U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney approved a temporary restraining order Monday night after the American Civil Liberties Union sued President Donald Trump and members of his administration on behalf of two Venezuelan men, referred to only by their initials, “and others similarly situated” who have been accused of being part of the Tren de Aragua gang.

For two weeks, the federal government is barred from using the Alien Enemies Act to remove plaintiffs D.B.U, R.M.M. and any other noncitizens accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang from both the state and the country.

“This ruling is a critical step toward restoring the rule of law in the face of a rogue administration that has shown utter disregard for the Constitution,” Raquel Lane-Arellano, the communications manager at the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said Tuesday.

The judge’s order will remain in effect until a hearing is held in the case in Denver on April 21.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in March, proclaiming Venezuelans who are members of TdA and not lawful residents of the U.S. “are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed as Alien Enemies.” The administration has used the act to send immigrants — including at least one Venezuelan who had been detained in Colorado — to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.

The act has been used only three other times in American history, most recently to intern Japanese-American citizens during World War II.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that anyone being deported under the declaration deserved a hearing in federal court first.

That led federal judges in New York and Texas to place temporary holds on deportations in those areas until Trump’s Republican administration presented a procedure for allowing such appeals. Sweeney’s order follows in their footsteps.

The Colorado order also comes as the ACLU warned, in an emergency filing, that the Trump administration as recently as Monday night may have been preparing Venezuelan men in custody in Aurora for another deportation flight.

The civil rights organization’s attorneys said they had received reports Monday that Venezuelan men being held at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s contract detention facility who were accused of being affiliated with the TdA gang “were rousted from bed and told that they would be leaving.”

The men repeatedly asked where they would be taken, and ICE  agents allegedly refused to answer, ACLU officials said in the document. The flight was later canceled and, as of Tuesday morning, the men remained in Colorado, the attorneys said.

Colorado immigrant advocacy groups applauded the ACLU’s legal challenge to the Alien Enemies Act and the judge’s order.

“The disappearance of our neighbors to a notorious prison without due process should be a wake-up call to the people of the United States,” said Jennifer Piper, the program director for the Colorado office of the American Friends Service Committee.

She added that the Trump administration is asking Congress to triple the budget for immigration detention from $25 billion to more than $60 billion — a request her group opposes.

“We hope that, as a country, we can do more than sending people to foreign prisons,” said Andrea Loya, the executive director of Aurora-based nonprofit Casa de Paz, on Tuesday. “We urge the federal government to make it right for the people they sent to El Salvador without due process.”

The Trump administration’s implementation of the Alien Enemies Act and the lawsuits that followed have become a flashpoint as more than 200 alleged TdA members have been sent from the U.S. to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, in El Salvador, escalating tension between the White House and federal courts.

Inmates in El Salvadoran prisons face “life-threatening conditions, persecution and torture,” ACLU officials argued in court documents. That constitutes “irreparable harm,” they said.

D.B.U., a 31-year-old man who fled Venezuela after he was imprisoned for his political activity and protesting against the Venezuelan government, was arrested in January during a raid of what law enforcement and immigration officials have repeatedly called a “Tren de Aragua party” in Adams County.

The Drug Enforcement Administration said 41 people arrested that night were living in Colorado illegally and claimed dozens were connected to the TdA gang. None of those people were criminally charged.

According to the ACLU, D.B.U. was identified as a gang member based on a tattoo of his niece’s name — his only tattoo. He “vehemently denied” being a TdA member.

The second plaintiff in the lawsuit, 25-year-old R.M.M., fled Venezuela after two members of his family were killed by the TdA gang. ACLU officials said in the lawsuit he was afraid the gang would also kill him, his wife and his children.

R.M.M. was detained in March after federal agents saw him standing with other Hispanic men near their cars outside a Colorado residence that law enforcement believed was connected to the TdA gang, according to court records. Like D.B.U., R.M.M. was identified as a gang member based on his tattoos, including one of his birth year, one of his mother’s name, one of “religious significance” and a character from the Monopoly board game.

He is not and never has been a member of TdA, ACLU officials wrote in court documents.

The ACLU claims Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act is invalid because the TdA gang is not a “foreign nation or government,” and there has been no “invasion or predatory incursion” — both of which are required to invoke the act.

“Criminal activity does not meet the longstanding definitions of those statutory requirements,” ACLU officials said in the lawsuit. “Thus, the government’s attempt to summarily remove Venezuelan noncitizens exceeds the wartime authority that Congress delegated in the AEA.”

In addition to Trump, the Colorado lawsuit names U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the Denver Field Office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Robert Gaudian and Denver Contract Detention Facility warden Dawn Ceja.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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“I wanted to see my son’s birth,” Finol Marquez told The Denver Post in Spanish through a translator. But his detention made that impossible.

The Post interviewed Finol Marquez, 28, when he was detained at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Aurora and again after he was forcibly returned to Venezuela, seeking to understand the removal process from his perspective.

His account of his processing before deportation included an assertion that, under pressure, he unwittingly signed a document admitting to being a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, which he said wasn’t true.

When asked on April 3 — the day before he was deported — why Finol Marquez had been detained, ICE said it was because he was an “illegal alien” but declined to share information on where he was being deported to and when he was scheduled to be removed. Later, ICE did not directly respond to questions about the document cited by Finol Marquez.

Finol Marquez’s deportation means his wife Ariagnny, two daughters and one infant son are left in Lakewood, wondering what’s next. Ariagnny, 31, declined to use her last name out of a fear that she’ll be deported, too. She has applied for asylum in the U.S.

“I’m here with my three kids,” she said in Spanish. “I have no financial support.”

The exact numbers of recent detentions and deportations under President Donald Trump’s stepped-up enforcement operations remain unclear due to a lack of federal transparency. Confirmation of the whereabouts of deportees has been piecemeal, with advocacy groups, lawyers and news organizations sporadically releasing names and locations based on available information.

Recently, local immigration assistance organizations and a report by CBS News confirmed that Nixon Azuaje-Perez, a Venezuelan migrant teen living in Colorado, was sent to an El Salvadoran prison. More than 200 migrants — many of them Venezuelan — have been transported to a maximum-security prison in the Central American country.

Federal officials have said they’re criminals and members of Tren de Aragua, but advocates have challenged those claims and questioned authorities’ reliance on tattoos as signifiers of gang affiliation.

In the end, Finol Marquez was returned to Venezuela, which reached an agreement late last month to resume accepting repatriation flights from the U.S.

Arrested in driveway

Years before Finol Marquez’s detainment, he and Ariagnny met because they’re from the same neighborhood in Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas. They’ve been together for almost a decade and wed about two years ago.

After making the four-month journey from their home country to the United States, they arrived in September 2023 and were part of the wave of Venezuelan migrants who traveled to Denver after crossing the border. They spent a year and a half starting new lives in Colorado before Finol Marquez was detained.

He said immigrants had successfully come to the U.S. for college and job opportunities, so he felt welcomed under then-President Joe Biden’s administration.

Back then, “the country was different,” he said.

Ariagnny applied for asylum and submitted her work permit paperwork. Finol Marquez applied for asylum, too, but a judge denied it.

On the morning of March 20, several unmarked vehicles pulled up outside the family’s home, according to videos shared with The Post. Both uniformed and plainclothes ICE agents apprehended Finol Marquez in his driveway.

He said they asked him questions in English, which he didn’t understand, and indicated for him to lift his hooded sweatshirt to examine his tattoos. Finol Marquez said he has a tattoo dedicated to his daughter.

Then, with his car keys and cell phone confiscated, he was put in handcuffs and loaded into a white Jeep, video footage shows. Ariagnny, who was pregnant at the time, looked on.

Finol Marquez confirmed that he had an active deportation order from last year and said it was the result of an unpaid traffic ticket. Without a work permit, he said he didn’t have the money to settle the fine.

Finol Marquez said after he was detained, he was taken to the ICE field office in Centennial where officials asked him to sign paperwork in English. Finol Marquez initially refused, but he said he felt pressured and ultimately signed it.

Later, he received a copy of the documents in Spanish, he said. They included a confession that stated he was a member of Tren de Aragua, he said, adding that other detained Venezuelans had also signed that paperwork.

“I’m a little worried,” he told The Post from the facility.

The Post has spoken with several immigration organizations about the alleged documents, but it was unable to obtain a copy and independently verify the claim. ABC News has also reported claims from detained Venezuelan men that they were compelled to sign confessions about being gang members.

When asked about the allegation, a local ICE spokesperson, who has declined to be quoted by name, did not directly respond. In a statement, the agency said it takes very seriously its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in its custody, and the allegation was not in keeping with ICE policies, practices and standards of care.

The agency previously shared the same statement for another Post story about detainees in Aurora.

At that detention facility, Finol Marquez said Mexicans, Guatemalans and other Venezuelans were among the people held there. He recalled one officer who spoke Spanish and helped him, but he also remembers arguing with another officer over whether he actually came to the U.S. to work.

“In reality, there was a lot of racist officials that treated us badly,” Finol Marquez said in a follow-up interview.

A statement sent by the GEO Group, a private contractor that runs the Aurora facility, said the company strongly rejected allegations of racism, pointing to its zero-tolerance policy with respect to staff misconduct or discrimination.

The statement said that, as a service provider to ICE, the GEO Group is required to follow performance-based national detention standards set by the Department of Homeland Security, including those governing the treatment of people in ICE custody.

The removal process

Finol Marquez’s removal left him and his loved ones with questions throughout the process.

Once he was moved from the Aurora facility, Ariagnny said she went days without hearing from him, and her biggest fear was “that he was taken to El Salvador.”

Finol Marquez said that possibility was also top of mind for him.

Before leaving Colorado, he said he asked an official where they were taking him, and that person responded that he’d find out in Texas.

Finol Marquez said he spent the entire day traveling on a plane — from Colorado to Washington state to Utah to Nevada to Arizona. There, he was given a cot, a pillow, a sandwich and water, he said.

The next morning, officers put Finol Marquez in metal handcuffs, leg irons and a belly chain, he said. Finol Marquez said another Venezuelan who spoke English asked an officer where they were going and was told to Florida, then Texas.

After another day of plane travel, Finol Marquez said he rode in a van for hours through Texas. At the final destination, other buses full of people arrived.

“What’s going to happen to us?” Finol Marquez remembered thinking. “Are they going to send us to El Salvador?”

He said he asked officers and didn’t receive responses. The detainees began boarding a plane: first women, then children, then men, Finol Marquez said. He estimates that more than 300 people were loaded onto the aircraft.

“It was scary because I didn’t know where they were going to take me,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a request for comment about Finol Marquez’s claims of government pressure to sign a Tren de Aragua confession and its lack of communication about what country he was being deported to during the removal process.

On the plane, Finol Marquez said he received a cookie, an apple and water, but his access to a restroom was limited.

After hours in flight, passengers recognized Venezuelan terrain below and started to cheer, Finol Marquez said. American officers removed his chains before landing, he said. He was then processed by Venezuelan officials.

Now that he’s returned to his motherland and been reunited with relatives, Finol Marquez said he’s feeling “good, thanks to God.”

He said his plan was to return to Venezuela eventually. But he didn’t want to do it so soon — or leave his family alone in the process.

“In reality, I didn’t think they would treat me like this,” he said, referring to the U.S. government representatives.

He said he wants his wife and children to come back to Venezuela. Ariagnny is also considering that option.

“To tell the truth, I have a lot of fear,” she said, “and I have thought about going back myself.”

Law enforcement announced Tuesday that they arrested Ana Ferrer on April 4 on several charges tied to the August 2024 death of Paul Peavey, the 57-year-old owner of the company Elite European Dobermans. Those charges include accessory to a serious felony, theft valued between $20,000 and $100,000 and tampering with physical evidence.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation filed an affidavit for Ferrer’s arrest warrant last month, and she was extradited from Nebraska to Clear Creek County last week, according to the county sheriff’s office.

Ferrer is the wife of Sergio Ferrer, who counted as the first arrest in the case. Last August, he was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated robbery, and he is still in jail.

Law enforcement reports that Peavey was last heard from on Aug. 19 and reported missing on Aug. 21. Around that time, as many as 10 Doberman pinscher puppies went missing, and they still have not been found, according to police. A search party of friends and family found Peavey’s body on Aug. 24.

An autopsy by the Clear Creek County Coroner’s Office revealed that Peavey was likely killed around Aug. 19, and he died from a gunshot wound.

As Peavey’s homicide investigation continues, the county sheriff’s office asks anyone with information about the crime or the missing dogs — all of which are microchipped — to call its office tip line at 303-670-7567, to submit a tip via email at crime_tips@clearcreeksheriff.us or to anonymously submit a tip online at https://bit.ly/CCSOCrimeTips.

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These attorneys in recent months have been filing petitions for writs of habeas corpus — requests to determine the validity of a person’s detention — in order to bring the cases before federal judges for review.  As the immigrants spend day after day in limbo inside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Aurora, the filing is a tactic that adds legal urgency — and the chance to get a federal judge to review the circumstances of detention and sometimes put deportation on hold in the process.

Vizguerra’s case has made national headlines since her detainment on March 17 outside her job at a local Target store, prompting an outcry from community leaders and spurring her lawyers to quickly file an emergency petition for a writ of habeas corpus in Colorado’s federal district court. A judge ordered ICE not to deport Vizguerra until the petition could be litigated, and her team is amending it to include claims of constitutional violations.

In late March, habeas corpus petitions were filed on behalf of two other detainees in the Aurora facility — one a “stateless” man who doesn’t have citizenship in any country, the other a transgender woman from Central America who is challenging her lengthy detention.

Theirs are among five habeas corpus petitions tied to immigration — including Vizguerra’s — that have been filed since the start of the year in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, according to records pulled from a Courthouse News Service database. Last year, a total of eight such cases were filed for the entire year under the immigration category — and that was double the number in 2023.

Denver-area lawyers say they believe an even steeper uptick lies ahead as President Donald Trump’s administration continues its crackdown on illegal immigration. Catherine Chan, a Denver immigration attorney, said the number of habeas corpus cases had been low historically because only a handful of immigration lawyers do that type of work for detainees here.

But now, organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union that advocate for immigrants’ rights are more interested in such cases, and detentions are rising with Trump’s push — resulting in the growing number of habeas corpus cases.

“I would imagine the nationwide trend is ticking in that direction,” Chan said.

The legal strategy is “mostly important, it seems, because today’s immigration apprehensions and detentions are seeming to fall outside the bounds of even the law,” Chan said.

Hans Meyer, another Denver immigration attorney, pointed to recent national reports of ICE officers allegedly violating federal court orders, immigration law and constitutional rights.

“ICE has to have a legal justification for depriving a person of liberty,” Meyer said. “And if there isn’t a legal justification, then the writ of habeas corpus is an important tool to stop ICE from breaking the law.”

But the agency has countered that their enforcement activities are legally sound, with U.S. attorneys arguing that they had a reinstated removal order to detain and deport Vizguerra.

A habeas corpus petition places a case within the purview of a federal judge because immigration judges don’t have the authority to make decisions about constitutional issues, Meyer said.

“We in the legal system need to look at avenues that would give people access to due process,” he said. “That’s gonna be — in many cases — filing these writs of habeas corpus in federal court.”

“Stateless” former Soviet waits in Aurora facility

One of the two cases filed late last month on behalf of ICE detainees is in support of Emmanuil Manoukian. His attorney filed a habeas corpus petition March 29.

According to his immigration lawyer, Brian Green, ICE has held Manoukian, a Los Angeles resident, at the Aurora facility for over seven months and has provided no further information on when he can expect to be removed from the country — even though the federal agency has surpassed the set time limit for such a removal.

Green says that although Manoukian was born in 1984 under the Soviet Union’s occupation in the country of Georgia, he isn’t a citizen there now. That’s because of a nationality law passed in 1993 after the small nation declared its independence. Manoukian and his mother had already fled Georgia to another European country at that point and weren’t eligible, Green said.

He added that Georgia has refused to give Manoukian a travel document. The petition notes Manoukian has criminal convictions, but it doesn’t elaborate.

As such, Manoukian is labeled by international law as a “stateless person” without any citizenship. He first entered the U.S. as a permanent resident with a visa in 2004. Thirteen years later, an immigration judge ordered Manoukian’s deportation, the petition says. Green declined to comment on the reason without his client’s permission.

Manoukian was detained in Los Angeles after he didn’t show up for an ICE check-in, Green wrote in the petition, and last month, ICE asserted that Manoukian wouldn’t be released from detention because he’s perceived as a flight risk.

Green wrote that ICE is seeking a country to accept Manoukian’s deportation.

“The U.S. government can’t force a country to take someone,” Green said in a phone interview, but “they can certainly negotiate, and they can entice third countries to take people.” His suspicion is that the agency is looking into whether Manoukian can apply for Russian citizenship — and, if so, ICE potentially would send him there, Green said.

He argues that the agency is violating both federal regulations and due process by continuing to detain his client, and Manoukian must be released until a removal date is confirmed.

“The habeas corpus (petition) is really the last-gasp attempt to make sure that people have their basic constitutional rights protected,” Green said.

Green, who’s also part of Vizguerra’s legal team, said ICE offices in the western U.S. are sending detainees to the Aurora facility, which is run by the private contractor GEO Group, because it serves as a processing center before deportations take place.

“That’s why I’m getting much busier in my practice with habeas cases,” he said. “That’s why I think the Colorado district court is going to have a lot more (habeas corpus petitions) than maybe Arizona or Utah.”

Trans woman fights to stay in U.S.

Another petition was filed in Denver on March 28 on behalf of Dayana Munoz Ramirez, known to ICE under her legal first name, Alfredo. Her lawyer, Colleen Cowgill at the National Immigrant Justice Center, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Cowgill argues in the petition that Munoz Ramirez’s “unreasonably prolonged” detention is unconstitutional because it has violated her right to due process. Her client should either be released or allowed a custody hearing with an immigration judge, she wrote, so that the government has to justify her detention.

According to the petition, Munoz Ramirez, 47, is a transgender woman from El Salvador who was detained by ICE in November 2023 — over 16 months ago. Cowgill wrote that her client has experienced persecution, torture and violence in her home country because of her gender identity.

Munoz Ramirez opted to hide her transgender identity for much of her life to stay safe, Cowgill wrote. Her client moved to the U.S. in 1993 as a lawful permanent resident, and she was convicted of stealing a vehicle in 2006, according to the petition.

Ten years later, Munoz Ramirez was placed in removal proceedings around the same time that she came out to her family as transgender, Cowgill wrote. But Munoz Ramirez didn’t publicize her gender identity during her immigration proceedings and was deported to El Salvador in December 2018.

There, she tried to live openly as a transgender woman, but Munoz Ramirez was repeatedly beaten and raped by both gang members and police officers, Cowgill wrote. Following Munoz Ramirez’s extortion and kidnapping, she reentered the U.S. around May 2019, documents show.

According to Cowgill, Munoz Ramirez was convicted of car theft in 2020 when she was riding with a friend in a stolen vehicle, although she said she didn’t know it was stolen. In November 2023, she was detained and placed in the transgender unit of the Aurora ICE facility, where she began gender-affirming hormone therapy.

In part because of her 2006 conviction, an immigration judge denied her attempts to stop her deportation.

After some legal back and forth, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver granted her motion for an emergency stay of removal in December. Her case is being litigated in court.

But Cowgill wrote in the petition that her client may still be detained for months — or years. And at the ICE facility, Munoz Ramirez continues to face harassment by other detainees and threats by staff, the filing says.

The agency told The Denver Post that ICE takes very seriously its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in its custody. It said the allegations were not in keeping with ICE policies, practices and standards of care.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado declined to comment about Manoukian’s or Munoz Ramirez’s cases.

Senate Bill 276‘s Democratic sponsors have been drafting the measure for weeks, and its introduction has been delayed amid negotiations with a leery Gov. Jared Polis.

The measure also lands almost exactly two months after federal raids were launched across metro Denver and amid broader scrutiny of the Trump administration’s immigrant crackdown, which has included the deportation of people — including a soccer player, a makeup artist and at least one person from Colorado — to a prison in El Salvador.

“The outcry from (the) community to not sit on our hands when there is this level of uncertainty, anxiety and fear is palpable, in communities across the state,” said Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat. She’s co-sponsoring the bill with fellow Democrats Sen. Mike Weissman and Reps. Lorena Garcia and Elizabeth Velasco.

With the legislative session set to end May 7, lawmakers will have just over a month to debate and vote on the bill. Republicans — who have introduced bills to increase the state’s cooperation with immigration authorities — are certain to oppose the proposal, and House Republicans criticized a previous draft of the bill during a press gaggle last month.

Josh Bly, spokesman for the Senate Republicans, declined to comment on the bill Friday afternoon, citing its recent introduction.

The debate will likely have national implications, too: The U.S. Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against cities and states with so-called “sanctuary” policies, and Polis and his staff have generally told lawmakers the governor doesn’t want to paint a target on the state’s back with legislation considered this session, Garcia said.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston testified in front of Congress last month about his city’s immigration policies, and Colorado’s four Republican members of Congress wrote a letter to Polis asking him to consider repealing the state’s existing immigration protections.

For his part, the governor has repeatedly said he welcomes the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — or ICE — in the state to arrest “dangerous criminals,” though he’s also said he doesn’t fully know what they’re doing.

In a brief statement Friday afternoon, Polis spokesman Shelby Wieman said the governor “will review the legislation that reaches his desk.”

What the immigration bill would do

Gonzales said that Senate Bill 276 would prohibit local governments from sharing private data on residents with immigration authorities, including ICE agents, unless they have a warrant, and any local government that ignored that order would face a fine of up to $50,000.

The measure would similarly ban those immigration authorities from entering “non-public” parts of public buildings — from hospitals and child care centers to schools and college campuses — without a warrant, Gonzales said. An agent without a warrant could enter a hospital lobby, for instance, but not a hospital room itself. That also applies to jails or prisons.

Both of those provisions would expand current law: State employees are currently prohibited from sharing information with ICE, and it also essentially blocks ICE from arresting people in or near courthouses. Local law enforcement is also prohibited from arresting someone based solely on their immigration status or holding someone in jail beyond their scheduled release so ICE can be alerted.

SB 276 would also remove two provisions of state law requiring undocumented people to file affidavits related to getting driver’s licenses and in-state tuition, in a bid to further blunt data-gathering from federal law enforcement. It expands the jail release requirements, too, to further prohibit facilities from keeping people who are ready to be released.

Finally, the measure would also seek to further limit local law enforcement’s ability to work with ICE solely on civil immigration enforcement, Garcia said. That wouldn’t apply to anyone under investigation for committing a crime. It would also ban a military force from another state from entering Colorado, unless it’s acting under federal orders.

Attorney General Phil Weiser told lawmakers in a call late last year that his office was studying how the National Guard can be deployed in the state in the wake of Trump’s comments about using the military for deportations.

Weissman, who represents Aurora, said his community has become an epicenter for the immigration debate. During an October rally in the city, President Donald Trump announced his intention to invoke an 18th-century law to mass-deport people and to call the program “Operation Aurora.”

“When these things happen, the cover story is folks who have a particular prior (criminal history),” Weissman said. “But what we know about these actions is they’re not that targeted and they do put fear and even terror into a much broader universe of people. People with various statuses, people just trying to live their lives, people part of the Aurora community and communities all over Colorado. Frankly, if you really listen to the rhetoric of officials in the Trump administration, that’s the point.”

Nonprofit partners weigh in

The bill was developed with guidance from Colorado immigrant rights groups, including Voces Unidas, the American Friends Service Committee and the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.

Alex Sánchez, the president and CEO of Voces Unidas, has personally felt the impact of deportation.

His parents immigrated from a rural community in the Mexican state of Jalisco for farmwork. Sánchez was born in Los Angeles and raised in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley. When he was 9 years old, his mother was deported in a mass raid in El Jebel that affected dozens of families.

“Those of us who grew up also on the Western Slope have also seen the historical trauma that has occurred over the years,” Sánchez said. “This is not the first time that we’ve had a hostile federal government that has used immigration policy as a political football.”

His organization is headquartered in Rep. Velasco’s district, and it has confirmed ICE operations in Glenwood Springs, Gypsum, Gunnison and more.

“One bill will not solve all of the challenges that we’re going to be facing as a community,” Sánchez said. “We also have to make sure that we’re willing to — as a state — to have the political courage to react live as executive orders come through.”

He also wants to see the strengthening of state policy around data about immigration status.

To Jordan Garcia, a program director at the American Friends Service Committee, the legislative push reflects some of the local public opinion.

In Colorado, “people here have said we want to do our best to protect people,” he said.

His organization helps run the Colorado Rapid Response Network and a statewide hotline to report ICE activity — to his knowledge, the only statewide hotline in the country. So far, it’s tracked ICE activity in Pueblo, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Brighton, Grand Junction and Durango.

While Jordan Garcia believes there are still more safeguards needed to protect immigrant communities — such as for laborers in the dairy, sheepherding and farming industries — he said the upcoming bill represents an effort by local lawmakers.

It stands out to him because, “right now, we’re hearing a lot of radio silence from other elected officials,” he said, adding that he has heard some movement about other potential proposals from U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper‘s office.

“We’ve had a lot of elected officials say, ‘We don’t want to bring a bigger target to Colorado because we’re already kind of in the crosshairs,’ ” Garcia said. “To that, we say, nothing you do is going to take those crosshairs away.”

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Nixon Azuaje-Perez, 19, is a Venezuelan migrant who was held at the local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center before being transported to Texas, then sent on a plane to El Salvador, said Andrea Loya, the executive director of Casa De Paz, on Thursday. Her Aurora-based organization visits immigrants at the detention facility and provides assistance upon their release.

The Trump administration has sent four planes carrying a total of more than 250 detainees — many of them Venezuelan migrants — to El Salvador to be housed in a prison, with the most recent one flying Sunday. Officials have said they are gang members, but advocates dispute the gang ties of Azuaje-Perez and some of the other detained men.

Loya said Azuaje-Perez was moved out of Colorado before a March 11 court date, and March 14 was the last that anyone had heard from him.

His name appears on an “internal government list” — reported by CBS News on March 20 — of Venezuelan men moved out of the U.S. to El Salvador’s maximum-security prison.

According to a Friday statement by three advocacy groups, Azuaje-Perez left his home country at the age of 13 — first heading southwest to Peru, then north to the U.S. Advocates say he and his family sought asylum at the southern border in August 2023, and they resided in shelters in New York City.

The organizations report that the family received work permits, and Azuaje-Perez moved to Aurora to find job opportunities, landing regular work with an employer.

Starting in December 2023, he lived at Aspen Grove Apartments — owned by problematic landlords CBZ Management — on Nome Street in Aurora, advocates say.

The Aurora Police Department announced last year that it had arrested Azuaje-Perez on July 29 on an allegation of “tampering with evidence” tied to a July 28 shooting that took place on Nome Street. 9News cited court documents saying he told police that he didn’t want law enforcement to believe he was involved in the crime; he said he picked up shell casings and threw them into an area with rocks.

The names of three other men who were also arrested by police at that time weren’t included on the list reported by CBS.

The advocacy groups say Azuaje-Perez was released from jail on Aug. 2 and attended a pretrial hearing on Sept. 13 after which ICE agents arrested him. Police said in a September statement that they suspected Azuaje-Perez was a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

Advocacy groups believe he was flown out of the country on March 15.

ICE directed questions to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. DHS didn’t respond to a request to confirm Azuaje-Perez’s circumstances and provide further details about why he was detained and deported to El Salvador.

U.S. District Judge Nina Wang held a short hearing on the high-profile immigration case, but did not rule on Vizguerra’s request to be freed. Vizguerra, 53, remained held at the Aurora ICE facility on a 2013 removal order and did not attend the hearing at the Alfred A. Arraj U.S. Courthouse.

Laura Lichter, Vizguerra’s lead attorney, called the activist’s detainment by ICE “retaliatory.”

“I believe that the targeting here of Jeanette is in line with what we are seeing in other types of cases where people are being targeted for showing up at protests, for posting certain messages on social media, for having a particular opinion,” Lichter said.

The judge granted the request by Vizguerra’s lawyers to amend their emergency petition for a writ of habeas corpus — a request to determine the validity of a person’s detention –with the new claim that ICE infringed on the advocate’s freedom of speech.

Wang previously had ordered the Trump administration not to deport Vizguerra or move her out of state until her petition is litigated. Vizguerra also has a case filed with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that ICE’s removal order is not valid.

Federal prosecutors did not oppose the amendment to add the First Amendment claim, which must be filed by April 8. From there, the federal government has 21 days to respond.

Vizguerra’s attorneys also complained to the judge that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services contacted her directly without her lawyers present about a “reasonable fear” screening: a process that takes place during a removal order when an asylum officer assesses the merits of a detainee’s fears about returning to their country.

That screening is scheduled to take place Monday.

“We are frustrated with how USCIS… has been conducting itself,” Lichter said in the courtroom.

Federal prosecutors said the agency is following procedure, but Lichter has argued against the validity of any removal order for Vizguerra.

“The agency has an obligation to fulfill its regulations,” Timothy Jafek with the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. He and other federal lawyers are representing Aurora ICE processing center warden Dawn Ceja, ICE field office director Robert Guadian, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi.

Until a court tells ICE its removal order is invalid, the agency will follow its regulations, Jafek added. That elicited a question from Wang: “How can ICE trigger that (process) if it is in dispute?”

The federal attorneys agreed that Vizguerra’s attorney can be present at the reasonable fear screening.

Vizguerra was detained by federal agents on March 17 outside her workplace, a Denver-area Target store. Almost two weeks have passed since then, and attendees of multiple protests and vigils have called for her release — as have elected officials, including Denver Mayor Mike Johnston.

Vizguerra, who first crossed the border from Mexico illegally in 1997, is known nationwide for her immigration advocacy after sheltering in two Denver churches to avoid deportation during Trump’s first term.

At an evening news conference on the steps of the Denver City and County Building, supporters of Vizguerra — including two of her children, Luna and Roberto Baez — echoed her arguments that she’s being retaliated against.

“She’s trying to speak out. She went to all these protests; she went and tried to help all these people,” her 18-year-old son Roberto said, “and that’s specifically why they targeted her.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado filed its response to the immigration advocate’s petition in U.S. District Court on Monday evening; a hearing on the case is set for Friday in federal court in Denver.

Vizguerra, 53, was detained by ICE agents on March 17 at her workplace, a Target store in metro Denver. The next day, her legal team filed an emergency petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which is a request for a court to determine the validity of a person’s detention.

Vizguerra is currently being held at the agency’s detention facility in Aurora, which is run by private contractor GEO Group.

The government’s response, obtained by The Denver Post on Tuesday, argues the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has exclusive jurisdiction over these types of cases. Vizguerra’s lawyers have also filed a petition for review in the 10th Circuit.

President Donald Trump’s administration is asking U.S. District Judge Nina Wang, who ordered ICE not to deport Vizguerra or move her out of state while the court considers legal arguments, to deny Vizguerra’s challenge to a removal order that was reinstated in 2013.

The government’s response says that, in the years since the removal order was issued, Vizguerra and ICE “have acted on the understanding that an order of removal exists” because she has sought and received stays of removal.

“At no time during all those years did she object to or challenge the reinstatement order,” the government attorneys wrote.

Federal prosecutors also contest that Vizguerra’s then-lawyer declined to respond to the 2013 reinstatement order.

Laura Lichter, Vizguerra’s lead attorney, counters that any removal order is invalid because ICE didn’t follow procedural standards, including informing Vizguerra about her right to challenge it.

“The government wants to litigate around the edges,” Lichter said in a Tuesday statement. “But the center cannot hold. There is no valid removal order. There never was.”

As Vizguerra’s case is argued, her four children are left to navigate the logistics of childcare, finances and other routines without the guidance of their mother, said Luna Baez, Vizguerra’s 21-year-old daughter.

“Things are very uncertain,” she told The Post on Tuesday afternoon.

The family is allowed to visit Vizguerra at the ICE facility three days a week, speaking to her through a window.

“It’s nice to see my mom’s face, but I can definitely tell that she can be doing better,” Baez said.

But Baez described Wang’s injunction last week that prevented immediate deportation as a step forward. “There’s definitely faith and hope,” she added.

Vizguerra’s immigration record

A declaration by ICE deportation officer Damian Morales, an employee of the Denver field office, was also submitted by federal prosecutors. He outlined a timeline of Vizguerra’s immigration records, beginning with her conviction of attempted possession of a forged instrument — a fake Social Security number — in 2009.

That year, an immigration court started Vizguerra’s removal proceedings, although she was released from ICE custody after paying bond, Morales said. Vizguerra’s application for cancellation of removal was denied in 2011, and a judge granted her voluntary departure from the U.S., according to Morales.

Vizguerra filed another appeal, and, while it was pending in 2012, she traveled to Mexico — leading to the dismissal of her appeal in 2013, Morales said. Then Vizguerra was arrested for illegally crossing the southern border again in April 2013, but she was released in June under an order of supervision, the declaration reports.

After being detained again by ICE in July 2013, Vizguerra filed a request for a stay of deportation, which was denied, Morales said. He added that ICE issued a decision to reinstate a prior removal order and sent it to Vizguerra’s lawyer, who declined to respond.

But Lichter contends that “ICE signed off on a reinstatement order before Jeanette even saw it. That’s not just a simple paperwork error — it’s unlawful,” she said.

The next month, the agency reconsidered Vizguerra’s stay of deportation and granted it, Morales said. It went on to grant her next five applications for stays of deportation, submitted from 2014 through 2016, according to the declaration.

However, the agency denied Vizguerra’s seventh stay of deportation in 2017, which resulted in her decision to shelter in two Denver churches to avoid deportation during Trump’s first term. The move made her a nationally recognized figure.

In 2021 and 2023, ICE granted two more stays of removal filed by Vizguerra, with her last one expiring in February 2024, Morales said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado declined to comment on ongoing cases. The office is representing the respondents to Vizguerra’s petition, including Aurora ICE processing center warden Dawn Ceja, ICE field office director Robert Guadian, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi.

Lichter depicted stays of removal as “discretionary humanitarian relief.” She disputes that Vizguerra was granted the stays because of her case’s merits, adding that ICE still hasn’t asserted whether it has the lawful authority to deport her.

“This is why we are fighting this case: Jeanette is being detained without lawful basis and denied her right to due process under the law,” Lichter said.

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That’s because the annual cost of covering abortion through Medicaid and another plan — projected at nearly $5.9 million — would be slightly more than offset by the reduced costs to cover births, according to a state fiscal analysis.

On Tuesday, the House Health and Human Services Committee passed Senate Bill 183 on a vote of 9-4. It already passed the Senate 22-12 earlier this month on a party-line vote. Co-sponsored by state Sens. Robert Rodriguez and Lindsey Daugherty, along with state Rep. Lorena García and House Speaker Julie McCluskie — all Democrats — the bill implements Amendment 79, which established a constitutional right to abortion in Colorado and was approved by 62% of voters in the November election.

The amendment also repealed an earlier provision in the state constitution that banned putting public funds toward abortion. The bill would now go a step further by requiring coverage of abortion care for Medicaid patients and Child Health Plan Plus program recipients, using state funding.

Public employee insurance plans would also have to cover the services, and the bill would prohibit state and local governments from blocking the right to an abortion. The legislation would take effect at the start of 2026.

“To further reduce federal interference, our legislation reduces the state’s reliance on federal reimbursement for reproductive health care,” Garcia said in a statement. “This bill upholds the will of the voters to ensure your fundamental right to access life-saving abortion care is never ripped away.”

Before the November election, opponents of Amendment 79 criticized state analysts’ conclusion in the Blue Book voter guide that its passage would have no fiscal impact. But the analysts wrote that any costs would depend on legislators’ future decisions since the amendment, on its own, didn’t authorize coverage of abortion services.

What fiscal analysts say

Now that SB-183 would require that public funding, the financial impact is coming into view.

In the state’s 2026-27 fiscal year, the first full year of public funding, the fiscal impact note for the bill projects that costs for abortion services will reach $5.9 million — and savings from terminated pregnancies are projected at $6.4 million.

The cited reasoning: Births covered by Medicaid incur higher expenses at delivery compared to the cost of abortion services.

The fiscal note estimates that the bill would ultimately cut costs for the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, which oversees Medicaid, by around $286,000 in the 2025-26 fiscal year, which begins July 1, and about $573,000 in the next fiscal year.

But because abortion services would have to be paid for using state money, the bill would shift more spending to the general fund.

In the coming fiscal year, appropriations to the general fund — a fund in the state’s budget used for Colorado programs — would jump by $1.5 million, while cash and federal funding for the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing will decrease by $1.8 million. Since public funding would take effect midway through that fiscal year, in January, both figures would roughly double for the 2026-27 fiscal year.

According to the fiscal note, to cover abortion services, costs would rise for both local governments and the state’s employee health insurance across all agencies. For state employees, analysts project that adding abortion coverage will cost $204,700 per year — and they make the assumption that there wouldn’t be savings from “averted births” since, without coverage, employees who want abortions would likely seek them on their own.

Debate over public funding

To Jack Teter, the regional director of government affairs at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, the fiscal impact — and any potential savings — don’t address the bill’s importance. Instead, he emphasizes that certain insurance plans will finally cover abortion services.

Right now, that type of care isn’t covered by insurance plans for state and local government workers, and the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing reimburses abortion services only in limited cases, including when a pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or poses a risk of death to the mother.

“The premise that insurance coverage for abortion care is a societal good because it saves money on births doesn’t feel right to me,” Teter said. “Access to health care is good always.”

The legislation’s fiscal note projects that more than 333,000 women ages 15 to 44 will be enrolled in the Medicaid or Child Health Plan Plus programs in the coming year, and almost 1.7% of program members of childbearing age will seek abortion care annually.

It estimates that procedural abortions are reimbursed at about $1,300, and medication abortions at $800. For pregnancies that are carried to term, it puts the average reimbursement for labor and delivery at around $3,850.

But Brittany Vessely, the executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference, disagrees with those estimates. Her group was an outspoken opponent of Amendment 79.

“The fiscal note drastically underestimates the cost of abortion, especially late abortion,” she said. Vessely puts the average late-trimester abortion cost at $3,000.

“To say that this saves the state money because of a one-time payment — it’s abominable,” Vessely said. “We’re talking about the lives of children.”

Teter says the state designates these health care services with set reimbursement rates.

“Medicaid has reimbursement rates for every single service that’s covered,” he said. “A provider can’t be reimbursed more than the Medicaid reimbursement rate.”

If the measure comes to pass, Vessely said Colorado taxpayers will carry the financial brunt of paying for abortions — “against their conscience, in many cases,” she added.

Teter underlines that the state’s residents “have spoken” by passing the amendment with over 1.9 million votes in favor.

“Insurance plans are a safety net, and insurance coverage for abortion care is no different,” he said. “There’s never a scenario when any of us who are paying into an insurance pool are able to — or have the right to — pass judgment on what health care someone else might need.”

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ICE agents detained Vizguerra at her workplace, a metro-area Target store, on Monday. She is currently being held in the agency’s detention facility in Aurora.

U.S. District Judge Nina Wang noted in her six-page order that an injunction “is necessary to preserve the status quo” in Vizguerra’s immigration case and to allow the court time to consider legal arguments in her emergency petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

The case is scheduled for a hearing in federal court in Denver on March 28.

The order is directed at Aurora ICE processing center warden Johnny Choate, ICE acting field office director Ernesto Santacruz, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi.

Vizguerra’s attorneys also filed a petition with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver to challenge her detainment.

“This case raises complex issues about not only the legality of Ms. Vizguerra-Ramirez’s ICE detention under immigration law, but also the jurisdictional interplay between district and appellate courts facing this specific set of factual circumstances,” Wang wrote in her order.

She noted that the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is superior to her court, so its judgment could sway her decision about the petition.

Wang previously had directed the Trump administration to inform the court by Monday why she shouldn’t grant the petition, which seeks Vizguerra’s release from custody.

ICE has said that Vizguerra, who first crossed the southern border from Mexico in 1997, is “a convicted criminal alien.” The agency said a federal immigration judge issued her final order of deportation, and Vizguerra’s latest one-year stay of deportation expired in February 2024.

But her legal team at Denver law office Lichter Immigration contends any reinstated order is invalid because standard procedure wasn’t followed by ICE officers.

Supporters are taking Wang’s order as good news.

“We are relieved and cautiously optimistic in the wake of this order,” said Jordan Garcia, spokesperson at the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker social justice group that has worked closely with Vizguerra’s family. “The order gives Jeanette’s lawyers and the government, if they choose to come to the table, time to resolve Jeanette’s case without imminent removal or transfer hanging over her.”

According to a news release from the committee on Friday, Vizguerra’s family said: “The ruling gives us one more protection while our mom’s fight for justice and freedom continues.”

Vizguerra’s arrest sparked protests locally, and elected officials including Denver Mayor Mike Johnston have spoken out against her detention. Vizguerra, 53, built a national reputation as an immigration advocate during President Donald Trump’s first term after sheltering in two Denver churches to avoid deportation.

Another rally and vigil is planned for 6 to 8 p.m. Monday outside the Aurora ICE detention facility.

ICE directed further inquiries about Vizguerra to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The Department of Justice’s public affairs office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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