In our quiet corners of Southwest Colorado, where families work hard, children play, and neighbors care for one another, there is a story that too many in our immigrant community have lived.
It is the story of one family, anonymous for their safety, whose only “crime” was to live, work, and love in the country they have called home for nearly a decade.
Years ago in Chihuahua, Mexico, the mother, a single mom with a six-month-old baby, met the man who would become her husband. He embraced her daughter as his own. They survived violence that forced them to flee, including an armed attack where they were kidnapped, robbed, and threatened with death. Authorities ignored their reports.
The mother left her nursing career to care for her daughter, born with a severe disability. Between 2015 and 2017, the husband came first to Colorado on a work permit, followed by the family. They worked, paid taxes, raised children, and had no trouble with the law.
In May 2025, the husband left for work and texted twenty minutes later: “My love, ICE has stopped us.” Minutes later came, “They are taking all of us.” His wife, also undocumented, held back her fear to get the children to school. That night, he called from Durango before being sent to Aurora Detention Center. He had no criminal record.
Bail was denied by a judge known for anti-immigrant rulings. The court ignored the family’s circumstances and the daughter’s needs. From inside detention, his choice was to fight an almost unwinnable battle or self-deport to save the family what little they had.
He described degrading conditions: no privacy in showers or toilets, sleeping cold without pillows, inedible food, and hostile officers. ICE transferred him between facilities in Colorado, Arizona, and Louisiana, keeping detainees chained for days, freezing, sleep-deprived, and humiliated. In Louisiana, they were denied food and water and mocked by agents. When his self-deportation was processed, ICE left him in Mexico City, far from home, without support or safe passage.
This is just one story among millions. Families are shattered, children traumatized, and communities robbed of hardworking neighbors by an immigration system built on cruelty, not justice. This man was a father, a husband, a taxpayer, a contributor.
The damage is not only in arrests and deportations. It is in the empty seat at the dinner table, the child who wonders why her father never came home, the mother who must choose between safety and survival.
Since this family’s story, we have seen even more cruelty. ICE agents smashed car windows while women and children sat inside on their way to meet a teacher for the first day of school. We have witnessed arrests as people walked out of the courthouse, in direct violation of Colorado Revised Statutes §13-40-122 prohibiting civil immigration arrests at courthouses, and Senate Bill 20-083 protecting immigrants from courthouse harassment.
We have also seen collaboration from a rogue sergeant in the Durango Police Department, clearing the way for ICE to detain community members, despite Senate Bill 19-1125, which limits local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Almost all of these detentions have been without judicial warrants, justified instead by “probable cause” that is nothing more than racial profiling.
Children do not deserve to be parentless. They should not fear walking into school. The U.S. Constitution, under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Plyler v. Doe (1982), guarantees every child the right to a free public education. Yet ICE chose the first day of school to terrorize families, targeting parents and traumatizing children. This cruelty is an attack not only on immigrant families but also on our shared values of justice, dignity, and education for all.
I share this because silence allows injustice to continue. I share it knowing it will happen again, unless we demand a future where no family is torn apart for daring to dream of a better life.
And yet, in the middle of this darkness, there is a light. Across Southwest Colorado, more than 50 community volunteers stand ready through the Southwest Rapid Response Network, documenting ICE activity and pushing back against unconstitutional detentions. They are proof that people will not stand by while families are torn apart. If you see or suspect ICE activity, call the Colorado Rapid Response Network hotline, available 24/7, at 1-844-864-8341.
Enrique Orozco is Co-Executive Director of Companeros: Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center in Durango. Visit companeros.org for more information.
