This report was originally published at Colorado Newsline.
DENVER | An international workers holiday and a “day without immigrants” were the latest occasions for Coloradans to gather in protest of President Donald Trump’s agenda.
A crowd of hundreds sprawled across the lawn of the Colorado Capitol in Denver on Thursday and rallied and marched through downtown Denver in a May Day protest organized by left-wing groups. They returned for an immigration-focused event on the Capitol steps.
“May Day is a historic day, not just for us, but for workers all around the world,” said Yoselin Corrales of Aurora Unidos CSO, the grassroots group that helped organize the rally. “We must take the lessons from our history and keep the fight alive. In our country today, workers rights and immigrants are actively being attacked from all directions.”
The City of Aurora found itself in the national spotlight last year when Trump, campaigning on a platform of mass deportations and harsh new border restrictions, claimed the expansive suburb of 400,000 had been “invaded and conquered” by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Early in his second term, Trump’s claims about the gang have fueled one of the most controversial elements of his agenda: The invocation of the centuries-old Alien Enemies Act to deport 137 detainees to a brutal maximum-security prison in El Salvador in March.
About 90% of those 137 deportees had no criminal record, and at least one, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, was removed as a result of an “administrative error.” Advocates, attorneys and family members for other deportees say that they were falsely identified as TdA members because of tattoos honoring family members or their favorite soccer team. The administration has moved to designate hundreds of other detainees for similar removals, but a variety of federal courts have halted the practice citing due process concerns and the inapplicability of the Alien Enemies Act in peacetime. Trump has openly floated plans to send American citizens to the prison, known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, next.
A series of highly publicized raids in Denver and Aurora in February by Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to turn up a large TdA presence in the area, with agency officials telling Fox News that they had detained just one suspected gang member out of the hundred they had targeted. Instead, federal law enforcement agents have touted busts of at least two underground nightclubs, where they said they detained dozens of people in the country unlawfully. ICE agents also detained Jeanette Vizguerra, a prominent local immigration rights activist, in a March arrest that Vizguerra’s lawyers allege was an act of retaliation for her speech.
Corrales urged the crowd at the Capitol to stand up for Vizguerra and other “working women who are detained at the horrific ICE concentration camp in Aurora for the simple crime of crossing borders while poor.”
ICE operates an immigration detention center in Aurora.
Citing the additional burdens and barriers faced by immigrants in the workforce, including employers’ use of the threat of ICE enforcement to coerce immigrants into unfair working conditions, she said the fight for immigrants’ rights and workers’ rights are part of an interconnected struggle.
“We are here today because we are here to fight, not on one front, or even two or three fronts,” Corrales said. “We’re going to stand with workers on every front.”
Ramon Zuniga, secretary-treasurer of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 and the son of Mexican immigrants, echoed that message.
“Immigrant rights are workers’ rights, and unions will lead the charge to fight back and stand up in solidarity with our immigrant brothers and sisters,” Zuniga said. “We must take to the streets, and to the Capitol and courtrooms, and to the ballot box, and together, we will prevail.”
The protest follows several other recent Trump-agenda protests at the Capitol, the latest on April 19.