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New Year’s celebrations were supposed to be particularly memorable for Pedro Gutierrez and his family, his son, Daniel, said on Friday. They would be – but not in the way the family had imagined.
Daniel, 20, married his wife in August and his mother’s sister had obtained a visa to visit Durango from Mexico. It would be the first time since Gutierrez left Mexico over 22 years ago that his whole family – his son’s new family included – would be together. Gutierrez turned 43 on Dec. 26.
But his New Year’s plans were interrupted early Wednesday when U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agents intercepted Gutierrez on his way home from the gym.
Gutierrez was pulled over blocks from their home. He was pulled out of his vehicle by several federal agents and arrested, Daniel said. As of Friday, Gutierrez was in custody at the Denver Contract Detention Facility in Aurora.
Gutierrez was not the only arrest made by ICE in the greater Durango area this week. The detention of a person in Mancos on Friday morning led to a protest outside the ICE field office in Durango’s Bodo Industrial Park on Friday.
The protest led to agents using pepper spray and threatening to shock people with a Taser.
“My father has been in this country for 22 years, and in 22 years my father’s only crime is being in this country illegally,” Daniel said, adding Gutierrez has no criminal record and has received maybe three speeding tickets in the past two decades.
The Durango Herald called the Denver ICE field office on Friday for comment. ICE spokesman Steve Kotecki said all questions must be submitted by email, saying, “That’s just our policy.”
The Herald sent an email asking why Gutierrez had been arrested and detained, as well as information about his criminal history, but did not hear back as of 6 p.m. Friday.
Daniel said he met his father and 16-year-old sister, Jazmin, at the Durango Community Recreation Center shortly after 5:45 a.m. for the family’s regular exercise routine. After a workout, the father and son would work a half day for Daniel’s painting company, Adonai Painting LLC, before going home around 1 p.m. to help prepare New Year’s dinner.
Recounting what his father told him, Daniel said Gutierrez left the gym with Jazmin and stopped for gas at the Marathon station on Main Avenue. Gutierrez felt uneasy – like he was being watched. He got back into his vehicle and headed home.
On the way, Gutierrez told Jazmin to call her mother, Minerva, Daniel said. Gutierrez suspected he was being followed by ICE agents. He was about three minutes from home near Needham Elementary School when he turned onto Arroyo Drive and police lights flashed in his rear-view mirror.
Daniel said Gutierrez pulled over and hadn’t yet completely stopped when another vehicle pulled in front of him and stopped horizontally in the road, blocking him. Agents approached Gutierrez’s vehicle, calling him by name and ordering him to exit.
“(Jazmin) said she could see the fear and the sadness in his face – of one of his biggest fears coming to life,” Daniel said.
Daniel arrived at the scene in his vehicle shortly after the stop.
As soon as Gutierrez partly rolled his window down, an ICE agent reached inside the vehicle and unlocked the door, Daniel said. The door wrenched open and three agents immediately seized Gutierrez, unlocking his seat belt and pulling him out of the vehicle.
Gutierrez told the officers he wouldn’t resist, but they didn’t listen, Daniel said.
“He didn’t resist in any kind of way. They unbuckled him. They were yanking him out of the car while my 16-year-old sister was in the car watching all of this happen,” he said.
An agent yelled at Daniel when he approached the scene, he said.
“One of the officers insults me, tells me to ‘Go the f--- away,’ that I can’t be there, I can’t pull up like that on a traffic stop,” he said. “I asked him why they were stopping him, where the warrant was, and they said, ‘You have two options. Get the f--- out of here or we’re putting you under arrest.’”
Daniel said he backed off – he couldn’t do anything for his father if he was in custody too.
The agents told Jazmin, who was crying in Gutierrez’s car, to leave.
“My sister doesn’t have a driver’s permit, doesn’t have a license, and my sister had to drive home,” Daniel said. “It’s not that far, but she had to drive home maybe two, three minutes away from my house, bawling her eyes out, not knowing what to do.”
Daniel said Gutierrez is a hard worker and an avid churchgoer whose top priority is his family.
A fundraiser for Gutierrez’s legal fees on Givebutter.com described him as “a devout Christian since birth” and “a beautiful singer” who has served as music director for a local church for the past 15 years and has volunteered for the community in other capacities.
It said Gutierrez began work in Durango as a dishwasher, worked as a baker and now works as a painter.
Daniel said his father met Minerva, his wife, after moving to Durango and fell in love with her and the city. Gutierrez was the breadwinner of the family. Now Daniel, he said, will have to step up to provide not only for his wife and himself, but his sister and mother too.
“There’s nothing that we can’t overcome,” Daniel said. “My father did it when he came to this country. He worked his butt off.”
He said people immigrate to the U.S. in search of a better life – if they didn’t need something better, they wouldn’t bother.
“We didn’t have many luxuries growing up, and I still don’t, but I can’t complain – I know my father is not gone,” he said. “He’s still here, and we pray to lord that he will be back very soon, and this nightmare will be over very, very soon.”
Three days after Gutierrez’s arrest, ICE detained a person in Mancos, which sparked a protest Friday outside the ICE field office in Durango’s Bodo Industrial Park.
Beatriz Garcia, Western Slope regional organizer for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said she did not have details about the arrested individual.
A board member of Compañeros: Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center who was present at the protest on Friday did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Colorado Rapid Response Network reported ICE activity and the detention of one person at a trailer park on Monte Street and Grand Avenue in Mancos, and likewise reported the ICE vehicles seen there had returned to the field office in Durango.
“A Mancos community member was detained this morning and reportedly taken to Bodo facility,” an alert from the Southwest Colorado Rapid Response Network forwarded to the Herald said. “The detainee’s family is requesting folx gather in support at ICE BODO, but stay peaceful, level-headed. Let ICE create the violence.”
The alert emphasized the family of the person detained requested peaceful support.
About a dozen protesters attempted to block federal officers from leaving the field office with the detained person. Curse words were exchanged by agents and protesters alike before agents pepper sprayed protesters and cleared the entrance for vehicles to leave the facility.
Durango Police Chief Brice Current said he contacted protesters and ICE, asking the former not to break the law while protesting and the latter to attempt to deescalate the situation.
“Peaceful protest is one of the most powerful and courageous ways people speak for justice, and it is something this community deeply values,” he said.
The incident marks the first physical confrontation between agents and protesters since October when federal agents deployed pepper spray and rubber bullets on a larger group attempting a similar strategy to block entrance gates.
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That protest, which lasted over 24 hours and drew over 200 people, ignited after a father and his two children – seeking asylum from Colombia along with his wife – were arrested by federal officers on their way to school.
cburney@durangoherald.com
