A 19-year-old University of Utah student who was arrested by federal immigration officers in Colorado earlier this month was released from federal custody Friday, according to a national advocacy group.
Caroline Dias Goncalves spent more than two weeks in immigration custody after she was arrested in Grand Junction on June 5. In a statement Monday, she called the 15 days she was confined to an Aurora detention center as the “hardest of my life.”
A Mesa County Sheriff’s deputy pulled Dias Goncalves over for a traffic stop on Interstate 70 near Fruita on June 5 because she was following a semitrailer too closely. The deputy let Dias Goncalves go with a warning, but only after asking about her accent and discovering she was born in Brazil. He then shared information about her in a Signal group chat between local and federal law enforcement.
The group chat was created as part of a regional drug interdiction effort, but federal authorities in the chat used the information the deputy shared to target Dias Goncalves for immigration enforcement. She was stopped again in Grand Junction — a few miles down the road — and arrested by federal immigration agents, according to the sheriff’s office, which later pulled its deputies from the chat.
Dias Goncalves immigrated to the United States when she was 7 and her family overstayed a tourist visa, according to reporting from the Salt Lake Tribune, which also reported the family has a pending asylum application.
In a statement from TheDream.US., an organization that gives scholarships and ongoing support to undocumented immigrant students who don’t qualify for federal financial aid, Dias Goncalves called her detention a “nightmare.” She received a scholarship from TheDream.US to attend the University of Utah, and the organization has continued to support her after her arrest.
“In detention, we were given soggy, wet food — even the bread would come wet,” she said in the statement. “We were kept on confusing schedules. And the moment they realized I spoke English, I saw a change. Suddenly, I was treated better than others who didn’t speak English. That broke my heart. Because no one deserves to be treated like that. Not in a country that I’ve called home since I was 7 years old and is all I’ve ever known.”
Her attorney, Jon Hyman, did not immediately return a request for comment Monday. In a previous statement, he said Dias Goncalves’ arrest was the result of “improper coordination between local law enforcement and ICE.”
Colorado law prohibits local law enforcement officers from carrying out civil immigration enforcement and largely blocks local police agencies from working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A spokeswoman for the Mesa County Sheriff’s office said deputies did not know the information shared in the Signal group chat was being used for immigration enforcement until Dias Goncalves’ arrest, and that the agency left the chat after discovering the information shared there was being used in a manner “contradictory to Colorado law.”
Dias Goncalves said she plans to move on with her life now that she has been released.
“I’m going to try to move forward now — to focus on work, on school, and on healing,” she said in the statement. “But I won’t forget this. And I hope others won’t either. Immigrants like me — we’re not asking for anything special. Just a fair chance to adjust our status, to feel safe, and to keep building the lives we’ve worked so hard for in the country we call home.”
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