Copyright The Denver Post
Two children and their father on their way to school were detained by federal immigration agents in southwestern Colorado on Monday, sparking protests from demonstrators who tried to prevent the family from being separated and moved to different facilities. Videos of the protest posted on social media Tuesday show law enforcement clashing with demonstrators outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Durango, where agents in tactical gear carried weapons that fire pepperballs. Video taken overnight shows one agent throwing a woman’s phone and then throwing the woman to the ground, and other protesters appeared to have been hit with pepperballs. Fernando Jaramillo Solano and his two children, ages 12 and 15, were detained by ICE on Monday morning while driving near their home, said Enrique Orozco-Perez, the co-executive director of the Compañeros Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center. The family applied for asylum after coming to Colorado from Colombia and has an active, ongoing immigration case. The children’s mother, who is the primary applicant on the asylum case, has not been detained, the group said. “ICE has blocked all the mother’s attempts to see her children, and is reportedly preparing to forcibly separate these minor children from their father and send them alone to Texas. This is not enforcement; it is a traumatic kidnapping of family members who are doing everything right and being punished for it,” Compañeros said in a statement. Steve Kotecki, spokesman for ICE’s Denver field office, did not immediately return an email seeking comment. The protests echoed similar opposition that’s been mounted against ICE facilities in Chicago and Portland, where protesters have gathered outside of the agency’s offices and detention centers. Orozco-Perez said in an interview that Solano was “violently” arrested Monday morning while taking his kids to school. He shouted to volunteers who’d arrived to observe the arrest that his children were in the car, and the kids were also handcuffed and detained. Volunteer legal aides from the group came to the ICE field office, where the family was held, to provide documents about the family’s pending asylum case. ICE officials refused to accept the documents, Orozco-Perez said. Protesters began to gather outside the facility shortly after the arrests Monday. When an attorney later arrived to again try to provide documents to ICE, legal aides were told by ICE that the family would be detained together, Orozco-Perez said. But the children’s mother later told advocates that she’d spoken with one of her kids and that they had been told they would be transported to Texas while their father was moved to Colorado’s immigration detention center in Aurora. Protesters then set up an all-night vigil to try to prevent any vehicles from leaving. That’s when one volunteer from Compañeros was shoved by an ICE agent, Orozco-Perez said. Video posted to Facebook by the group shows a masked agent grab a phone from a volunteer who’d held her camera close to the man’s face. The agent then throws the phone as the woman yelled for him to return it. He then grabbed the woman and threw her to the ground, the video shows. The protests continued into Tuesday. Law enforcement began handcuffing and pulling people sitting in front of the office’s gates. A group of Colorado State Patrol troopers were also present and appeared to be clearing the road so several SUVs could leave the building. Protesters threw objects and bottles of water at the SUVs, one of which grazed a protester standing in the roadway as it sped past them. The video shows a masked agent in tactical gear unloading what appear to be pepper balls from close range on two people sitting in the roadway. “What you saw was people defending our community with their bodies, trying to not allow ICE to leave,” Orozco-Perez said. Sgt. Ivan Alvarado, spokesman for the state patrol, said the agency was at the protest to assist. He said the agency would be releasing a statement shortly. A message left for the Durango Police Department was not immediately returned. In a statement, Durango School District spokesperson Karla Sluis said the district could not confirm whether any students were involved in “immigration enforcement action” because of federal privacy laws. “Our schools remain safe and welcoming places for every student who walks through our doors. By both state and federal law, every child is entitled to a public education regardless of background or circumstance, and the district does not collect or share information about immigration status,” Sluis said.
