When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, Jesse Ramirez took the day off to mourn.
“I was totally heartbroken at the fact our nation had chosen someone like Donald Trump to be the face of our country,” said Ramirez, founder and executive director of Inspire, a Colorado nonprofit that helps low-income, Latino high school students access college.
When Trump, ousted by voters in 2020, secured a second term by defeating Vice President Kamala Harris this week, Ramirez said he knew he must step up and help.
“The very safety of some of our students and families is going to depend on people like me,” the 43-year-old, first-generation Mexican-American said. “They’re relying on us. They’re looking to us, and they need us. We have to be those people for them at this moment where this is so much uncertainty.”
With Trump’s re-election, Colorado’s immigrant communities and advocacy organizations are preparing for what they fear will be a new level of federal hostility that could endanger the hundreds of thousands of foreign-born people who call the state home.
Trump, who has referred to immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the United States, promised to carry out mass deportations of people who are here illegally. His plan — “Operation Aurora” — is named after the culturally diverse Colorado city of 400,000 that drew national attention after the former president repeatedly exaggerated claims that violent Venezuelan gangs had taken over.
He has said he would pursue the death penalty for migrants who kill American citizens and invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law previously used to create Japanese internment camps during World War II. Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser, has said sympathetic Republican governors could activate National Guard troops and deploy them to nearby states that refuse to participate in deportations.
“We will send elite squads of ICE, border patrol and federal enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest and deport every last illegal alien gang member until there is not a single one left,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Aurora last month.
In Denver, a deep-blue city that long has held so-called sanctuary policies, Mayor Mike Johnston said the second Trump administration should not expect cooperation with any kind of mass deportation program.
“We would not participate in anything of that nature and I think they would find a great majority of the country would not partner on something like that,” Johnston said in an interview Wednesday.
Denver already bars local law enforcement from cooperating with federal officials seeking to deport undocumented immigrants who may be in city custody. Under Johnston, the city has also launched a program dedicated to supporting asylum seekers — mostly migrants from Venezuela — with housing, food, job training and other services while they await federal authorization to work.
“We’re not planning to change any part of our approach to this issue,” Johnston said. “We will continue to be a welcoming and warm city connecting people to the service they need including housing.”
Gov. Jared Polis, through a spokesperson, declined an interview request Wednesday about Trump’s plans for immigrants in Colorado. The spokesperson, Shelby Wieman, instead referred to a statement in which Polis congratulated Trump and affirmed Colorado’s commitment “to protecting freedom, choice and the opportunity for everyone to build the life they want in our great state.”
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At El Refugio Immigration Law in Aurora, owner and founder Ashley Cuber said 90% of her client base are Venezuelan migrants who arrived in the past year or so – mostly families applying for asylum.
She expects complications under Trump for not only her clients, but also people with Temporary Protected Status and recipients of DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, status.
Temporary Protected Status is extended to foreigners from select countries undergoing armed conflict, natural disasters and other conditions — a temporary immigration status that protects migrants from deportation and grants them authorization to work. Current eligible nations include Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela.
Meanwhile, DACA is an Obama-era immigration policy that provides protection from deportation and work permits to people who were brought to this country without documentation as children.
Alberto Bejarano, a Venezuelan who resettled in Denver in March 2018 and secured Temporary Protected Status, isn’t worried. He backs the incoming Trump administration and its plan for deportations. Bejarano compared the Democratic Party to the socialism of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
“Trump has never said that he’s anti-immigration,” Bejarano said Wednesday. “He’s like most of us: anti-illegal immigration.”
During his first term, Trump dramatically curtailed the use of Temporary Protected Status and tried to end DACA. He pledged on the campaign trail to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, and deport them.
“He’s planning on stripping Temporary Protected Status or other types of status like DACA away from people to make them now eligible for deportation,” Cuber said. “There’s going to be lawsuits.”
She described her friends who are DACA recipients as “terrified.” Cuber estimates that mass deportations would impact hundreds of thousands of people across Colorado. There are an estimated 11 million people in the country illegally.
“It would harm the United States to deport the numbers he’s saying,” Cuber said. “And it would take decades for the U.S. economy to recover, if ever.”
Around 9.5% of Colorado’s residents are foreign-born, according to 2022 data from the American Immigration Council. Nearly half of Colorado’s immigrants are naturalized citizens. About 5.8% of the state’s U.S.-born residents live with at least one immigrant parent.
Immigrants account for 11.4% of Colorado’s labor force and make up 12.2% of the state’s entrepreneurs, 11.2% of STEM workers and 8.3% of nurses, according to the data.
Nita Gonzales, a board member of Servicios Sigue Action Fund, said she doesn’t doubt Trump will act on his proposed mass-deportation plan.
“This plan is not just about immigration policy,” Gonzales said in a phone interview. “It’s about targeting families, neighbors and individuals who contribute daily to the strength and diversity of our communities.”
She referenced the legacy of former Colorado Gov. Ralph Carr, a Republican who spoke out against Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. Gonzales pressed Colorado’s mayors, congressional delegation, state legislature and Polis to push back against the president-elect’s immigration policies in the near future.
“We have to work to ensure our cities are places of safety and not targets for political agendas,” Gonzales said. “We are prepared to stand up against this in Colorado.”
State Rep. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat who comfortably leads in his bid for a seat in the state Senate, likewise leaned on the election results to show Colorado’s values – even if Trump has explicitly targeted his district.
“Last night, unfortunately, the country chose Trump and Trumpism,” he said Wednesday. “I think it’s important to point out that Colorado did not choose Trump and Trumpism.”
Weissman promised to fight any unlawful actions in court and highlighted existing caselaw preventing things like the detention of immigrants purely based on federal immigration detainers.
“Any efforts the federal government attempts to pursue in the state of Colorado that are not legal will be met with a reminder that we are a country where we still follow the rule of law,” Weissman said.
“Feeling like there’s a target on their back”
Henry Sandman, managing director of the Colorado Immigration Rights Coalition, said the organization has already started hearing from immigrant community members who are scared and sad.
“Just the pain of feeling like there’s a target on their back — like they’re not wanted,” Sandman said.
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Sandman said coalition will continue its work of making sure Colorado is a state welcoming to immigrants.
The organization was born out of a difficult time for immigrants in the past, when racist rhetoric was rampant after 9/11, Sandman said. From 2006 to 2013, the coalition fought to repeal “show me your papers” laws that forced law enforcement to detain and deport thousands of Coloradans.
During Trump’s last presidency, Sandman said ICE raids abounded. The coalition established a hotline to provide the immigrant community with information about what was going on and to help teach people their rights under U.S. law.
Beyond fears of mass deportation and raids, Sandman said he’s concerned what repeated attacks painting immigrants as criminals will do to harm the vulnerable community.
“That’s something we’re going to be monitoring very closely because the way immigrants were portrayed throughout the campaign is not accurate and it divided us,” he said. “We want to change the discourse.”
Denver Post staff writer Joe Rubino and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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