THORNTON — A Colorado woman whose son died from a fentanyl-laced pill he bought through social media celebrated a this week against Meta and YouTube that she said opened the door for companies to be held responsible for harms to children using their platforms.

“The truth is out, and it����ap time that they are held accountable for the design of the platforms,” said Kimberly Osterman, whose son Max died in 2021 at age 18. “They put profits over safety.”

Flipping through photo albums Thursday at her home in Colorado, Osterman reflected on “the days before social media. The days before the infinite scrolling lured him in.” Photos of him in frames with hearts and angel’s wings dotted the shelves.

Osterman said Max arranged to meet a drug dealer he connected with on Snapchat and purchased what he thought was Percocet. The pill was laced with a deadly dose of fentanyl, and he was dead the next morning. Osterman is pursuing a wrongful death lawsuit that is separate from cases decided this week.

In Los Angeles on Wednesday, both YouTube and Meta, which owns and operates platforms including Instagram and Facebook, liable for harms to children for designing their platforms to hook young users. The companies said they disagreed with the verdicts and may appeal.

And in a jury determined that Meta knowingly and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. Meta said it would appeal.

Snapchat����ap parent company, Snap Inc., in January just before the Los Angeles trial began. TikTok also agreed to settle, and details were not disclosed.

Osterman is part of Parents for Safe Online Spaces, or ParentsSOS, a group that includes parents who have lost children to online harm and advocate for more regulation. It has campaigned for the , pending federal legislation that would require social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent harm on platforms minors are likely to use.

She hopes to see social media companies enact strict guardrails, such as age verification technology, to prevent anyone under 18 from accessing the platforms.

“You think your kids are safe in their home, in their bedroom, but that����ap not the way it is with the current status of social media,” she said.

Osterman knew Max used Snapchat to communicate with friends but did not realize the danger he was in. She said he loved lacrosse and wrestling and was academically brilliant.

The man who sold the pill to him, Sergio Guerra-Carrillo, was sentenced to six years in prison on two distribution charges in 2023.

Snapchat did not immediately comment Thursday when asked about Osterman’s case. The company has said previously that it uses cutting-edge technology to proactively find and shut down drug dealers’ accounts and blocks search results for drug-related terms.

It is not yet clear whether the recent verdicts against the social platforms will . But the verdicts demonstrate a growing willingness to hold major social media companies responsible and demand meaningful change. Tech watchdogs expect they will open the door for more lawsuits and regulations.

Jered Morgan took to Facebook late last year to criticize the and its chief of police, Jonathan Lange, after drivers started receiving hefty fines for speeding along a nearby Weld County road, according to a federal lawsuit filed in the District of Colorado.

Fake profiles he believed belonged to Lange and his wife started about the legality of the fines, Morgan told The Denver Post. When he commented on the town of Kersey’s Facebook page directly in December 2025, his comments were removed and he was blocked, the lawsuit alleged.

“I was just kinda shocked,” Morgan said. “It was pretty blatant that they were trying to censor me.”

The tickets, generated by radar equipment, charged drivers $340 for speeding 25 mph or more over the posted speed limit, . But caps the fines municipalities can charge for photo speeding tickets at $40 on regular roads and $80 in school or construction zones.

“In response to the firestorm caused by these actions, Kersey actively sought to silence its critics online. Morgan was among those critics,” the lawsuit stated.

The town’s posted social media policy allowed officials to delete all comments “deemed crude, inappropriate, misleading, or hostile” and to block any users who repeatedly posted comments that were removed for those reasons, according to the lawsuit. Morgan’s attorneys alleged in the lawsuit that the policy discriminated against content and viewpoints, violating the First Amendment.

“These actions were not taken with malice or with the intent of limiting public discourse,” Kersey Mayor Nathan Roth and Town Manager Stacy Brown said in a joint statement. “Rather, Town staff acted in accordance with the Town’s social media guidelines and with a focus on maintaining a safe and respectful online environment.”

Morgan’s account “could not clearly be identified and was believed to potentially be an individual who had previously been subject to a restraining order for the harassment of a Town employee,” the statement continued.

The town settled the lawsuit outside of court, agreeing to pay Morgan $45,000 and revise its social media policy, according to a document provided to The Denver Post by Morgan’s attorneys. Kersey officials will only delete comments or block users who “post true threats or fighting words, post obscenities, or violate any state or federal law through their posting,” the document stated. The town will also add annual training on First Amendment principles for Kersey employees.

Town officials agreed to the settlement to dismiss the case and deny any liability or wrongdoing, the document states. The case was dismissed on Thursday, court records show.

Frayer Contreras-Gafaro, 24, was convicted in December on 11 felony charges, including several counts each of second-degree kidnapping, aggravated robbery and burglary, Arapahoe County court records show. He was sentenced last Monday to 75 years in prison.

The jury acquitted Contreras-Gafaro of nine additional charges, including theft in a range of $20,000 to $100,000, felony menacing, third-degree assault, child abuse, false imprisonment and criminal mischief, according to court records.

Contreras-Gafaro and another man, who officials did not identify, pulled out guns inside an Aurora apartment in the 1300 block of North Laredo Street on June 12, 2024, according to a .

The men had reached out to the apartment resident, a 33-year-old woman, on Facebook after she listed jewelry on the social media platform, the news release stated.

“The victim’s two children were inside the apartment at the time and were ordered into a nearby room,” prosecutors stated in the release. The children were told that she would be killed if they screamed, the woman told police, according to the release.

The men stole dozens of jewelry pieces, valued at approximately $20,000, according to the DA’s office.

Contreras-Gafaro blocked the victim on Facebook after the incident, but she was able to use her husband’s account to find the man, officials said in the release.

“This decades-long sentence ensures this defendant will no longer have the opportunity to terrorize another family,” Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Johnny Lombardi said in a statement. “This was a calculated and violent crime carried out inside a home where a mother and her children should have felt safe. We hope this sentence brings the victim and her family a sense of justice and closure.”

The 24-year-old man will not be eligible for parole until he’s 84, according to the DA’s office.

That review could result in new data center-specific regulations and zoning focused on “responsible land, energy and water use,” along with affordability for utility ratepayers, about the proposed moratorium.

“Data centers power the technology we depend upon and strengthen our economy,” Johnston said in the release. “But as this industry evolves, so must our policies. This pause allows us to put clear and consistent guardrails in place while protecting our most precious resources and preserving our quality of life.”

New data center in north Denver sparks calls for accountability from concerned neighbors

Data centers are the buildings where companies, including tech giants like Google and Meta, store their infrastructure, such as servers and storage systems. The centers make commonplace services like email, online banking, telehealth, Netflix and Facebook possible for Denverites. They can also suck up massive amounts of water and energy.

The moratorium, which is intended to last “several months,” will take effect only if a majority of the council first approves an ordinance.

Two of the 13 council members, Paul Kashmann and Darrell Watson, are quoted in the mayor’s news release as being generally supportive of the initiative.

Kashmann noted in his statement that there is still “distance between the mayor’s view and mine … as well as some other council colleagues.”

“I look forward to working with the administration, the community at large and industry voices to see if regulations -- as have been instituted in sister cities around the country -- will or will not make additional data center development possible in the City and County of Denver,” he said.

Watson said he planned to introduce the proposal and emphasized that he sees Denver as a city that wants to be both welcoming to innovation and committed to protecting the environment.

"Data centers use significant energy and water. We have a responsibility to manage their growth in our communities wisely and sustainably,” he said. “We can protect the health of Denver communities, strengthen our climate commitments and continue to keep our city moving forward responsibly.”

City officials plan to work with residents, climate experts and industry leaders to develop the new regulations.

The pause, which city spokesman Jon Ewing says will be filed in the council in the "coming weeks," wouldn’t impact existing data centers, those already under construction or projects the city has already permitted. But those projects could “be expected to follow new guidelines once announced.”

A controversial data center under construction in northern Denver's Elyria-Swansea neighborhood wouldn't immediately be affected.

Johnston's action comes as state lawmakers are having their own wrestling match over data centers.

Last year, the legislature killed a bill that would've given tax exemptions to data centers. This year, the proposal is back. would provide 20 years' worth of full sales and use tax exemptions to data center builders who invest a certain amount of money and provide a set amount of jobs, among other requirements.

On the other side, another group of legislators has filed , which would generally require data centers to match 100% of their energy output with renewable sources. Neither bill has yet been heard in committee, and HB-1030's first committee meeting was delayed amid negotiations between the two camps.

Staff writer Seth Klamann contributed to this story.

Denver International Airport and Denver Animal Shelter will host the 10th DEN Puppy Bowl in the Jeppesen Terminal on Friday, Feb. 6, organizers said in a statement. The photo-friendly event usually snares travelers and passersby who aren’t in a hurry — and who just might be looking for a new canine friend.

“Get ready for an adorable showdown as puppies play in the spotlight in a friendly and entertaining competition,” airport officials said.

The DEN Puppy Bowl dogs will be available for adoption at 9 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 8, at Denver Animal Shelter, 1241 W. Bayaud Ave. in Denver.  Puppies will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, organizers added. Visit for more information about Denver Animal Shelter and adoption guidelines.

The event will also be streamed live on Denver International Airport’s Facebook page at . Viewers can search social media using #DENPuppyBowl. And the Animal Planet Puppy Bowl, from which the DIA event takes its name, will air starting at noon on Super Bowl Sunday with simulcasts on Animal Planet, Discovery, TBS, truTV, HBO Max and Discovery+.

The second result — — is the legitimate news site run by dozens of CU Boulder student journalists who take photographs and write articles about local sports, student government, arts and culture, and campus goings-on.

Their website warns that the news organization is “not affiliated with cuindependent.com,” the web address the CU Independent had used since 2009.

The imposter site is confusing readers with articles that appear to be generated by artificial intelligence and is siphoning pageviews from real student reporting, the CUI’s journalists say. They’ve spent hundreds of dollars of their own money to try to fix the problem, enlisted lawyers and even tried to get the Colorado Bureau of Investigation involved.

Students built an entirely new website — the version now found at cuindependent.org — over the summer in hopes of disentangling themselves from the old one.

“In my time as editor-in-chief, I would love to spend more time working on our reporting than trying to fix this website that’s impersonating us,” said Greta Kerkhoff, who is serving as the CUI’s editor-in-chief this academic year.

The CUI has no official connection to the university’s journalism program, but department chair Patrick Ferrucci said the faculty wishes the student publication’s editorial staff success as it works to resolve this “unfortunate situation.”

“Online AI-generated content can be inauthentic and misleading and should not be confused with high-quality community journalism, professional ethics and editorial standards, and the skills of dedicated student journalists honing their craft at CU Boulder and at other colleges and universities,” Ferrucci said in a statement.

When a reporter from The Denver Post messaged the imposter site asking who was behind it, the emailed response ignored the question entirely, instead offering prices from $149 to $299 that could be paid for articles with “quick link integration into content that����ap already resonating with our audience.”

‘It feels incredibly malicious’

Nobody knows who is running the knock-off site, which claims to be an evolution of CU Boulder’s student-run campus news outlet with roots dating back to 1978. The site purports to still be the CUI, but “a little bit different.”

“Our team believes in the freedom to speak, feel and explore who we are,” the imposter website says on its “about” page. “We still honor what CU Independent stood for: strong voices, independent thought and stories that matter. You’ll see new faces and new sections, but the heart stays the same.”

The website lists seemingly fictitious writers and advisers alongside what appear to be AI-generated photos and author biographies. Some of those bios claim the site’s journalists — who are supposed to be college students gaining experience — are “seasoned reporters” with more than a dozen years of experience in the journalism industry. A Google search of those reporters’ names did not turn up results elsewhere.

In at least one case, the image of a real journalist is used. The imposter CUI website features a bio of a writer named that includes a photo of , an

As the site located at their longtime web address keeps posting new AI-generated articles that have nothing to do with CU, the student journalists say they are at their wits’ end. Above all, they worry about their journalistic reputation being tarnished.

“It is clearly being done by someone who knows every legal loophole,” said Jessica Sachs, the CUI’s editor-in-chief during the 2024-2025 academic year and a current CU Boulder journalism student. “It feels incredibly malicious.”

How did a rogue website become the bane of these students’ existence?

The answer isn’t entirely clear, but years of unorganized cybersecurity management likely contributed to the situation, Sachs said.

‘Kind of a security nightmare’

Since the CUI website’s inception — the publication, then still named the Campus Press, became online-only in 2006 — a revolving door of college students had access to the various passwords and permissions for the publication’s WordPress content-management system without much organization or documentation.

“It was kind of a security nightmare,” Sachs said. “I made it my mission to fix everything as much as I could.”

Last year, during Sachs’ tenure as editor-in-chief, she said the cuindependent.com domain registration was about to expire, but nobody knew who the original account-holder was or had the password needed to renew the account. Sachs said she went back five or six generations of editors-in-chief, but could not find the keeper of the domain.

For years, she said, the entire website went down — sometimes for just 24 to 48 hours — whenever the registration lapsed, only to come back online after the unknown account holder paid the bill.

“That was way too stressful,” Sachs said.

To avoid that drama, Sachs enlisted the help of a computer science freshman who spent last summer building a replica of the CUI website, along with its archives, at the cuindependent.org address.

The students thought they had solved their problems. The new website was up and running. The old site vanished for about nine months.

But when Kerkhoff took over as CUI editor-in-chief this academic year, the old .com address came roaring back. Someone had apparently bought up the expired web address. (The current site, like many webpages, is registered anonymously through GoDaddy.)

The old domain featured what appeared to be AI-generated content on a website posting as the student news outlet. Articles on the impersonator site range from “How many albums does Drake have?” to “Why does my hair hurt when I move it another direction?” to “Is Freddie Highmore actually autistic?”

The fake site initially used the real CUI’s trademarked logo and linked to the news organization’s social media pages, but whoever was behind it eventually made their own logo and created fake CUI Instagram and Facebook pages, rendering Kerkhoff’s attempt to report trademark abuse moot.

“Whoever is doing this seems to have a good understanding of media law because they narrowly scrape by with what they can get away with,” Kerkhoff said.

Kerkhoff said she spent her own money hiring a domain broker to try to buy back the .com site to no avail. Out of options, she contacted the , which connected her with a lawyer.

Protecting students’ intellectual property

Attorney Alexandra Bass, who is representing the student newsroom, said copycat websites are becoming increasingly common and the rise of AI further contributes to “the chaos.”

“This can be particularly harmful to student newsrooms whose staff often changes from year to year,” Bass said in a statement. “…Student newsrooms should consider designating a person responsible for domain maintenance and implementing a documented process to manage their domains amid transitions.”

Copycat news sites use AI to mass-produce content quickly, generating revenue from ads and affiliate links, Bass said. It’s not easy to prove the imposter site is generating money, which is why Kerkhoff said the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s business fraud unit couldn’t take on the case.

Bass advised the student journalists to document instances of public confusion and file a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy complaint to have the copycat site taken down and, ideally, get the domain transferred back to them.

The CUI is in the process of filing such a complaint (), the student editors said, and they’ve reported the fraudulent website to nearly every entity they can imagine.

The fight, though, has even impacted the CUI’s new .org site. The student reporters’ new site has experienced intermittent problems with security pop-ups and blocked access for some visitors. When Kerkhoff brought the issue to WordPress, she said employees with the content management system told her the CUI’s site was secure.

She believes the repeated reports made by CUI staff against the imposter website are being misattributed to the .org address, triggering those error messages.

Jonathan Gaston-Falk, an attorney with the Student Press Law Center, said the CU Boulder students’ case and others involving AI are difficult to pursue because it’s hard to find an actual human or legal entity against whom to lodge grievances like copyright infringement.

“That����ap increasingly difficult when the lines are blurred as to who is actually running or managing some of these websites,” Gaston-Falk said. “We’re very proud of these student journalists who are stepping up not only to report it but to protect their intellectual property. This student leader (Kerkhoff ) has been absolutely dogged in trying to protect her and her newsroom’s rights here, so we’re very happy about that.”

A said the driver, a female, remained on the scene and is cooperating with the investigation.

“We don’t know why he was in the roadway,” said Joanna Small, a public information officer with the department.

The Adams County Coroner will release the name of the man who died pending his identification.

Someone posting under the name of Kristie Huhn left a comment on the Facebook post stating that her son was the individual who died in the accident.

“We were visiting my daughter from out of state for Christmas. He has never been here before. He just wanted to go for a walk,” Huhn wrote. A call made to Huhn’s number was not answered.

This is a developing story and more details will be provided as they become available. 

So sick was little David Sturgeon that he couldn’t leave his second-floor bedroom, even to celebrate Christmas. He couldn’t go down the stairs of his family’s Denver home to see the tree or the decorations hung upon it.

But what David did have was a window. And outside that window was a pine tree.

He also had an electrician for a father. It was 1914, two years after the elder Sturgeon — also named David, though he went by D.D. — founded . With his son sick upstairs, Sturgeon took some of the family’s light bulbs, dipped them in green and red paint, and strung them along a length of electrical wire. Then he clambered up the pine tree and festooned it with incandescent color.

“David lay in his bed, watching the lights sparkle like emeralds and rubies against the ermine mantle of snow,” the still-running Sturgeon Electric in 2017.

It’s believed to be the first time Christmas lights had been hung outside anywhere, said Jason Hanson, a historian and chief creative officer at History Colorado. Indoor Christmas lights were invented , by Edward Johnson, a colleague of Thomas Edison.

But no one had moved the lights outside.

The year after Sturgeon strung up the tree, some neighbors hung up their own lights, too. The tradition spread across the city and, later, the country.

By 1919, lights and decorating municipal buildings. In 1920, the oldest-running large-scale light display . Kansas City , and Denver launched its own in 1938.

“There’s something about it that just feels right. At the holiday season, it’s dark. You’re bringing light,” Hanson said.

Like the marvel in Denver, Johnson’s earlier invention of Christmas lights also involved a tree and a window. In the early 1880s, he’d strung 80 red, white and blue bulbs on a tree in his parlor window, .

Still, it would take years before electric lights became ubiquitous. At the time, Christmas candles were far more common. But they were also dangerous: A 1917 Christmas tree fire caused by a candle killed several people in New York City. A local teenager — whose family also worked in the burgeoning electrical industry — then suggested that his family produce colored bulbs for festive and safer lighting, .

In Denver, Sturgeon would later be crowned the “Father of Yule Lighting.” The lights helped earn Denver the moniker of “Christmas city of the world,” a title encouraged by Frances “Pinky” Wayne, a veteran Denver Post journalist who also served as the Christmas editor.

In 1924, a decade after Sturgeon climbed the pine tree, Wayne and The Post hosted the first citywide outdoor lighting contest (featuring $500 in prizes, including a Hoover vacuum). Mr. and Mrs. N.A. Wimer, who lived at East Eighth Avenue and Vine Street, won the grand prize, according to The Post.

The next year, Wayne wrote, “the number of contestants increased more than 200%” and their “installations were 1000% more beautiful.” Weeks before he would be crowned that year’s winner, a local reverend declared his commitment to supporting the city’s growing reputation.

“Believing in Denver as I do, and believing that it is the duty of citizens and Christians to emphasize the Christmas spirit, my sons and I are going the limit to do our share to uphold Denver’s claim to the title of Christmas city of the world,” the Rev. David C. Bayless told Wayne.

In Denver, the city’s annual tradition helped bring colored lights to the region, Hanson said. The city kept its lights up through the National Western Stock Show each January. The event drew people from across the region. They would return to their hometowns and, newly illuminated, eye their Christmas decor and their pine trees anew — just as Sturgeon’s neighbors had, years before.

“Then, as now, neighbors got to keep up with the neighbors,” Hanson said.

History Colorado now includes in its “Zoom In” exhibit, which features 100 objects from the state’s past. (The lights aren’t Sturgeon’s original; they were made by , the company founded by the New York City teenager who’d helped popularize electric lights after the fire there.)

Before including the lights in the exhibit, Hanson said History Colorado tasked a team of researchers with debunking Sturgeon’s claim to fame.

But they couldn’t disprove it, he said, beaming.

In an email to The Post, , an emeritus lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin who wrote a book about Christmas in America, said “history-keeping” was complicated. But she, too, wouldn’t “take away Colorado’s claim.”

As for the origin story, it’s unclear exactly how old young David Sturgeon was when his father lit up the tree outside his window, or the nature of his illness. A death notice for him was published in the Denver Post nearly seven years later, in September 1921, and it cited his age at 13 when he died.

Don Egan, the president of Sturgeon Electric’s commercial and industrial division, said the story’s been part of the company culture during the entirety of his nearly 35 years there.

“It’s emotional for some people,” he said. “The heritage, the history. The fact that it started with D.D. Sturgeon and that the Sturgeon name still lasts today.”

Both the family and the city are now part of how Americans think about Christmas, Hanson said.

“People who celebrate Christmas, I’ll bet you the image in their head when you say ‘Christmas’ involves some kind of lights, lighted houses, ‘National Lampoon’ lighting up the house so it can be seen from space,” he said.

“All that starts with the Sturgeons.”

District officials placed Chris Sutton on what’s called “inactive” status on Sept. 16 after receiving complaints about a social media post he made — a move that barred him from teaching for at least the remainder of the 2025-26 academic year, according to a news release from Sutton’s Denver-based attorney, David Lane.

The district reinstated Sutton on Dec. 5 after his attorneys sent a letter to administrators threatening a lawsuit and alleging administrators violated the educator’s First Amendment right to free speech.

“This is a really important case,” said attorney Maddie Schaefer of Killmer Lane LLP, who represents Sutton, in an interview. “People need to know their First Amendment rights cannot be violated in this way.”

Pueblo County School District 70 declined to discuss the case, issuing a statement Thursday that said, “In accordance with district policy, District 70 confirms that Christopher Sutton, an at-will employee, was temporarily placed on inactive status and has since been reinstated.”

Sutton’s suspension came as educators at universities and K-12 schools nationwide faced in the wake of his death.

On Sept. 14, Sutton wrote a Facebook post referencing the death of Kirk, who had been shot days earlier while speaking on a college campus in Utah.

“Pretending that everyone deserves to be mourned is dumb as (expletive),” Sutton wrote. “Sometimes, the world becomes a better place. If I find relief in the passing of my own relative, then why in the (expletive) would I need to grieve a propagandist that worked to make the world more dangerous?”

Republican National Committee member Christy Fidura shared a screenshot of Sutton’s post in a Facebook group called “Pueblo County Patriots” and encouraged members to contact the district’s superintendent, according to a letter sent by Sutton’s attorneys to district officials.

Fidura declined to comment for this story.

Eight people complained to district officials regarding Sutton’s Facebook post before he was placed on “inactive” status pending an investigation by the Board of Education, according to the letter.

Two of the people who complained were local politicians who threatened not to support a mill levy override to increase funding for the Pueblo school district, according to Sutton’s attorneys.

Sutton, a disabled veteran, had several teaching jobs in October that he was unable to work because district officials suspended him, according to the letter.

In a Dec. 5 letter that District 70 Superintendent Ronda Rein sent Sutton regarding his reinstatement, she wrote, “The District wishes to reiterate that the initial action of placing your substitute eligibility status on inactive status was neither arbitrary nor capricious.”

“That decision was made based on a valid and documented concern that your past behaviors and activities, particularly those conducted on social media, created substantial and credible disruption to the educational environment and required the expenditure of significant administrative resources,” Rein wrote.

Sutton might still pursue a lawsuit against the Pueblo County School District despite his reinstatement, Schaefer said.

“There’s further accountability that needs to be had for these actions against Mr. Sutton,” she said. “…The harm that was done to his constitutional rights — his ability to speak freely — that harm sends a message to other people in the district, other employees, that if they choose to speak freely about issues of national public concern that the district disagrees with, they might also suffer these types of consequences.”

Marina Ortiz, who teaches fifth grade at Global Village Academy, was arrested Friday during an appointment at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Centennial, the charter school’s principal wrote in a letter to parents Monday. Her family was also detained, and they were all sent to a detention center in Texas.

Ortiz and her family had legal authorization to live and work in the United States, according to a statement from Michael Henderson, the executive director of . Ortiz “has a valid employment authorization document, authorizing her lawful employment in the United States, with any U.S. employer through the spring of 2029,” he wrote.

“We are currently working closely with our legal team and outside immigration attorneys to understand if and how we might be able to help facilitate their return to Colorado,” the school’s principal, Stacy Bush, wrote to parents.

The school and its parent organization declined an interview request. Steve Kotecki, a spokesman for Denver’s ICE field office, did not immediately return a request for comment, nor did a representative for ICE’s regional office.

ICE’s arrest of father, two children in Durango spark local protests

posted online Tuesday, Douglas County school board member Susan Meek said she was "deeply shocked and profoundly saddened" about the reports of Ortiz's arrest. She wrote that though the arrest didn't happen on district property, "the fear and uncertainty it creates reach deeply into our classrooms, workplaces and neighborhoods."

"We are a nation built on the idea that immigrants play a vital role in our society -- enriching our schools, workplaces, communities, and collective future," Meek wrote. "The values of fairness, dignity, respect, and inclusion are undermined when an individual who abides by the rules and shows up ready to serve is treated in this way."

Meek declined an interview request but said she was seeking to call an emergency school board meeting so that the leaders of the district, which includes Global Village Academy's Parker school, could be fully briefed.

School district spokeswoman Paula Hans referred comment to the school.

in support of Ortiz and her family had raised more than $7,100 as of early Tuesday afternoon.

Ortiz's arrest prompted concerns mirroring those raised by immigrant-rights advocates earlier last month, when a number of immigrants without proper legal status received instructions to attend new check-in appointments at the Centennial office. Advocates then turned up at the facility and picketed outside, urging people to reschedule their appointments.

In September, one advocate told The Denver Post that four people who entered the office were detained, including an elderly Cuban man with dementia.

The news of the detention of the teacher's family spread as protests erupted in Durango over the Monday detention of a father and his two adolescent children. According to social media posts by the , the family members were arrested on their way to school.

The family members were all in the process of applying for asylum, according to the advocacy groups.