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Colorado advocates decry ICE courthouse arrest of immigrant family [1]
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Date: 2025-05
Colorado immigrant rights advocates expressed outrage over the Thursday arrest of a family of three outside a federal immigration court in Denver, calling the tactic an escalation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers that will punish immigrants who comply with the law by attending their scheduled court hearings.
Emily Brock, an attorney with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, witnessed the arrest of the family, including a 1-year-old child, shortly after they attended their hearing at the Department of Justice’s Denver Immigration Court at 1961 Stout St. Six unidentified plainclothes officers surrounded the family, according to the Colorado Rapid Response Network, a coalition of immigrant advocacy groups. The officers refused to let Brock speak with the family about their rights before they were taken away.
“As a parent, I cannot imagine the terror these parents experienced as the officers surrounded them with their child in their arms and told them they were to go with them,” she said.
“As the officers got closer, the little boy’s arms clung tighter around his father’s neck,” Brock added. “To take enforcement action against a family following the rules, attending their proceedings, is an attack on due process and serves only to instigate increased levels of fear in the community.”
The arrest at a federal courthouse in Denver appears to be part of a nationwide policy shift by ICE as President Donald Trump’s administration moves to carry out unprecedented mass deportations of as many as 12 million immigrants in the U.S. who lack permanent legal status. Federal immigration agents have long avoided such arrests so as not to deter immigrants from going through lawful court proceedings.
But over the last week, an “aggressive new initiative” by ICE has abruptly reversed that policy, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times.
Christina Brown, an immigration attorney and founder of the Colorado Asylum Center, said that such a policy will force immigrant families to make an “impossible choice” — whether to “attend court and face possible arbitrary mandatory months-long detention, family separation and the prospect of arguing your case from inside detention, or not appear in court and face certain targeting for deportation by ICE.”
Denver’s ICE field office did not immediately respond to questions Friday about the arrest and where the family was being held. Colorado’s only immigrant detention center, in Aurora, is an adults-only facility. Under Trump, multiple ICE facilities across the country have been reopened for family detention, a practice that had largely ended under former President Joe Biden.
“Detaining an entire family — including a baby — after they did exactly what was asked of them shows how far ICE will go to punish people simply for trying to stay together and follow the law,” said Raquel Lane-Arellano, communications manager for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. “This is a deliberate attempt to scare our communities out of the courtroom and into the shadows. But we won’t back down — we will keep showing up for each other, demanding justice, and holding those in power accountable.”
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