Aurora immigrants gird for deportations amid Trump’s threats and local promises

AURORA | It was early September, the height of election-season hyperbole about Venezuelan gang violence in Aurora, when former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Tom Homan hit town campaigning for conservative candidates.

“If the right guy gets in office in January, I am coming back, and I won’t forget the City of Aurora and the people that live here. You can take that to the bank,” he said at city hall.

Sure enough, Homan became one of Donald Trump’s first appointees, whose position as “border czar” will play a key role in an unprecedented nationwide deportation plan the president-elect has dubbed “Operation Aurora.” Trump said Homan “will be in charge of all deportation of illegal aliens back to their country of origin.” 

This won’t be the first time Aurora — a city where one in five residents is foreign-born — has anticipated roundups. When Trump first became president in 2017, school boards, social service providers, churches, community groups and civil rights advocates put in place a host of protections for immigrants, in addition to several laws passed by the state legislature. It turned out that legal and procedural snags kept Trump from carrying out the mass raids and deportations he planned in his first term, legal and civil rights experts say.

They expect Trump’s crackdown on immigrants will be far more successful in his second term, when his administration will have learned from past legal and legislative obstacles and devised ways to work around them. Besides, experts note, with the Supreme Court and the Republican-led Senate and House presumably behind him, Trump is likely to face less pushback this time around.

“The first Trump administration was brutal, but there were guardrails in place,” said State Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Democrat who has played a key role in passing state laws protecting immigrants. “Now there will be no guardrails except the ones that we in our communities and in our local and state governments have built.”

That assessment is common among local immigrant activists.

“Trump’s a major threat and he’s put a target on Aurora’s back,” said Gladis Ibarra, co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, who said she fears the president-elect will use the city as a testing ground for his plans.

Legal and non-legal immigration statuses and how might they change

An undocumented immigrant means just that: a person who has entered the United States without authorization and has no legal right to live or work in the country. Yet some have been more protected from deportation than others under various forms of humanitarian parole U.S. presidents have granted for reasons such as natural disasters, armed conflict or other extraordinary conditions that prevent their return home. 

Humanitarian protections do not place immigrants on a path to citizenship or to permanent resident status — also known as a “green card” —which allows the holder to live and work in the United States permanently. Rather, they safeguard beneficiaries from deportation and allow them to work and travel temporarily, 

Of the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, about 2.7 million people claim one form or another of humanitarian protection, including a designation called Temporary Protected Status. The protections usually last for six to 18 months at a time,but typically have been extended. Some migrants from El Salvador, for example, have been living in the U.S. with protected status since 2001 following a series of deadly earthquakes in that country. Others from Nicaragua and Honduras have had their TPS authorization renewed since Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

The Biden administration has extended, reinstated or created protections for about 863,000 people from 16 countries, including Venezuela — more than twice the number from four years ago. Tens of thousands more immigrants are eligible and awaiting approval.

Venezuelans, Haitians and Salvadorans are the largest group of Temporary Protected Status holders. However, government and activist group officials estimate that about 70% of undocumented immigrants are from Mexico.

Aurora has long had a large population of Salvadoran migrants with humanitarian protection, and the city even has a Salvadoran consulate. 

Many of the estimated 40,000 Venezuelans who have migrated to Colorado in recent years — fleeing violence, economic collapse and political corruption under President Nicolás Maduro — also have settled in Aurora. Some have Temporary Protected Status protections and others have been shielded from deportation under a lesser-known status that Trump granted at the end of his first presidency.

But, unless extended, Temporary Protected Status will expire in 2025 for immigrants from 13 of the 16 countries, including Venezuela, while protections for people from Haiti, Somalia and Yemen will end in 2026.

The groups considered most likely to face deportation are those Trump singled out on the campaign trail: Haitians, whom he notoriously and falsely accused of eating their neighbors’ pets in Springfield, Ohio, and Venezuelans, whom he spoke of as murderous thugs who have violently taken over Aurora. 

Trump made little distinction between Aurora’s Venezuelan community as a whole and members of a Venezuelan prison gang called Tren de Aragua whom he claimed, falsely, have overrun the city. Aurora police, in conjunction with other local and federal law enforcement agencies, have arrested nine alleged Tren de Aragua members in connection with 14 crimes this year. Still, authorities say the gang’s members make up only a minute fraction of overall gang activity in Aurora, and an even smaller fraction of the city’s Venezuelan community in general.

Trump is threatening to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 to circumvent conventional due process delays to round up suspected foreign-born gang members, detain them, and quickly “send them back where they came from.” 

The act is a 1798 law that allows the president to deport any noncitizen from a country that the U.S. is at war with. Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has advanced a theory that illegal immigration amounts to an invasion to justify state enforcement measures, so far without success, but legal scholars say judges may be reluctant to second-guess what a president considers a foreign aggression. The sweeping Alien Enemies Act authority may sidestep a law that bans the military from civilian law enforcement, military legal experts say.

Trump also has pledged that “Operation Aurora” will go much further, targeting non-criminal immigrants by rescinding their immigration safeguards and allowing Temporary Protected Status and similar humanitarian designations to end. That may include the 500,000 or so recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which has delayed the deportation of people without documentation who came to the U.S. as children. Trump tried and failed to end DACA protection in his first term, and is expected to try again. 

Local and national officials say it’s unclear how Trump may use the military to round up immigrants suspected of being undocumented. Trump on several occasions has mentioned the use of the National Guard, which is under control of state governors. But there are provisions for the president to summon guardsmen. Trump and his supporters have said recently that active duty members of the military would have roles in enforcing security at the border or maintaining camps created for immigrants either being adjudicated or deported.

Hans Meyer, an immigration lawyer in Denver, predicts the president-elect “will end TPS for everybody.”

“We’ll see a much more pernicious and sophisticated elimination of as many immigration statuses as possible,” he said. “The Trump Administration was playing junior varsity ball in 2017 and will be playing varsity ball in 2025.”

What about the kids?

Federal laws prohibit public schools from discriminating against students because of their national origin. That keeps classrooms and other benefits such as free lunches and social services open to immigrant children. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials historically have treated schools — like hospitals and places of worship — as safe spaces, and has avoided raiding them. 

Migrants fear that will change in Trump’s second term.

“God forbid,” said Frida Nuños, a Venezuelan mother of four living in northwest Aurora who, since the election, has cried every time she drops her two eldest at school.

Eight years ago, local school districts and community groups were less concerned about raids at schools than workplace sweeps that would lock up parents, leaving nobody to pick up or care for their children. ICE’s arrest of 273 workers during a 2006 raid on a Swift meat-packing plant in Greeley left families panicked not just in that community, but as far away as Aurora where some of the workers lived. As the Denver Post reported, more than 200 students throughout the Front Range came home that day to find one or more of their parents gone.

Arapahoe and Adams counties’ social services teams and officials in Aurora Public Schools have not responded to inquiries about ways they might protect immigrant families threatened by Trump’s immigration policies.  

In 2017, APS pioneered a policy delaying ICE agents from entering schools except in “extremely rare situations.” At the urging of RISE Colorado — an education-centered nonprofit that organized immigrant students to persuade school boards — APS passed a resolution ensuring the district doesn’t collect information about the legal status of students or their families. The resolution also prodded APS leadership to create a system for parents to let teachers know who would be taking care of their kids in the event that an ICE action prevents them from picking them up after school.

Educators who have experienced immigration raids in their communities say that keeping accurate and up-to-date emergency contact records is the single most critical step they can take on behalf of immigrant families.

In Cherry Creek School District, where at least 30,000 students from Aurora are enrolled, district officials are starting to have conversations to plan for a variety of immigration-related scenarios come January.

“We remain fully committed to protecting our students and schools and ensuring all students have equal access to quality public education,” said Abbe Smith, Director of Communications.

What’s the word from city hall?

Since Trump’s election on Nov. 5, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has staunchly insisted his city will not participate in Trump’s mass deportation plans. That means, in part, that Denver police and jails won’t collaborate with ICE, which at least for now doesn’t have enough agents or detention space on the Front Range to carry out mass raids and lock-ups.

State law prohibits local law enforcement from arresting or jailing someone on the basis of their immigration status — which is a civil, rather than criminal  matter — anyway.

In Aurora, Mayor Mike Coffman and city management are vague about how resistant they would be in collaborating on potential immigration actions in Trump’s second term.

“As we always have, we will work with our federal partners and follow federal law and directives as they apply to our community,” reads a statement from the city government.

The City Council passed a resolution in 2017 declaring Aurora is not a “sanctuary city.”

“Aurora intends to continue to comply with all constitutional and lawful federal immigration laws and regulations and will continue its practice of non-obstruction with regard to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s efforts to enforce federal immigration laws and regulations,” that resolution reads.

City council approved another resolution earlier this year halting city support of migrants and people experiencing homelessness.

“We are bringing forward a resolution to let cities know that they’re not allowed to bus migrants into our community without us knowing,” said Councilman Steve Sundberg. “We want to simply let our residents know that although we are empathetic towards the plight of such folks, we cannot host them out of pure reality and our financial situation.”

Sundberg and most members in the council’s conservative majority stayed silent this election season as conservative Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky falsely claimed in interviews with right-wing national and international media outlets that Tren de Aragua gang members had overrun the city. Coffman at first parrotted some of Jurinsky’s claims, but then renounced them, saying the exaggerations she and Trump were making about the gang threat were hurting Aurora’s reputation among companies seeking to do business and groups considering holding conferences here. 

Only two council members, Democrats Crystal Murillo and Alison Coombs, defended migrants in Aurora and slammed Jurinsky for scapegoating them for political reasons and jeopardizing their livelihoods and safety.

Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain — the seventh person to lead the department in five years — swore into office a month after the political firestorm about Venezuelan in the city blew up. He said upon his arrival that he wants migrants to feel safe in Aurora.

“As law enforcement, we do not handle the immigration. Immigration is handled through the White House, it’s handled through the federal government, and again, however they get here, however they arrive, whatever that situation is, once they drop down, our job and our role is to provide for their safety. Whether they’re documented or whether they’re undocumented, I don’t care less,” he told the Sentinel in late September. 

Yet two weeks later, Chamberlain firmly defended the department’s efforts to recruit new officers at Trump’s political rally in the city — the same event where Trump dubbed his national deportation plan “Operation Aurora.”

That prompted push back from some of the city council and immigrant activists across the city.

“Trying to recruit officers at a rally built on fear mongering, xenophobia, and all the phobias just feels like a really irresponsible thing to do,” Councilmember Murillo criticized the police department at the time.

Gonzales, who has spent years championing immigrant protections as a community organizer and state lawmaker, called Chamberlain’s defense of the recruiting efforts “stunning, but not surprising,” and a “clear indication of who he really is.”

“Chief Chamberlain and all local communities have a choice as to whether they’ll do Donald Trump’s dirty work for them. We have banned that at the state level. But now it’s up to local governments themselves whether they will follow the law or follow Donald Trump. We will all be watching closely.”

In the meantime, U.S. Rep Jason Crow, who represents Aurora, posted on X this weekend saying, “I want to be clear on Trump’s “Operation Aurora.”

“I will always stand with our immigrant community and continue to do everything in my power to protect Coloradans of all backgrounds, defend the Constitution, and stand against Donald Trump’s worst impulses,” he wrote. 

Jurinsky responded with the following: “Nothing and no one will stand in the way of Operation Aurora commencing in Aurora. Citizens and non citizens have suffered enough. It ends now!”

What are communities and individuals doing to prepare?

Like most people she is close to, Ibarra, Colorado Immigration Rights Council co-executive director, needed a week for Trump’s victory to set in. Having emigrated from Mexico at age 8, she has been living under temporary protective status as a DACA recipient and has a lot to lose. 

Still, she is determined not to let fear of a second Trump term discourage CIRC’s and its members’ work building what they call a “unified statewide voice to improve the lives of immigrants and refugees in Colorado.”

“The election results maybe are a big shock or awakening to a lot of people and maybe not what we expected as a community. But people need to know that we need to be united and will need to support each other more than ever for the next few years,” Ibarra said.

CIRC is working on an updated preparedness packet to hand out to families and planning know-your-rights training for migrants in Aurora and elsewhere in Colorado.

By law, undocumented immigrants are required to carry work authorization forms and/or proof of their immigration status with them. The coalition is encouraging them to apply for Colorado identification cards or driver licenses they can show ICE officers if the need arises. State law doesn’t require drivers to have citizenship. The Department of Motor Vehicles is in the process of making licenses and ID cards even easier to get for undocumented residents and other newcomers. Tests are available in English and Spanish, and getting a license requires fewer documents for some applicants. It’s unclear how these documents may help prevent or delay deportation under a new Trump effort.

“It’ll be much more accessible, regardless of your immigration status,” Ibarra said.

Gonzales urges people in immigrant communities to also carry other documents they can show ICE agents in case of an emergency. Such packets, she says, should include copies of any applications they’ve filed with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or proof of having paid off any traffic tickets or other court fines, if they’ve had any. Also recommended to keep on hand are letters or other paperwork showing they have volunteered at their kids’ schools, are involved in their local church, coaching little league or otherwise are contributing to their communities.

Gonzales also encourages people to meet with an immigration attorney to evaluate their legal options. 

For DACA recipients whose work authorizations are set to expire in 2025, she said, “It’s imperative that you submit your renewal application as soon as possible.” She recommends the nonprofit group Juntos Community, which offers in-person and virtual help renewing authorizations and gives financial aid to those who can’t afford the $555 federal online filing fee. 

“Do the paperwork now. Don’t be frozen by fear,” Gonzales urges. “The rhetoric that President-elect Trump and his cronies are putting out is meant to instill fear. It’s meant to make you shrink and feel small. Know that there are people in your family, in your community and across the state who see you, who support you, and so now it’s time to prepare.” 

Many Hispanic citizens and green card holders are also planning to take precautions. Some have gone on social media to say they will start carrying birth certificates, passports or certificates of naturalization in case they’re approached by ICE. There is even chatter about avoiding large gatherings of Latinos for fear of getting swept up in an ICE raid.

Meyer, from Meyer Law Office, a prominent Denver immigration firm, warns his clients against over-reacting and panicking, saying, “Trump taking office doesn’t mean we’ll immediately have storm troopers on the streets taking down doors.” 

He said affected residents need to manage their angst over the unknown.

“I’m just telling people to live your life, keep working, keep living in your family and community,” he added. “Don’t take yourself out of the game or fall prey to propaganda, which is just giving them a victory.”

Ibarra urges citizens to show up for non-citizens much the way non-Asians showed up for Asians during a period of intolerance during the COVID pandemic. She and other organizers recommend volunteering to witness and record potential ICE raids, frequenting immigrant-owned shops and hiring services by immigrants, and even posting yard signs or bumper stickers saying they care about immigrants and “will stand up for them when the time comes.” 

“People with more privilege, it is equally important for them to understand what their role will be in January,” she said. “If you care about your neighbors and you care about what happens in your community, to your coworkers, your children’s friends at school, I would say this is the time to show up.” 

AP/The Associated Press contributed to this report.