Protesters Gather After ICE Detains Family In Durango
ICE Detains Asylum Seeker And His 2 Children In Colorado, Claim It Was A Case Of ‘Mistaken Identity’
The federal government keeps trying to convince us that its immigration agents aren’t racially profiling, are mainly arresting violent criminals, and are not initiating any of the countless violent confrontations between agents and protesters. Meanwhile, court cases, data on detainees, and video footage just keep indicating that the feds are liars and their masked agents are abusing their power.
In Durango, Colorado, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, where a father had been detained along with two of his children, which, according to ICE officials, was a case of “mistaken” identity. During the protest, an agent was captured in now-viral video footage grabbing a woman’s phone and pushing her to the ground, prompting a use-of-force investigation by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
According to CBS News, 45-year-old Fernando Jaramillo-Solano, his 15-year-old son, and his 12-year-old daughter were on their way to school last week when all three of them were snatched up by ICE agents and held at a detention facility. On Friday, ICE official Gregory Davies testified in a federal court hearing that Jaramillo-Solano was “mistaken” for someone else immigration agents were looking for. Oddly enough, the man they detained, along with his children, happened to be going through the asylum process. It’s almost as if the totally-not-racially-profiling agents either snatched up the wrong Brown person, or they’re lying about not arresting people who are going through the legal immigration process.
From CBS:
In that testimony on Friday, Davies went on to testify that ICE will not arrest anyone who’s going through legal immigration proceedings. Attorneys for the plaintiffs pointed out that Jaramillo-Solano was going through the asylum process — a position also taken by Compañeros: Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center, the Durango-based organization that said it was helping him with his asylum claim.
“There’s this false idea that immigrants are criminals, but it’s not true. This family was- they were doing everything legally, everything by the books, they were going through the system, doing their best to do it legally, like people say that they want immigrants to do, and then this is how they’re treated,” Matt Karkut, co-executive director of Compañeros, told CBS News Colorado on Friday.
Mind you, the hearing Davies was testifying at wasn’t centered around Jaramillo-Solano’s wrongful arrest. The case in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado actually centered around warrantless arrests in Colorado as a result of a complaint filed by the ACLU of Colorado, Meyer Law Office, and Olson Grimsley Kawanabe Hinchcliff & Murray, LLC against ICE, its Denver Field Office, ICE’s parent agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and several senior DHS and ICE officials. The complaint was filed on behalf of plaintiffs, Refugio Ramirez Ovando, Caroline Dias Goncalves, two other plaintiffs who are only identified by their initials, and “all those similarly situated,” and it alleges that “militarized” ICE agents, “often with masks, body armor, and long guns,” are “indiscriminately stopping and arresting people with brown skin in their mission to meet the Administration’s ramped-up enforcement demands.”
Similar complaints have been filed against the government in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
It’s also worth noting that Colorado Gov. Jared Polis claimed via X that state authorities were not alerted by the federal government of the ICE operation that landed Jaramillo-Solano in detention.
“I am deeply concerned about the circumstances of the detainment and movement of Fernando Jaramillo Solano and two minor children,” Polis wrote. “ICE did not inform us about this operation, and has not since. The federal government’s lack of transparency about its immigration actions in Durango and in the free state of Colorado remains extremely maddening. The federal government should prioritize apprehending and prosecuting dangerous criminals, no matter where they come from, and keep our communities safe instead of snatching up children and breaking up families. We have not been informed that any of those detained are suspected of any crime. Further, the federal government should promptly consider any asylum claims.”
According to The Colorado Sun, Enrique Orozco-Perez, executive director of Compañeros, Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center, reported that two people from the center’s Rapid Response Network went to the area where Jaramillo-Solano was being apprehended. He claimed ICE refused to let the children go with the representatives from the resource center and instead handcuffed them and placed them inside the back of the car with their father.
“They were detaining a gentleman who kept screaming in Spanish that his kids are in the back of the car,” Orozco-Perez said. “When our volunteers started asking about the kids, they were able to find out that their mother lived near there and that because of the mother’s status, she too was afraid to go over there.”
“Our legal representative went to the ICE office and presented the paperwork. ICE refused the paperwork and refused to give up the kids,” Orozco-Perez went on to say. “At a minimum, we were asking for the children and to be reunited with their mother.”
Videos taken of the subsequent protest show demonstrators shouting “Let the kids go!” and holding up signs that read “Hands off kids.”
Damn, with all of this brazen human rights violating by federal agents, I almost forgot to circle back to the alleged police brutality that happened at the protest.
The CBI said Thursday that “it’s investigating the use of force by an anonymous, masked agent against a woman at the protest, as well as any ‘state criminal law violations during the incident,'” CBS reported.
From the Sun:
The protest was largely peaceful Tuesday but began to escalate about 12:15 p.m., as more than 200 protesters blocked an area near the office at 32 Sheppard Dr., said Franci Stagi, who arrived shortly after 5 a.m. At least seven ICE agents dressed in camouflage pepper-sprayed people in the crowd, she said. Durango police officers were also on scene.
The ICE agents broke through a human chain that protesters had formed to block them from removing the family from the facility, the Durango Herald reported. The agents dragged protesters who were sitting on the pavement in front of the gate, the newspaper reported.
Stagi, 57, started protesting Monday evening until about 8:30 p.m. before going home. She was back at the ICE building at 5:20 a.m. and saw an unmarked car pull up around 6:15 a.m., she said.
Stagi was recording on her phone when she asked an officer, “You’re a good Christian, aren’t you?”
“Boy, did that piss him off,” Stagi told The Sun on Tuesday. The officer, who was wearing a vest with “police” printed on it, knocked her phone out of her hands and she tried to grab it back.
The Trump administration would have us all believe that countless protesters and community members are all telling the same lies about its poor, little immigration agents who are “under siege.” You can believe them, or believe your own eyes. What we’re seeing is MAGA madness, not law and order.
SEE ALSO:
Federal Judge Places Restrictions On ICE Arrests In Chicago
Federal Judge Rules ICE Must Wear Body Cameras In Chicago
US Citizen Shot In Back By ICE Agent In Southern California
ICE Detains Asylum Seeker And His 2 Children In Colorado, Claim It Was A Case Of ‘Mistaken Identity’ was originally published on newsone.com
