"On Oct. 27, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers took two children and their father from outside a middle school in Durango, Colorado. The kids and their parents, who were originally from Colombia, had come to the United States seeking safety and opportunity, as so many immigrants have done before them. They had applied for legal asylum, with paperwork to prove it. Now they're separated, traumatized and afraid."
"This is not the first time ICE has severed families in Durango. A few weeks earlier, another father was detained while driving his children to school and was later deported to Mexico in the middle of the night. In an attempt to keep the Colombian family from likewise being whisked away under cover of darkness, a rapid response team put out a call for people to stand watch at Durango's ICE facility. More than a hundred showed up, linking arms to form a peaceful blockade."
A Colombian family seeking legal asylum was detained on Oct. 27 when ICE officers took two children and their father from outside a Durango middle school despite asylum paperwork. The detainees are separated, traumatized and afraid. Weeks earlier another father had been detained and deported to Mexico. A rapid-response call brought more than a hundred community members to Durango's ICE facility, where protesters linked arms, shared blankets and hot beverages and kept watch throughout a freezing night. At dawn state, local and federal officers arrived to break the blockade so ICE could transfer the family, and violence followed. A former Durango resident now living in coastal British Columbia watched the raids unfold from afar.
Read at High Country News
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]