a difficult time for immigrants in the past, when racist rhetoric was rampant after 9/11, Sandman said.��From 2006 to 2013, the coalition fought to repeal “show me your papers” laws that forced law enforcement to detain and deport thousands of Coloradans.

During Trump’s last presidency, Sandman said ICE raids abounded. The coalition established a hotline to provide the immigrant community with information about what was going on and to help teach people their rights under U.S. law.

Beyond fears of mass deportation and raids, Sandman said he’s concerned what repeated attacks painting immigrants as criminals will do to harm the vulnerable community.

“That’s something we’re going to be monitoring very closely because the way immigrants were portrayed throughout the campaign is not accurate and it divided us,” he said. “We want to change the discourse.”

Denver Post staff writer Joe Rubino and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Aviles-Zamora and her mother met with the attorney in 2017 to begin the teen’s , or DACA, application process. Aviles-Zamora craved a driver’s license and a job like her friends, but being brought from Mexico to the United States when she was 4 years old precluded her from the same opportunities.

When Aviles-Zamora’s mother learned about DACA, she thought it could guarantee her hardworking daughter a normal life. The Obama-era program provided two years of renewable protection from deportation and work permits to people who were brought to this country without documentation as children.

The mother-daughter duo entered the office buoyant, preparing for celebration.��But they were too late, the attorney informed them.

“I was gutted,” said Aviles-Zamora, now a 21-year-old student at Metropolitan State University of Denver who has since found an alternative to DACA that offers her comparable benefits.

President Donald Trump halted new applications for DACA protections in 2017, allowing only existing recipients to renew. Had they come in a few months ago, the lawyer told them, they wouldn’t have missed the deadline — but now Aviles-Zamora was locked out.

Since 2017, DACA and those who’ve been able to remain in the U.S. under its protections have been in limbo amid multiple challenges to the federal program’s legality. Experts predict the matter soon will reach the U.S. Supreme Court, where the conservative majority is expected to strike the policy down. Unless Congress acts, the futures of 600,000 current DACA recipients across the country — — will be in jeopardy and hundreds of thousands of immigrants who would have been eligible for the program’s protections will lose a legal pathway to live and work in the U.S.

The end of DACA would have far-reaching implications for those who are undocumented, their families and the economy as a whole. Hoping to help blunt those impacts, immigration advocates in Colorado are urging people who are undocumented to seek out alternative programs that provide similar benefits to DACA. State legislators, meanwhile, are considering strategies to ensure people brought to the U.S. as children without documentation can continue to live and work in Colorado, regardless of what happens at the federal level.

“Many of the folks with DACA are adults now and are integrated into our economy, our workforce and have children of their own,” said Arturo Jimenez, an MSU Denver affiliate professor and immigration attorney. “The end of DACA would just be devastating for the nation, including Denver and Colorado.”

A federal judge in 2021 declared DACA to be illegal because of the way the Obama administration enacted it in 2012. Last October, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, but sent the case back to the Texas judge, asking him to take another look at it after the Biden administration made changes to the program. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas heard arguments in June, but that ruling is still pending.

The courts have allowed existing DACA recipients to maintain their protections and apply for renewals as the case continues to be litigated.��But legal experts anticipate DACA likely will end within the next year or two, possibly sooner, Jimenez said.

“I hope I’m wrong,” he said.

Humanitarian parole

An additional 8,230 Coloradans were estimated to be eligible for DACA in 2022, according to the , but they are blocked from seeking the program’s protections as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is no longer accepting new applications.

, immigrants must have arrived in the U.S. before their 16th birthday, lived in the U.S. continuously since June 2007, be free of any felony convictions or significant misdemeanor offenses, and pose no threat to national security or public safety, among other requirements.

While the legal pathways to citizenship are slim, there are alternatives to DACA that people living in the U.S. without documentation can apply for to keep living or working in the country legally.

For example, Citizenship and Immigration Services is still processing requests for , a temporary travel permit that allows people involved in U.S. immigration proceedings to leave the country for a short period of time and re-enter with the same status they held when they left, without having to apply for a visa. This can be a slow process, Jimenez said, but the federal government is more quickly processing applications for people to leave and come back.

“If they have a sick uncle or grandparent outside the country and that person is receiving treatment in the hospital, with a doctor’s letter, they can go see them,” Jimenez said. “I’ve had many clients file, leave and come back within two or so weeks.”

More importantly, Jimenez said, emergency humanitarian parole allows a person to enter��the U.S. legally, which opens more doors for their immigration status down the line. “The legal re-entry is really important,” he said.

There are many myths within the undocumented community about what might hurt a person’s chance at citizenship or DACA renewal, Jimenez said.

However,�� immigration law has numerous provisions that could help a person’s immigration status, he said, including or having a U.S. citizen family member who is willing to

People also erroneously believe that if they have DACA status, they are not allowed to also pursue these other options.

“There are a large number of DACA recipients who have never spoken to an immigration attorney or someone with expertise with immigration to find out if they have other options for legalizing their status,” Jimenez said. “And many people do have a clear path but just don’t know it. Go to an expert and get that advice.”

“Your community is there for you”

At the immigration attorney’s office that day in 2017, through a wall of tears, Aviles-Zamora watched her mother’s horrified face turn toward hers.

“It was clear she felt responsible and thought she had ruined my whole life by not taking me sooner,” Aviles-Zamora said. “She kept saying she was so sorry and she didn’t know, and I couldn’t stop crying, but kept telling her it was OK.”

Aviles-Zamora was right. She applied — and was granted — work authorization and a Social Security card through another program, the Special Immigrant Juvenile classification, last fall.

The five-year��road to get there was ripe with challenges and misinformation.

Later In 2017, Aviles-Zamora moved from Illinois to Colorado with her family and settled into classes at Denver’s John F. Kennedy High School.

She formed close relationships with her teachers and guidance counselor, who steered her toward the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, a resource for the Colorado immigrant community.

“There are so many places you can get help,” Aviles-Zamora said. “Don’t be afraid to ask. Your community is there for you to help you.”

Aviles-Zamora learned about the federal Special Immigrant Juvenile classification, which provides certain children who have experienced abuse, neglect or abandonment under state law, the ability to seek lawful permanent residence in the U.S.

Her strained relationship with her father escalated to family court and eventually qualified Aviles-Zamora for that classification. She wept on MSU Denver’s campus when she got the call that she had been accepted into the Special Immigrant Juvenile program — a flicker of hope for the young woman who dreams of joining the workforce.

Labor shortages

One of the most important aspects of DACA for many of its recipients is the ability to obtain permits to legally work in the country, which contributes millions to the economy, including through taxes.

At a time when the country is facing severe labor shortages, the end of DACA could be detrimental for many employers, said Alexandre Padilla, professor and chair of the Economics Department at MSU Denver.

Immigrants often accept jobs in industries in which U.S. natives don’t want to work, including frontline work, construction or farming, Padilla said. Cutting or limiting those eligible for DACA also ends up raising costs for businesses that have to replace their workers, research has shown.

In 2017, the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank, estimated rescinding DACA would cost American employers . Over a 10-year period, the federal government could lose $60 billion in revenue and the loss in gross domestic product.

For Colorado, according to the research, that would total in costs to the state.

Getting rid of DACA won’t mean an end to people living in the country without authorization, but from an economic standpoint, experts point to negative effects. For example, a 2016 study showed that heads of households who were able to get DACA status saw a 38% reduction in poverty, and those with higher earnings were able to support themselves and their families, Padilla said. They are more likely to purchase homes and put more money into the economy, and their children are healthier and have fewer mental health problems. They are also more likely to pursue educational opportunities.

“The issue with (ending) DACA is that the uncertainty has a host of problems,” Padilla said. And with that uncertainty comes less of an incentive to attend college, innovate and work, which ultimately harms society as a whole, he added.

Undocumented immigrants who have DACA or would be eligible for the program in the U.S. were estimated in 2018 to contribute , according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The consensus among economists, Padilla said, is that the benefits of immigration far outweigh the costs. He believes DACA should actually be expanded rather than eliminated, especially since the number of recipients has dropped significantly since 2018, despite how many people could have been eligible.

“Eliminating DACA might be good politics (appease anti-immigrant sentiments to capture votes and political support), but it is bad economics,” Padilla wrote in a presentation last fall titled “The Economics of DACA: What is Seen and What is Not Seen.”

That’s why Colorado lawmakers like Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat, and Rep. Naquetta Ricks, an Aurora Democrat, are researching ways to support DACA recipients in the state, potentially through future legislation.

Colorado has earned a pro-immigrant reputation in recent years for its policies, including allowing people who are undocumented to get driver’s licenses, enabling undocumented workers to obtain professional licenses, authorizing DACA recipients to work as armed police officers, and making DACA recipients eligible for in-state tuition and financial aid.

Gonzales wants to take stock of what Colorado already��has passed and what other states have implemented, but she said the answer may even be something that hasn’t been done before.

“Colorado has led and been groundbreaking on a lot of policy, and as we look to the end of DACA, our community’s going to look to us to lead again,” she said.

State Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, a Monument Republican, said for him, the question of what happens to DACA is representative of a broader federal problem. Lundeen said he wants to see secure sovereign borders, but also a “functioning gate” that people can get through legally to live and work in the country.

The U.S. economy needs immigrants to function, he noted, and he especially wants to see a solution for those living here without documentation who entered the country as children and know only America as their home.

“I hope the federal law will get to a place where we can actually solve the problem,” Lundeen said.

In the meantime, Colorado advocates are looking to statewide solutions that have been tried in other states.

In May, the University of California’s Board of Regents announced a plan to remove hiring restrictions for all students, regardless of their immigration status. MSU Denver, which is governed by its own board of trustees, is looking into whether it could implement a similar initiative, spokesperson Tim Carroll said.

The University of Colorado Board of Regents doesn’t have plans to change its hiring processes on system campuses, according to spokesperson Jeff Howard, but it is “ready to assist impacted students” if changes to DACA occur.

On a smaller scale, CU Boulder clinical law professor Violeta Chapin is working with other faculty and meeting with state business leaders to help DACA recipients and undocumented students start their own businesses — an option that would allow those who lose work authorization to still comply with tax laws — and to provide them .

Chapin, the law school’s associate dean for community and culture, said starting a small business isn’t accessible for everyone, but it’s one alternative to being able to work legally in the U.S. Federal immigration law doesn’t bar immigrants without documentation from owning small businesses.

The immigration clinic at the law school has also hosted presentations about hiring undocumented workers as independent contractors rather than employees because those tax documents don’t ask about citizenship status.

“Don’t lose hope”

The potential end of DACA shifted some of the programming for the nonprofit , an organization that helps undocumented families access upward mobility and build generational wealth. At first, its focus was on helping undocumented people who were eligible for DACA for the first time, said CEO and founder Luis Antezana. Then the nonprofit pivoted to helping recipients with renewals, including helping provide grants to pay for them, as well as offering entrepreneurship classes.

Antezana, a DACA recipient who immigrated to the U.S. with his family at age 7, didn’t know he was undocumented until he was a senior in high school and wanted to apply for college. He learned that without a Social Security number, he couldn’t seek financial aid and his family couldn’t afford to pay for a university education. It was a difficult time in his life, he said, but he ended up being able to go to a university through a scholarship.

In 2015, Antezana moved to Colorado and worked in education until he decided to dedicate his full-time work to Juntos in 2021. If the DACA program ceases to exist, it would not only impact the work Antezana does with Juntos, but it would also take away his own work authorization.

On one hand, it’s a reminder that “there are people in power, there’s a government that wants to terminate who I am, essentially,” the 31-year-old said. But on the other, “the sun has still risen every day, you’ve still gotten up.”

He plans to continue that work to help people and families find alternatives to DACA and ultimately thrive.

Although DACA may no longer be an option, advocates want to help undocumented people find new paths, like Aviles-Zamora was able to.

She is still awaiting her Social Security card and work authorization. The yearning for these documents that will allow her to pursue a career in law — inspired by her own legal journey — is palpable.

“I was thinking back to 15-year-old me being like, ‘Woah, I thought I was going to get DACA.’ Then I learned I wasn’t going to get DACA,” Aviles-Zamora said. “I thought I was going to have to marry out of high school to get citizenship. I didn’t even know I could apply for college. Now look at me.”

Aviles-Zamora is majoring in English and double-minoring in political science and art history. She dreams of attending law school one day, but, in the meantime, is eyeing an internship at the Denver Art Museum, where she could give tours to bilingual students.

She’s paying for her MSU Denver education through scholarships and can’t wait until she’s able to earn wages with her own work authorization.

“Don’t lose hope,” Aviles-Zamora said. “The legal system and justice system, in general, can be very very stressful and disheartening. You can apply to multiple things at the same time and see what sticks first and keep going.”

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Gov. Jared Polis signed into law on Thursday, allowing the state’s Peace Officers Standards and Training board to establish rules for people with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status and asylum seekers to become certified peace officers or reserve officers. That means police and sheriff’s departments can change their firearms policies to allow eligible immigrants employed as law enforcement officers to carry guns and allow those eligible to attend training academies.

The new law, backed by Republicans and Democrats, is set to take effect 91 days after this year’s legislative session ends.

“We have a number of areas of workforce shortage across our state,” Polis said at the signing. “There’s a number of ways that we’re stepping up to address this… We’re expanding that this year including law enforcement, firefighting …”

Interim Aurora Police Chief Art Acevedo told The Denver Post Thursday that he supports allowing DACA recipients to work as police officers, especially amid a nationwide shortage of people applying for law enforcement positions.

People with DACA status were brought to the U.S. as children and have been vetted for the Barack Obama-era program. They live and work legally in the U.S. Those applying for police positions would still have to go through the same rigorous process as everyone else, including required background checks, polygraphs and completion of various tests, Acevedo said.

Acevedo, who immigrated with his family from Cuba as a young child, recalled , through the department’s explorer program. The student, Christian Mendoza, wanted to become a police officer after he graduated but was not eligible because of his status, so he ended up getting hired at the police agency but not in a capacity where he would carry a gun.

Although Acevedo advocated for such a policy change to allow people with DACA to apply for policing jobs in Texas, similar legislation wasn’t adopted. Now, he says he wants to call that former student and encourage him to apply in Colorado.

“It’s not about nation of origin,” Acevedo said. It’s instead about integrity and dedication to the job and mission, he said.

Rep. Cathy Kipp, a Fort Collins Democrat, has been working with the state attorney general’s office for more than a year on the bill after someone with DACA contacted her about wanting to work as a police officer. They looked at what other states have done and found that Connecticut has already allowed people with DACA status to work as police starting in 2021.

Not only does this allow people with DACA to achieve their job goals, Kipp said at a House Judiciary Committee meeting for the bill, but it also will help diversify police forces.

GOP Rep. Ryan Armagost of Berthoud signed on as a sponsor after talking to the police chief in Greeley, who he said couldn’t hire “probably the best applicant he ever had” because of the candidate’s citizenship status. Armagost told committee members that he served with who were able to carry firearms, so he was glad to extend that to police agencies as well.

“They serve in every other capacity when they choose a life of public service,” Armagost said. “They can be firefighters, they can be EMTs, first responders, but law enforcement was cut out of that because of the issue of being able to be issued a firearm and ammunition not only in the performance of their duties but as a POST-certified peace officer (while off duty).”

Colorado was able to pass the new law because of a federal exception allowing the practice. Although law enforcement leaders worried about what would happen to their officers if the federal government decided to remove the exception, the��state law’s proponents have said that as more states and police departments rely on immigrants in these positions, it would become more difficult for the federal government to end it.

The bill passed 31-4 in the Senate and 46-18 in the House. For Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, a Monument Republican, his no vote was a close call.

“We should do everything we can to encourage people to become fully vested members of our community,” he said. “This is an example of how policy can dilute the motivations to become fully vested — do the work to become a citizen.”

But immigration advocates have long argued that there is no clear pathway to citizenship for people with DACA — a program with an uncertain future.

GOP Rep. Matt Soper of Delta, opposed the bill because he said he couldn’t get over the fact that noncitizens would be arresting citizens in Colorado for violations, calling it “just one line too far.” The solution, he said, is the federal government needs to act on immigration.

Reporter Seth Klamann contributed to this story.

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Their daughter is terrified of police officers. Their son began wetting the bed and hasn’t stopped. She disconnected all of her electronics because she worried she was being watched constantly. Her mother died.

Now, the 32-year-old Denver woman doesn’t have stable housing after losing her mobile home.

“Really, I have very little hope,” said Hilda, who spoke on the condition her last name be withheld because she’s in the country without legal authorization and fears for her family’s safety in Mexico. She added: “I’m suffering from depression.”

The Denver Post spoke to Hilda and five��other Coloradans left struggling after U.S. Immigration and Enforcement officers detained them or their loved ones, in order to get a sense of how their lives are being affected by federal immigration enforcement in this state.

Their experiences corroborated findings from a by the Colorado State University’s School of Social Work and the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition that anonymously documented the stories of 17 immigrants dealing with an immigration system they say is spiteful, unjust and further disadvantages those who don’t have the financial means to fight through it.

ICE’s Denver Field Office, which oversees operations in Colorado and Wyoming, conducted 2,131 deportations in 2020 out of 185,884 nationally, according to an .

The number of deportations has dropped in the two years President Joe Biden has been in office. In 2021, the agency deported 1,237 people in the Denver Field Office’s operations area, and 924 in 2022, according to data provided to The Post.

The Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition teamed up with CSU researchers to increase understanding and awareness of how the U.S. immigration system functions and to detail the lived experiences of immigrants in Colorado who came into contact with ICE, local jails and the immigration detention facility in Aurora — run by private prison company GEO Group — over the last decade.

After the researchers concluded their interviews, many of the people they spoke to worked with advocacy groups to voice their support for , a Colorado bill now headed to the governor’s desk that would restrict local and state government entities from getting into agreements with ICE to detain immigrants suspected of civil immigration violations.

“The issue is not just that the system rips apart families, destabilizes the basic unit of society and needlessly incarcerates people, though that would certainly be enough to warrant overhaul,” CSU researcher Elizabeth Kiehne said in a statement. “The issue is also that how enforcement officers and detention facility personnel go about their job is senselessly inhumane, dehumanizing and traumatizing.”

“People can’t stay silent”

The project began about two-and-a-half years ago, and now researchers are working on three reports, including peer-reviewed journal entries detailing their findings. One of the reports also will focus on the criminalization of immigrants and their work to advocate for a more humane approach for immigrants — a movement the federal government is inadvertently fueling, according to Kiehne, an assistant professor of social work.

Seventeen immigrants in Colorado between the ages of 18 and 65 participated in interviews and focus groups, conducted in Spanish, for the project. Eleven of them were directly impacted and six indirectly, according to the researchers. The average length of time a person spent in detention was about 4.3 months and the average time they’ve lived in the U.S. was about 15.6 years. The majority of those interviewed came from Mexico, with the others from Colombia and Nicaragua.

“People can’t stay silent,” Kiehne said in an interview. “They don’t want to. They have to speak up. They’ve already hit their own rock bottom and they’re motivated to change systems.”

The researchers’ analysis pinpointed seven themes that emerged across people’s experiences with federal immigration enforcement.

• Treatment was described as aggressive and authoritarian
• Basic rights were ignored
• Detainees were coerced to voluntarily leave the country
• Racism fueled rights violations
• Detainees were subjected to unjust criminal treatment
• Treatment within the immigration system��was neglectful
• Deceptive practices sowed community distrust

Before embarking on the project, Kiehne said she knew that immigration detention separated families. But she said she learned during her research that ICE makes it a point to be cruel and inhumane during arrests and in detention. Those interviewed said it����ap so they break and voluntarily leave the country, and that ICE often withholds information from them or denies them their rights, Kiehne added.

ICE officials did not respond directly to the themes identified in the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition’s report when asked about them by The Post.

But an agency spokesperson said in a statement that “regardless of nationality, ICE makes custody determinations on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with U.S. law and U.S. Department of Homeland Security policy, considering the individual merits and factors of each case. ICE officers make associated decisions and apply prosecutorial discretion in a responsible manner, informed by their experience as law enforcement professionals and in a way that best protects against the greatest threats to the homeland.”

Part of what was most surprising for Kiehne about the research was that it seemed like ICE was conducting operations based on broader negative societal views and biases about immigrants.

“This would go along with the theme that we call ‘racism fuels human rights abuses,’ where participants also articulated themselves that they feel that the reason why they’re allowed to be treated like this is because they’re people of color, because they’re brown,” Kiehne said. “Their very humanity is in question.”

That’s not the way former ICE Denver Field Office director John Fabbricatore sees it.

Fabbricatore, who oversaw ICE operations in Colorado and Wyoming before retiring in July, started working in Denver in 1999. He said in an interview that it����ap difficult to respond to the themes described in the coalition’s report because he believes everyone should be treated in the best way possible in detention and he would need to review individual cases to respond.

But Fabbricatore said there are certain restrictions, routines and orders in detention and ICE has to enforce those regulations, so the agency has to be authoritative. And for ICE officials, that includes enforcing immigration law, even for asylum seekers going through a legal process — not just those who are living in the country without legal authorization.

“The bottom line is no one’s ever going to agree with an asylee (a person seeking political asylum) being in custody. I mean, I get it,” Fabbricatore said. “I’m not this guy that wants to kick everyone out of the United States. I love immigration. I want to see people from all over the world coming here. … I want them to do it legally.

“But I understand when asylees come up here… they’re claiming bad situations in their country. And it’s difficult to watch those people be put into custody. It is difficult, but it is the law and Congress needs to change that law if they want things to be different. It’s not ICE making it up.”

When he worked as director in Denver, Fabbricatore said about 80% of the people held in the Aurora detention center were convicted of crimes, but that percent likely has fluctuated with more asylum cases coming up from the border.

ICE’s Denver Field Office booked 1,916 people in 2021 and 2,227 in 2022, according to data provided to The Post. But the agency did not provide current data on the percentage of people being held in the Aurora immigration facility who had prior criminal convictions.

Fabbricatore stressed that there are avenues for people to file complaints when their rights are violated and if there are contracted guards at the Aurora facility who are abusive, they should be removed. And he insisted that the GEO Group has plenty of oversight and overall has a good record, despite claims and lawsuits to the contrary by outside groups and immigrant families.

The GEO Group said in a written statement that it was proud of the professionalism it uses to run services on behalf of the federal government and its accreditations, including access to “around-the-clock” medical care and legal services. A spokesperson said GEO Group has a commitment to respecting human rights and employing ethical practices and that it has a “zero-tolerance policy with respect to staff misconduct.”

“GEO has a long-standing track record of providing high-quality services to those entrusted to our care and has safely and humanely managed the Aurora ICE Processing Center for more than three decades,” the private prison company said in its statement. “Unfortunately, these efforts by the Colorado legislature are part of a long-standing, politically motived and radical campaign to attack ICE’s contractors, abolish ICE and end federal immigration detention by proxy. ”

Traumatic detention

The researchers and people caught up in the immigration system report the opposite to be true, with lawmakers noting that the state does not have as much oversight of the Aurora facility as it does with its own prisons.

In addition to the consequences of direct contact with ICE, the CSU research also disclosed .

Hilda’s children are still traumatized by seeing their father picked up by ICE and deported. The family has lived in Colorado since 2014, and her husband was first arrested in April 2018 outside their home in Broomfield as he was headed into work.

He spent about three months in the Aurora detention facility before being deported. Hilda sent two of her sons to Mexico to stay with their father, and she planned to join them with the rest of their children a short time later. Hilda and the couple’s two older children, who were born in Mexico, are living in the United States without legal authorization.

Although they already had lost friends and family to cartel violence in Mexico, the conditions worsened, and a friend of Hilda’s husband was assassinated in July 2018, just months after he’d arrived in Mexico. So her husband again crossed the border, where officers outfitted him with an ankle monitor.

Six or seven months after his return, Hilda said her husband received a formal notice of deportation, and out of fear, they cut off his ankle monitor.

“We were so afraid about what had happened, about the kidnappings, the killing, and, really, we had nowhere to go,” she said in Spanish. “We were so afraid. I don’t like to remember this. It’s really hard to think about.”

In August 2019, her husband received a letter stating he could have another chance at a hearing in immigration court. The couple felt like it was a trap, but they wanted to pursue legal residency, Hilda said. However, after the hearing, ICE arrested her husband again. Their children were present and called out to their father, crying as he was taken into custody, she said.

The officers transported him to the Aurora detention center, where he spent the next eight months. Hilda said her husband complained about the food being rotten, and he was under extreme stress and in significant pain. He was clenching his jaw so hard he was at risk of losing his teeth, she said.

In 2020, Hilda’s husband was deported again. He’s now working in Mexico under a pseudonym and is effectively undocumented in his own country, she said, because of his fears of the cartels.

“A��scar that will never go away”

Lorena Barreras, another Coloradan living in the country without authorization, frequently thinks about those conditions after her son’s time at the Aurora detention facility.

Her 19-year-old son was arrested in January 2020 in Grand Junction — a woman they knew in a neighboring county falsely accused him of a crime, Barreras said, so she could obtain a U Visa, which is legal status granted to immigrant victims of crime or those who help police in identifying or investigating crimes.

Barreras, 37, has lived in Edwards since she immigrated to the United States 16 years ago and is a mom to three U.S. citizen kids with another on the way.

Her son, from her previous marriage in Mexico, had come to Colorado on a work visa in 2018, she said. He had been helping his mother clean hotels, trying to save money to pay for school, and was waiting on an extension of his work authorization prior to his arrest.

On Jan. 8, 2020, he was in Grand Junction for the day helping a friend of Barreras’ with a paint job. When officers approached him, he was willing to speak to them, Barreras said, because he had nothing to hide. But they arrested him on what she said were false charges.

Barreras’ son was booked into the Eagle County jail after his Mesa County arrest. But by the time his mom got there and paid his bond, ICE agents were taking him into custody in the parking lot.

“It was unforgettable,”�� Barreras said through a translator. “I tried to grab my son, but they ran me off. They threatened me — they told me that if I didn’t let go of him, they were going to arrest me, too. They threatened, asking for my documents and I had to leave. I had to run away. But it was something that I’ll never, ever forget. It was so terrible and the way that they treated my son, even though he wasn’t resisting… It was like they had pain in their hearts.”

Barreras’ son was transferred to Aurora, where he was feeling unwell and getting worse — he had headaches and dental pain, but inmates have said that when they complain about tooth pain, their teeth just get pulled, he told his mom. Barreras said she wasn’t allowed to visit him because it was at the height of COVID-19, and even though they had some video calls, she said the guards would sometimes hide the tablets so inmates couldn’t speak to their families. Her son told her they were locked up in their cells nearly all day.

“He still suffers from depression,” Barreras said. “He is constantly crying and he really misses me.”

Now, Barreras also suffers from mental health issues, takes medication and goes to therapy because of how much the incident affected her, and she said her other children are struggling, too.

Barreras’ son was pressured to sign voluntary deportation paperwork, she said, and ICE didn’t let her see him before he was removed from the country. Someone had to help her retrieve her son’s belongings from detention because the guards wouldn’t cooperate with her, she said.

Now he can’t return to the U.S. and still has an open charge — not a conviction — on his record that he wants an attorney to work to remove. Barreras said she’s already paid $10,000 for a lawyer who she said did nothing to actually help her son.

“It really impacts the whole family,” Barreras said. “It’s like a scar that will never go away.”

“They don’t want us to be here”

That fear of deportation is very real for Angelo and his growing family.

Angelo, 23, spoke to The Post on the condition that he be identified only by his first name out of fear of jeopardizing his ongoing asylum case. He’s been in Colorado for 10 months, and lives in Commerce City with his girlfriend and their new baby. He said, in Spanish, that the situation in Peru had gotten dangerous as economic conditions deteriorated, and he and his family were threatened and extorted for money.

He knew people in Colorado, so he decided to make the journey, turning himself in at the U.S. border as he sought asylum. He was transferred to multiple detention centers, separated from his pregnant partner, before he arrived in Colorado.

In November, after Angelo had started working a retail job and he and his partner were settling into their new home, he was accused of stealing a cellphone and was apprehended by police. Someone he didn’t know had made the report, which he said was fabricated.

Angelo was booked into the Adams County jail and once his bond was paid, he said sheriff’s officials told him to go into a specific room. There, he found ICE officers waiting for him, and they arrested him. Throughout the interaction, he said, the officers harassed him, told him he was getting deported and transported him to the Aurora immigration detention facility.

The conditions were difficult, he said, and to make matters worse, his girlfriend was dealing with illness from her pregnancy alone. He was the breadwinner and, even though she tried to get a job, no one would hire her while visibly pregnant. He was worried he would miss the birth of their baby.

Eventually, with the help of the American Friends Service Committee, his partner was able to bond him out of detention��and find him a lawyer.

The criminal charges against him were dropped.

Angelo said he wants people to “take a look at whether immigration is really serving us because it seems like the police, the immigration (officials), they’re just inventing whatever charge to detain us because those officials don’t like us.”

“They don’t want us here,” he said.

“Just asking them to be more humane”

For Sandra Vargas, a 42-year-old Aurora resident who has lived in the United States for 20 years, the arrest and detention of her two brothers in Aurora, one of them more than a decade ago and another about eight years ago, are still vivid in her mind.

They were both separately arrested for nearly a month, but because they did nothing wrong, Vargas said, they ultimately were allowed to stay in the country.

She describes the detention facility conditions like a jail or prison in Mexico, not the humanitarian standards that the United States boasts, filled with psychological harassment and withholding of food, among other abuses. Her brothers described guards threatening deportation, despite no criminal charges, and getting lobbed with demeaning and racist remarks. They had to purchase everything including basic necessities that county jails often provide inmates through tax dollars.

It was a difficult time in Colorado already, and she and her family were frequently subjected to racist remarks and discrimination, she said.

In 2013, Vargas’ 15-year-old brother was walking down a street at night after leaving his girlfriend’s house. He was dressed as a “cholo,” in a style of clothing belonging to a Latino subculture, she said, when officers approached him.

Authorities claimed it was a routine check, Vargas said, but her family believes he was detained for the way he was dressed and because he’s Mexican. He didn’t have an ID, so he was placed on an immigration hold at the Aurora city jail until he was transferred to the ICE facility, Vargas said.

After not knowing where he was for several days, the Vargas family learned the teen was in jail and they went to bail him out. But by that time, he’d already been transferred to the immigration facility run by GEO Group.

Vargas’ 25-year-old brother was arrested and detained in 2015 after he was found to be driving without a license during a traffic stop in Brighton. He was booked into the Adams County jail before being transported to the Aurora immigration detention center.

Despite the immense struggles, Vargas said she feels grateful that she and her family were able to ultimately pay lawyers to help her brothers get released. But she recognizes so many others, including friends and family, don’t have the ability.

Her youngest brother now has Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, status, though that is now in jeopardy at the federal level. Her older brother had his charges dropped and now has legal status.

But during the family separation, she and her husband had to continue working, despite the pain they were feeling.

“We’re just asking them to be more humane, to respect the rights of each individual… and that everyone deserves respect and to not be mistreated,” she said.

Biased motivations

For the Diazes, it was a near miss. They didn’t get booked into the Aurora immigration detention facility, but it was close.

One morning in February 2019, Carolina Diaz and her husband dropped their daughter off at daycare and headed to a housecleaning job. It was snowing, but they could still see a car tailing them. The car was unmarked, but then the driver turned on lights and sirens and pulled them over.

Diaz was confused — they were following the speed limit, but when the officers spoke their names, it became clear they were from ICE. She said the officers accused them of deceiving them and cheating the system to stay in the country, which the Diazes told the officers wasn’t true. Then the officers asked the couple to follow them to the ICE office.

The Diazes are asylum seekers from Colombia. They initially came to the U.S. with their infant daughter on a tourist visa in 2017, visiting family in Durango as a temporary escape from the insecurity they were feeling in their home country. They both had stable jobs in Colombia — she was a journalist, her husband a veterinarian.

But after the 2018 Colombian presidential election of , the Diazes began to worry about what a return in that political climate could mean and feared for their safety. Carolina Diaz was a peace activist in her native country and a victim of war — her father was kidnapped in 2003, tortured and killed.

The Diazes were granted political asylum a couple of years ago and have been waiting for their permanent residency paperwork.

But for hours that day in February 2019, Diaz and her husband were grilled about various people they worked with, community members’ legal statuses and why they were in Durango. The officers were rude and demeaning, Diaz said, and they mocked them. She said they also made empty promises about getting them legal documentation if they cooperated.

After nearly eight hours, they let them go, she said. That was partly because they had no one to take care of their daughter, she said. But she also believes, based on the experiences of other friends in the area, that there was a more nefarious reason: the way they presented themselves.

“It’s a really ugly reality,” she said. “But I think compared to many other people coming from other countries and even people coming from my own country, I’ve had more access to opportunities and education” and she could better advocate for herself. She also spoke a little English, which she thinks may have helped, though one of the ICE officers spoke fluent Spanish.

And, Diaz said, both she and her husband look white with lighter complexions than many other Colombians or Latino immigrants. So, despite the stress, she doesn’t consider her experience as terrible as it could have been.

The unintentional movement

Hilda is a prime example of the movement Kiehne’s research identified, one that, she believes, ICE unintentionally started, pushing immigrants to advocate for themselves. She’s been helping organize “Know Your Rights” training sessions to help others avoid similar situations with federal immigration authorities.

“I want people to know that they have rights. If me and my husband had known the rights that we had, even with the situation that we were in, we never would have let him get detained so easily,” she said. “We would have had people accompany us to the court. We would have had communities standing outside looking��and protecting him against the detention by ICE.”

Barreras said she decided to participate in the project and be interviewed by The Post because she wants to be heard and wants to educate people on what����ap happening with the immigration system.��It����ap something the researchers said they heard repeatedly throughout the course of their project.

The Diazes say they have been paying taxes since they arrived in the country in 2017, and not getting any credit for their dependent daughter. Carolina Diaz said she can’t fathom that her tax dollars went toward her own detainment and that of other immigrants.

Most people who get caught in the immigration system are not bad, she said, but they don’t understand the convoluted process to become residents and often don’t have access to lawyers or the money to pay them, she noted.

Kiehne said research has shown that and deportation separates families, but many people end up coming back, particularly if they’re raising U.S.-citizen children. It often affects stable families and laborers, she added, and, as Diaz noted, American children who grow up with these traumas.

The report’s results weren’t shocking to Nayda Benitez of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, a DACA recipient herself and a community organizer. But it reinforced how traumatic the systematic abuses are, she said.

Colorado Democratic lawmakers and advocates have been working for years to make the state more welcoming to all immigrants, regardless of status, saying everyone deserves basic rights and protections. The legislature, especially since 2019, has passed various laws to protect people who are undocumented residents in particular, most recently .

Fabbricatore, who has lambasted Colorado in the past for its so-called “sanctuary status,” referred to these changes as unsafe for the officers and communities as ICE works to arrest people over immigration violations. It leads to ICE officers having to go into communities to make arrests, he argued.

Advocates like Benitez, however, say that all Colorado residents should be protected and not live in fear, including immigrant families seeking better lives, who are just working to support their families and continue to contribute to their communities.

“There are innocent people that are being impacted,” Barreras said. “And even those who are accused of crimes shouldn’t be treated this inhumanely, so I want to ask for people to help us because there are people who are being wrongfully accused and there’s a lot of injustice.”

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“We really understood the weight of what that meant,” said Uriarte, now a 24-year-old Metropolitan State University of Denver graduate. “We were so young and we already knew the importance of this decision.”

Uriarte grew up in Denver’s Westwood, a predominantly Latino, working-class neighborhood. Born in Mexico and with a father who joined the workforce before completing school, education meant everything to Uriarte and her parents, who came to this country illegally in search of a greater life for their children.

A better middle school meant more intensive classes and a shot at a better high school — a chance for Uriarte to be the first in her family to go to college, earn a degree and know a life different from her parents’ struggles.

Luck was on Uriarte’s side in 2010 when she entered the Denver Public Schools enrollment lottery and nabbed a spot at the middle school she and her family hoped would put her on a path toward success: Denver West Middle School, known at the time for its rigorous focus on getting students to college, she said.

But Uriarte’s future once again hinges on circumstances outside of her control. She’s a beneficiary of the legal protections provided under the federal government’s , or DACA, program — the future of which is in doubt as courts weigh its legality.

She��wonders whether she’ll be able to pursue the life she and her family worked and sacrificed for or be deported back to a country she only knew as a baby.

Called to the field that guided Uriarte on her path to success, the December graduate hopes to put her elementary education degree with a concentration in culturally and linguistically diverse studies to good use in Colorado, but DACA’s ultimate fate could put her future as a teacher in jeopardy.

“It’s degrading,” Uriarte said. “Some people think it’s just on a whim that people have chosen to leave their home country and come here instead. But to make such a big decision, it’s never for no reason. It makes me angry because I think about everything my parents have done for me and everything I have done. Why can’t I be able to fully enjoy everything that we’ve worked for?”

Future of DACA unclear

DACA, a program established by the Obama administration in 2012, provides two years of renewable protection from deportation and work permits to undocumented people who were brought to the United States illegally as children.

To be eligible for DACA, applicants must have arrived in the U.S. before their 16th birthday, lived in the U.S. continuously since June 2007, be free of any felony convictions or significant misdemeanor offenses, and pose no threat to national security or public safety, among other requirements.

In 2017, President Donald Trump announced he would rescind DACA, instigating a series of court cases to determine the program’s legality that remain ongoing and serve as a constant reminder to hundreds of thousands of people that their lives are being built on a precarious foundation.

In October, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled DACA unlawful. Existing DACA recipients can still renew their applications, but , said Violeta Chapin, a clinical law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.

More than 13,000 Coloradans are DACA recipients, according to 2022 data provided by the . About 8,000 more people in Colorado are estimated to be eligible for DACA but are blocked from newly applying.

Almost 600,000 DACA recipients nationwide have been left stranded in this ongoing limbo.

“It’s just sort of churning around,” Chapin said of DACA’s status. “Eventually, it will get to the Supreme Court, but right now it’s in a holding pattern.”

Chapin described the odds of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority siding with DACA recipients as “miraculous.”

A different kind of learning loss

When Uriarte’s name was drawn for Denver West Middle School, she said a weight lifted that she hadn’t realized her child self was carrying. The door to a path toward opportunity had been opened, and Uriarte sprinted through.

Even so, Denver West Middle School was intense for Uriarte, who learned English while attending elementary school.

Uriarte’s experience as a Latina student inspired her to become a teacher so she could be a resource she never had — someone who understood the double-edged sword of assimilating into an American school.

“The loss that a lot of students like me experienced growing up makes me want to make sure students can continue to nurture that part of them,” Uriarte said. “That was one of the most heartbreaking things for my parents. The more we went to school, the quicker we were losing the parts of ourselves we didn’t want to see gone — the language, for example.”

Each classroom at Denver West was named after a university, Uriarte said, and the prospect of college was drilled into students. Teachers were caring but academically strict, she said. The workload, she said, was heavy and, at times, overwhelming.

“I did get pretty stressed out, but once I started taking college classes, I realized that everything I had done, going back to middle school, really did prepare me for what I was getting myself into because I was already so accustomed to not taking any shortcuts,” Uriarte said.

By the time Uriarte got to West High School, the gravity of her situation as an undocumented student started weighing heavy. She was accepted into the DACA program in 2016, but there was an unspoken understanding among students not to discuss their legal status for fear of what might happen to their families.

One day, the high school organized a trip to the University of Denver for undocumented students, Uriarte said, to inform them about their college options and avenues to receive monetary assistance since they do not qualify for federal financial aid.

When the students assembled for the trip, Uriarte was shocked to find many of her friends among the group — a secret they all��had been keeping from each other and were relieved to finally share.

“It was a very comforting moment to know I wasn’t alone in this,” she said.

Helping undocumented students succeed

Uriarte didn’t know how she was going to pay for college but worked hard enough to earn the selective

Additionally, Uriarte received help from the and the ��state program, which allows eligible undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at Colorado’s public colleges and universities and receive need-based state financial aid.

Gregor Mieder, director of , said MSU Denver serves the largest population of undocumented students of any Colorado higher education institution.

“I’ve been working with immigrant youth and families for many years and their dedication to education and to being part of the Colorado labor force blows me away every time,” Mieder said. “These are individuals who are eager to fill the kinds of jobs where we see a huge need in the state of Colorado — like social workers, teachers, nursing, accountants. Those are jobs where we have problems finding folks, and not just a few folks, but thousands and thousands of positions that are open. It����ap the immigrant communities that are stepping in and want to fill those positions, and that’s important for our state.”

Mieder’s office helps undocumented students along with refugees and students from abroad learn about financial aid options available to them, provides writing and language support, offers students grants to pay for their DACA renewals, and even connects them with immigration attorneys when needed.

“We have really, fortunately, over the last few years come a long way in Colorado to make college and career more accessible for undocumented people, but a lot of that can be pretty specialized knowledge,” Mieder said.

Many local high schools have counselors or staff knowledgeable in helping undocumented students access college, but if a student or family is interested in learning more, Mieder said reaching out to specific higher education institutions like MSU Denver will provide undocumented people with the answers they’re seeking.

“It’s so mind-blowing”

Uriarte passed her prerequisite classes at the Community College of Denver and transferred to MSU Denver to pursue her elementary education degree.

In the spring, Uriarte began her year-long teaching residency at Northeast Elementary School in Brighton, which she just wrapped.

She hopes to teach either first, second or third grade in Colorado, and she wants to land at a school where she can make the most difference.

“Upcoming teachers know where we’re needed most is where there’s the most trauma and the most diversity and lack of resources, and where I grew up was a Title I (high-poverty) school and where I did my residency was a Title I school, and I can’t imagine another way for me to give back to everything I’ve gotten,” Uriarte said.

Looking back, Uriarte is proud of everything she and her family have overcome. Her parents have since attained their residency status, and her mother earned a GED.

“Being reflective, thinking about where we were back then and where we are now, it����ap so mind-blowing,” Uriarte said. “There’s a lot of joy in seeing where everything started and how everything panned out.”

The new graduate hopes the joy and luck that have graced her life in the past continue so she may work toward her future in the only country she remembers.

But that will depend on the future of DACA. The bipartisan legislative support for the program that once existed is dwindling, said Chapin, the CU Boulder law professor.

“It’s an abject failure of our congressional members to agree, and it leaves those who are impacted by it with a tremendous amount of anxiety and anger and an increasing sense of not feeling welcome in a country that they love,” Chapin said. “It is our fault — the U.S. system and people who can vote — that we have been unable to pass laws that would normalize and change the status of not just DACA recipients but their parents, many of whom have lived here for decades and the vast majority are contributing members of society.”

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The Biden administration said it plans to appeal Friday’s ruling that requires the federal government to stop processing new applications for the DACA program, which helps immigrants whose families brought them into the U.S. as young children temporarily avoid deportation and become eligible for work permits and Social Security numbers.

The latest court ruling leaves immigration attorneys scrambling to figure out how best to help clients who planned to apply for DACA. Current DACA recipients — people like 25-year-old Estéfani Peña Figueroa, who says she feels like she’s been on a “roller coaster” since 2017 — worry what this could mean for the program long-term. And advocates say it����ap past time for a permanent solution.

“There’s so many other students like myself,” Peña Figueroa said.

The Obama-era policy protected , but its existence has been threatened due to legal challenges, including after it began in 2012 and when the Trump administration worked to end it in 2017. Friday’s came from a 2018 lawsuit filed by Texas’�� attorney general and other states.

“The court clearly saw that this program is against the law through and through,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a written statement Monday. “This lawsuit was about the rule of law – not the reasoning behind any immigration policy. The district court recognized that only Congress has the authority to write immigration laws, and the president is not free to disregard those duly enacted laws as he sees fit.”

U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen ruled the program unlawful because it didn’t follow federal administrative rules, but he noted in his decision that the government won’t need to take action like deportation against any current DACA recipients or applicants.

Peña Figueroa, a graduate of Metropolitan State University of Denver, worries about the effects of Hanen’s decision, despite the planned appeal.

“I don’t feel like I can plan for my future,” said Peña Figueroa, who works at her alma mater in immigration services helping others who are in the U.S. without legal permission. “I’m thinking about doing a master’s program, but it just feels like I can never do that because I have to wait for those two years and then hope that I actually get my DACA renewed, but it’s not something that I can plan long-term because of DACA.”

Peña Figueroa had a common worry when she first applied for DACA: that she could put her family in jeopardy. She ultimately applied at the urging of her mother and a friend, but the process wasn’t easy or cheap.

Eighteen-year-old Karen Lizet Lozano of Breckenridge was just approved for DACA two weeks ago. It was a nearly four-year wait, as she was preparing to apply former President Donald Trump blocked the program on her 15th birthday in September 2017 (the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the DACA program last year).

Her family brought her from Mexico at just three months old to the U.S. She’s now a Summit High School alumna who just received a work permit and has a full-ride scholarship for college.

“I’m thankful for it,” she said of her new status, “but I’m still fearful that one day, like, something’s going to happen since we don’t have anything permanent and I could still get it taken away.”

Immigrant advocacy groups called Friday’s decision devastating and one that harms not only the immigrants themselves but the country as a whole.

Denver immigration attorney Catherine Chan said it appears that applications that were already processing before Friday’s decision would still be accepted, but that����ap not the case for other first-time applicants.

The ruling isn’t a surprise to Chan, adding that it could serve as an impetus for Congress to include a pathway to citizenship for immigrants living in the country without documentation.

“I’m a little bit more of a realist instead of an optimist about Congress acting,” Chan said, noting immigration continues to be a politically divisive issue. Plus, the Biden administration has issued what Chan sees as talking points about immigration, but there’s been little action.

The bipartisan political immigration advocacy group FWD.us called on Congress to act immediately, saying it����ap the only solution. But Congress has failed to pass the DREAM Act at least 16 times, said Violeta Chapin, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s law school who oversees its immigration clinic.

“It’s really shameful, in my opinion, that it results in hundreds of thousands of people’s lives, essentially being whipsawed back and forth by the judiciary and by members of Congress that refused to compromise,” Chapin said.

Chapin said numerous judges, Biden and even President Barack Obama, who created the policy, have said DACA is not meant to be a permanent solution because it doesn’t provide legal status to the young immigrants.

Chan, Chapin and other immigration attorneys will have to look for other ways to help clients obtain legal status, but the options are limited.

Colorado passed legislation this year to help immigrants who are living here without documentation get access to public benefits and avoid possible deportation after obtaining drivers’ licenses, but Chapin said only a federal solution can provide a path to citizenship.

The whole family — Juana who was about 8 years old at the time, her parents and her baby sister — were in the car, a few miles away from their home in Brighton. They neared a roundabout, seeing a lot of traffic in a part of town where it was rumored immigration enforcement had been.

Juana’s dad told his wife to get out of the car, take the girls and run. They made it to a parking lot where Juana’s dad later met them. It was a false alarm.

Juana, whose last name has been withheld at her attorney’s request because of her pending court case, immigrated to the country illegally with her family as a young girl. Her parents tried to protect her from worrying about her status, but the incident stayed with her. For years, she has lived in fear.

The Biden administration has given her hope, having voiced intent to make , including through a legislative proposal that would include a pathway to citizenship. And already, the Democrat signed several executive orders: to end the U.S.-Mexico border wall construction, revoke former President Donald Trump’s policy and preserve the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

He’s also already tried issuing a 100-day moratorium on deportations for most immigrants who entered the country before Nov. 1, but a federal judge in last week.

For many immigrants stuck in limbo, President Joe Biden’s plans signal a new era on immigration and even how immigrants are viewed in America.

“It was like, finally, we can do something,” said Juana, 23, who graduated from a medical assistant program in 2017. “We can better our lives, we can come out of this shadow we have been in for so many years. We can probably have our voice heard for once.”

Ming Hsu Chen, director of the Immigration and Citizenship Law Program at the University of Colorado Boulder, said it’ll be “important is to see how many of those pieces remain vision pieces … and how many of them can become a reality.”

According to the American Immigration Council, about 10% of Colorado’s population in 2018 (the most recent data available) was foreign-born. And about 3% of Colorado’s population — 180,000 people — is made up of immigrants who are living in the country illegally, according to the latest estimates in 2017.

DACA rollercoaster

Trump had hoped to end the DACA program, which allows young people who came to the United States unlawfully with their families as children to be temporarily shielded from deportation in two-year increments. Ultimately after legal battles, applications were severely restricted, and current “Dreamers” could apply for renewals only one year at a time.

Colorado has more than 14,500 Dreamers as of March 2020, according to the American Immigration Council.

Maria Morales, a third grade teacher in Denver Public Schools, is one of them. She came to the United States in 2007 with her family when she was 12 years old and she applied for DACA in 2012.

Morales, who grew up in South Carolina, remembers the questions she would get in high school, even from guidance counselors, about why she didn’t just “go back” to Mexico.

Go back where?” she’d ask. “I grew up here. I went to school here. And I want to continue being here.”

The DACA program allowed her to go to college, after which she joined Teach for America. But DACA’s fate over the last four years, and therefore her own, left Morales “filled with uncertainty.”

“Over the past nine years, I’ve been living my life in increments of two years after every renewal,” she said. “I have to think about, ‘OK, what am I going to do for the next two years,’ because I feel like I cannot plan for long term.”

Avoiding deportation

It����ap that same reason — planning a life — that has Miriam Espinoza, 19, of Aurora and her 17-year-old sister, applying for DACA.

The young women are currently in deportation proceedings due to an error by a former attorney, their lawyer said. But, because they are eligible — Espinoza was 4 years old and her sister 2 when they came to the U.S. from Mexico — Espinoza hopes she will be able to participate in the program so she can go to nursing school.

“I feel like since I’ve lived here my whole life, this has become my home, and so I feel like I really hope that DACA works or that there’s a different pathway (to legal status), because I know many people that are in my situation or the situation of my family would also benefit from that as well,” she said.

Her immigration attorney, Hans Meyer, commends Biden’s proposals, but acknowledged��it won’t be easy to undo years of policy decisions.

“What we’ll find out is, is the Department of Homeland Security going to walk the walk that Biden talks? That will be the litmus test,” Meyer said. “Miriam’s the perfect witness test, to see whether or not we are actually going to see an agency that can be reformed.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Denver declined an interview to discuss Biden’s plans, directing questions to the White House. ICE did say in a statement that it continues to make determinations about taking people into custody on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with the law.

Leaving sanctuary

While the executive orders have brought comfort to some immigrants, others who have sought sanctuary in churches are not ready to leave just yet. That����ap because none of Biden’s proposed policies directly address those in sanctuary who already have deportation orders.

It also doesn’t stop people from getting detained, said Jeanette Vizguerra, who has been in and out of sanctuary, most recently for nearly two years at First Unitarian Society of Denver.

“I always follow my intuition and my intuition never fails me, and I knew something like what happened (last week) was going to happen,” she said of the Texas judge’s order, through a translator.

On Friday, the Democrats in Colorado’s congressional delegation wrote to the president asking him to for Coloradans living in sanctuary.

The 48-year-old mother of four is a vocal activist for immigration reform and even took the risk of leaving sanctuary earlier this year to go to Delaware, Biden’s home state, to ask him before the inauguration to make changes.

Although she did not meet with Biden, she believes he wants meaningful change, and for that to happen, “the community needs to stand behind him and support him,” “not … put all of the blame on him, but to also push on our Congress.”

The policies are not just theoretical — they rip apart families and put people’s lives in danger, Vizguerra said. Tearing up, she slips into English, saying the hardest part of her time in sanctuary has been “not living together with my family.” Her kids live with their dad in Denver and visit her on the weekends and some evenings.

Seeking asylum

A 25-year-old Fort Morgan resident����ap life depends on Biden following through with his plans.

Eulalia, whose full name is being withheld at her request because of fear of deportation as her case goes through the court system, arrived in the U.S. in 2018. Her husband was already here and had planned to stay temporarily, but her family was being threatened and extorted for money in Guatemala.

“I had no desire to leave my country and leave everything behind,” Eulalia said through a translator. “But I had no choice.”

She and her husband, separately, presented themselves at the border when they entered the U.S., were detained and released under asylum proceedings.

Seeking asylum in the U.S. is legal. However, a 2019 Trump administration policy forced to wait in Mexico for court hearings — a practice the Biden administration halted.

Eulalia said she’s been waiting three years for a hearing date. Plus it����ap hard to fully understand what����ap happening with the case, and legal help is expensive. She regularly checks in with immigration enforcement.

But she knows if her asylum request is rejected, she could be sent back to Guatemala and separated from her four kids.

“I’m afraid every single day what����ap going to happen when the pandemic is over,” she said, “because one of the last check-ins they had, they asked me for my passport and my children’s passports. And usually when they do that, it means they are closer to taking some kind of action against you.”

During one of their last check-ins, her husband was detained for three months, she said. She wasn’t working and was seven months pregnant. Some days, they didn’t even have enough to eat. Eulalia’s husband, who now has a work permit, was released in December.

“We deserve a chance and opportunity,” she said, “and that����ap all we’re asking for, the benefit of an opportunity.”

“We deserve a chance and opportunity,” she said, hopeful for a positive result after years of limbo, “and that����ap all we’re asking for, the benefit of an opportunity.”

They consider each other best friends and even attend Metropolitan State University of Denver together.

But one major difference — in the form of federal paperwork — divides the undocumented duo, affording 22-year-old Ruth more opportunities and less stress than her 19-year-old brother.

Ruth is one of the more than 18,000 Colorado recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program since 2012. Joel only aspires to be.

“It would definitely give me a lot more confidence,” Joel said. “It would boost my self-esteem. Being undocumented kind of feels like you know you’re different from other people. You feel below them. You feel nervous.”

Joel came of age to apply for DACA — which provides deportation protections and work authorization for people who came to the United States illegally as children and have since passed a background check and paid fees — as rumors swirled in the immigrant community that the Trump administration might deport applicants. He held off on applying out of fear of being ripped from his family and sent back to Mexico — a country he left when he was so young he doesn’t remember it.

This summer, the Trump administration announced it would ��after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to shut down the Obama-era program. In 2017, the Republican president announced he planned to rescind DACA, setting off a series of court cases that left the hundreds of thousands of U.S. recipients in limbo.

On Friday, a federal judge in New York ordered the Trump administration to restore DACA to its original form, instructing the Department of Homeland Security to post a public notice Monday stating the administration will resume accepting new DACA applications.

President-elect Joe Biden’s once the Democrat takes office next month, offering hope to Joel and thousands of Coloradans who are eligible to reap the benefits of the program that allows young Dreamers to go to school, work, get a driver’s license and breathe a sigh of relief in the only country many of them know.

“This is my home,” said Joel, who lives in Westminster. “This is all I know. My family brought me from Mexico when I was 2. I don’t remember anything from over there. This is my country even though it’s not written down on paper.”

Violeta Chapin, clinical law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said there is hope on the horizon for young people who have been unable to apply for the DACA program.

“There are thousands of young people in Colorado who have aged into DACA and meet all the requirements yet they have been prohibited from applying,” Chapin said.

However, as typically goes with the much-contested DACA program, a threat to its existence looms, Chapin said.

Attorneys general in several states are asking a federal judge in Texas to declare DACA unlawful because it was created by Obama via executive order and did not go through a traditional rule-making process, Chapin said.

“The argument has always been that DACA was a lawful exercise of the president’s priorities and discretion,” Chapin said. “It’s saying, ‘I see a difference between undocumented felons and undocumented students and, in my discretion, I’m allowed to use my resource I have to find those undocumented people we actually want to remove. The others — we aren’t going to remove them.'”

To be eligible for DACA, applicants must have arrived in the U.S. before their 16th birthday, lived in the U.S. continuously since June 2007, be free of any felony convictions or significant misdemeanor offenses, and pose no threat to national security or public safety, among other requirements.

If the Texas lawsuit goes forward and DACA is ruled illegal, Chapin said either the U.S. Supreme Court would have to take it up or Biden would need to go through more formal channels to recreate the program.

In the meantime, Joel and Ruth will cross their fingers as they once again await their fate.

Joel has his paperwork to apply for DACA ready to go when the time comes.

Joel’s dreams of joining the Marine Corps were dashed when the recruitment office told him his immigration status prevented him from serving the country he loved.

Hoping he could at least serve his community locally, Joel pursued a career as a police officer but was again turned away because he was undocumented. Now, Joel is studying to become a firefighter, banking on faith in obtaining DACA status to provide him work authorization.

“He’s working hard on his classes, doing everything he needs to do the way he needs to do it and he still has the thought in his mind that this might be for nothing,” Ruth said of her brother. “He worries he could graduate and his degree could mean nothing for him if he can’t get a work permit.”

Ruth is majoring in Spanish with a minor in human services. The 22-year-old hopes to use her language skills and mental health knowledge to provide translation services to Colorado’s Spanish-speaking community.

Ruth’s DACA status allows her to receive financial aid through MSU Denver, whereas Joel is ineligible and pays for school out of pocket.

MSU Denver educates more undocumented students than any college in the state, said Gregor Mieder, the university’s immigrant services program coordinator.

“Any time there is the potential for legislation that would introduce more stable pathways to an immigration status, there is oftentimes extremely cautious optimism from the students I talk to,” Mieder said. “Some express they’re monitoring what’s happening, listening to it but intentionally choosing not to feel or not to allow themselves to be too optimistic because this has just been an 8-year-long process and there have been promises of developments that have not led to anything substantial.”

Mieder said MSU Denver vows to work with its undocumented community and keep their students informed and connected to the services they need to succeed, no matter what happens.

“When I finally got DACA, it was great because it was like I was like everybody else,” Ruth said. “With DACA, I was able to find help to pay for college. DACA gave me more confidence in who I am because being undocumented really makes you feel invisible, and it makes you feel like you’re not worthy in a way. That is a very false idea, but it’s one that I carried with me and one I didn’t really notice or acknowledge until I had the DACA status when I could really see how it was affecting me to be undocumented.”

I’ll never forget one young Latina woman who was especially impressive and wanted to go to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In addition to having a burning desire to change the world, she seemed like a genuinely nice person.

But she was undocumented. It didn’t matter that she came here from Mexico when she was a year old and spent 12 years in the American school system. It didn’t matter that she was at the top of her class and had an impressive list of school and community activities. She was ineligible to attend a military academy and serve her country.

This exemplary woman is one of more than 26,000 Dreamers in Colorado who came to the United States when they were children and have been living in an exasperating no-man’s land ever since President Trump announced more than two years ago that he was dismantling the program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, that gave them temporary legal status. Without it, they could be eligible for deportation.

I’m encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court did the right thing by upholding DACA and protecting 1.2 million DACA-eligible undocumented immigrants’ right to live without fear and support their families and communities.

I’m also aware this reprieve could be temporary. The momentousness of this decision underscores the need for Congress to finally step up and pass legislation to give them a permanent home and pathway to citizenship. Not only would such a move be good for Colorado, it would send a message that our country believes in fairness. These young adults didn’t make the decision to come to the United States illegally when they were children, and they shouldn’t have to continue to suffer decades later.

During my time in Congress, I learned that many of my colleagues, including Republicans like me, felt the same way I did: Dreamers are valued contributors to society.��Nationally, 93 percent of Dreamers were employed in 2017.��That same year, they paid $4 billion in local, state and federal taxes. They fill critical shortages in health care, education, software engineering and accounting. Across the nation,��62,600 Dreamers are on the front lines��taking care of patients during the Covid-19 pandemic; there are more than 11,000 registered and vocational nurses, more than 9,300 medical assistants and more than 5,800 nursing assistants, according to New American Economy.

As the mayor of Aurora, Colorado’s most diverse city, I often hear how immigration impacts residents’ lives. With our large Mexican, Salvadoran, Ethiopian and Korean immigrant presence, it����ap not uncommon to meet families of mixed status: you have two siblings, just a year or two apart in age, but only one is an American citizen. These kids should be growing up the same, but the Dreamer will have a different identity and life—all because of an immigration technicality. Many live with chronic anxiety, compounded by the fact they don’t qualify for financial aid in Colorado to pursue a college education.

Dreamers need the same opportunities as their brothers and sisters and peers to reach their potential. And Colorado needs their talents and passion. Considering that Dreamers start businesses at higher rates than native-born Americans, we can’t afford to lose them, especially during times of economic uncertainty. They could be the next wave of our state’s entrepreneurs and create much-needed jobs.

We shouldn’t put Dreamers at the mercy of the courts. Congress needs to do its job and pass legislation that allows Dreamers to put down roots where they belong, become residents and have the chance to become American citizens. They deserve nothing less.

Mike Coffman is the mayor of Aurora and former U.S. Representative of Colorado’s 6th��district.