Colorado attorneys who don’t normally practice immigration law are gearing up for battle.
About 100 lawyers just took a crash course in persuading immigration judges to grant bond and release people who are locked up at the ICE detention center in Aurora. The training put on by Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network took place Friday, three days before President Donald Trump returned to office on promises to deport tens of thousands of immigrants in what he has called “Operation Aurora.”
At the same time, another immigrant rights group is training volunteers who want to serve as “legal observers” who will document interactions with law enforcement, as well as serve as translators and asylum application assistants.
Trump said he would use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the president to deport noncitizens from a country considered an enemy of the U.S. during wartime. The act was most recently used after the attack on Pearl Harbor against Japanese people who were incarcerated in camps around the country, including Amache in southeastern Colorado.
“We are so glad to have you here with us today as we prepare for, unfortunately, the second Trump administration,” Carly Howenstein, the immigrant advocacy network’s detention program pro bono coordinator, said as she began the training workshop Friday. “We remain firmly against the dehumanization of immigrant communities, and we’re more committed than ever to fight it for equal justice.”
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Aurora is licensed to hold up to 1,500 people. The federal government refuses to release a daily count of how many people are held in the detention center but immigrant advocacy groups estimate there are about 1,200 people in detention. Of those, about 40% are facing criminal charges while 60% are being held solely for being in the United States illegally.
Most of them are facing their immigration judge without an attorney.
Immigration law is confusing, in part because the rules can change with each administration, which is why only about 50-100 lawyers in Colorado regularly practice it. But any kind of lawyer can give an immigrant a better shot at getting released on bond — if they can show the person is not dangerous and that they have such strong ties to the community that they aren’t likely to run away.
“It is a huge affront to us all if people’s liberty is stripped from them for no reason,” said Laura Lunn, an attorney at the advocacy network who helped run the training workshop. “You can do such powerful things with a law degree, including securing somebody’s liberty. You can stand by someone’s side and say it’s not OK to detain this person when there is no danger to the community and there is no flight risk.”
The advocacy network is focused on helping the hundreds of immigrants who are locked up in detention, though there are more than 77,000 pending cases in federal immigration court in downtown Denver and most of those immigrants don’t have attorneys either. Colorado is tied for last place in the nation in the percentage of people who have legal representation in immigration court, which is 14%.
Immigrants who are detained struggle to gather evidence to prove their case because they are often cut off from communication, Lunn said. The network asked attorneys to take on clients in the detention center pro bono, and for those who don’t want to appear in court, the network is recruiting lawyers to contact ICE on behalf of immigrants who are detained. This requires preparing an evidence packet to attach to an email in an attempt to persuade federal authorities that a person does not fit the criteria to require detention, Lunn said.
“It’s truly just shooting off an email to ICE,” she said.
Non-immigration attorneys who attended the training session watched a mock bond hearing and learned the basics of the detention center and the three courtrooms within its cement walls. Detainees, for example, wear color-coded uniforms depending on the seriousness of the charges against them — red is for those accused of the worst crimes, then orange, green and blue.
Trump declares national emergency at the border
The national immigration backlash has centered on Aurora, which not only has the ICE detention center but received several thousand new immigrants during the past three years, mostly from South America.
Trump made a campaign stop in Aurora in October, claiming that the city had been “conquered” by Venezuelan gangs. Standing by photos of suspected gang members on a stage, Trump said that gang members who are deported and return to the U.S. without authorization should face an automatic 10-year prison sentence. He also has vowed to begin a “mass deportation” upon taking office.
Venezuelans who police said are members of the gang Tren de Aragua were arrested in Aurora in connection with a shooting and a separate kidnapping, both near a troubled apartment complex that is being shut down by the city. Aurora police and city officials have acknowledged the gang violence but said they are dealing with a mismanaged, crime-ridden apartment complex and pushed back at Trump’s claims that the city was overrun by immigrant crime.
The advocacy network, which has 41 people on staff, cannot keep up with the number of immigrants who want attorneys. Instead, they hold “Know Your Rights” presentations five days a week, almost every week, for immigrants held in detention after receiving a list of detainees who don’t have lawyers. They also hold the presentations in downtown Denver for the hundreds of people who come through each week trying to understand a complex court system in what is usually not their native language.
“Colorado ties for last in the country for rates of representation for people in immigration court — that means we have to get creative,” Lunn said. “We are empowering non-immigration attorneys to step up in court.”
Another advocacy group, the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, is training volunteers to join what they call the Colorado Rapid Response Network. They want people to document immigrants’ experiences with legal proceedings, help them with paperwork, translate, and serve as “legal observers” who would take notes when immigrants or other civilians are interacting with law enforcement. Observers act as a neutral party during events and protests to advocate for immigrant rights, for example.
“As Trump’s administration sets a course to ramp up enforcement and their cruel plan for mass deportations, crudely coined ‘Operation Aurora,’ Colorado is a critical firewall against these attacks,” the group said Monday after Trump’s inauguration. The organization scheduled a “We Fight Back Day of Action” for Saturday in Aurora.
The details of Trump’s deportation plans are unclear. It’s also unclear how much power the federal government will have to force states to cooperate. Several states, including Colorado, have laws that protect people who are not authorized to live in the United States.
A Colorado law passed in 2023 prohibits local governments from entering into agreements to detain people in privately run immigration facilities, which includes the ICE detention center in Aurora. It also prohibits local governments from paying for the construction or providing government land to build an immigration detention center run by a private company.
Within hours of taking office, Trump declared a national emergency at the U.S. southern border with Mexico and issued an executive order to protect the United States from “invasion.”
“This invasion has caused widespread chaos and suffering in our country over the last four years,” the emergency declaration said. “It has led to the horrific and inexcusable murders of many innocent American citizens, including women and children, at the hands of illegal aliens. Foreign criminal gangs and cartels have begun seizing control of parts of cities, attacking our most vulnerable citizens, and terrorizing Americans beyond the control of local law enforcement.”