Tag: Jennifer Piper

When Jeanette Vizguerra’s attorney Hans Meyer walked into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Centennial this morning, he found the lobby full of...

Since October, Arturo Hernandez Garcia has been living in the basement of the First Unitarian Society of Denver in sanctuary from a U.S. Immigration and...

In a series of charged emails to the Colorado Independent prompted by a report on the existence of unlisted immigrant-detention "subfield offices" in the state, Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, wrote to clarify that the offices were used only for processing suspects. He said immigrants suspected of violations were held at the agency's subfield offices for up to approximately two hours before being transferred to long-term holding facilities. He conceded that contact information for the facilities was unavailable and that detainees being processed at the offices were not allowed to contact relatives or attorneys before being transferred to the larger facilities. The nature of the processing done in the offices, however, was merely transitional, he wrote, and the offices were not "secret."

The detention policies of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in Colorado and the network of facilities that has grown here in the last few years are drawing increasing attention among local lawmakers and human rights organizations. Critics of the system say men and women held on suspicion of immigration violations in the state are housed in conditions that rival those established for violent criminal offenders, that the immigrants are becoming fodder for a booming detention industry, and that detainees are often difficult to locate in the tangle of state facilities, which include unlisted so-called subfield offices.

As a proposed national Latino census boycott receives increased media attention, many Latino and immigrant organizations in Colorado say they’re thankful the movement hasn't taken hold so far in the Centennial State. “We’re hoping it doesn’t become a huge issue here,” said Chandra Russo spokeswoman for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. “Latinos gain strength in numbers. Diminish the numbers and you diminish the influence and power of Latinos. Only uninformed people would propose something of this nature. They’re not aware of the damage they might do.”