DURANGO, Colo. — The Colorado Bureau of Investigation will look into the actions of a federal agent who threw a woman to the ground as she was protesting the removal of two children and their father from the country in southwestern Colorado early Tuesday morning.
The incident, which was captured on video and obtained by Denver7 Thursday, shows a federal agent taking a woman’s cell phone from her hands and throwing it away before grabbing her by the neck and throwing her to the ground.
The video prompted Durango Police Department Chief Brice Current to request that the Colorado Bureau of Investigation look into the incident.
In a statement, Rob Low, a spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI), said the agency “will investigate whether there were state criminal law violations during the incident.”
- Denver7 obtained the full video of the clash between the protester and the federal agent, which you can see in the video player below:
The protests outside the ICE field office in Durango began earlier this week, after immigration rights advocates learned 45-year-old Fernando Jaramillo-Solano and his two children, ages 12 and 15, were detained by ICE while driving near their home Monday morning.
Video of the protests shared on social media by Compañeros: Four Corners Immigration Resource Center, a grassroots immigrant rights organization, shows demonstrators had gathered outside the ICE field office to prevent the family from being separated and moved to different facilities across the country.
Demonstrators could be seen blocking the gates of the field office to prevent black Suburban SUVs from leaving the premises, while others tried to shield them from a line of federal agents in tactical gear approaching the crowd to remove them.
Moments later, the video shows those agents pepper-spraying the crowd to disperse them before they’re seen forcibly removing some of the protesters blocking the gate, with an agent grabbing one of the individuals sitting on the ground by the neck.
Later in the video, another federal agent in tactical gear can be seen pushing a protester out of the way of an incoming vehicle before a group of demonstrators is seen throwing objects at the vehicles leaving the area, purportedly with Jaramillo-Solano and his two kids inside.
The confrontations between the protesters and federal agents continued for about 10 more minutes before a separate agent in tactical gear is seen pushing a couple of protesters sitting on the roadway to the ground as another agent, also in tactical gear, fires what appears to be pepper balls from close range.
“There was no aggression that was started until it was started by HSI (Homeland Security Investigations),” said Tiffany Chacon, the childcare project manager for La Plata Food Equity Coalition. “It was very surprising to see that it switched so aggressively within a matter of minutes.”
Chacon said ICE has a job to do, “but the way that it was carried out was inappropriate, was unacceptable, and people have been hurt – elderly people were thrown to the ground. It is not acceptable, and it is not OK.”
State, city leaders react to family’s detainment, ICE handling of protesters; agency responds
Gov. Jared Polis and other state and city leaders were quick to denounce the family’s detainment as well as the apparent use of excessive force shown against protesters by federal agents.
Saying he was “deeply concerned” about the detainment and movement of Jaramillo-Solano and his two children, Polis said in a statement that ICE had not informed his office about Monday’s operation and has failed to provide any updates since, including information as to whether the father of two was suspected of any crime.
“The federal government’s lack of transparency about its immigration actions in Durango and in the free state of Colorado remains extremely maddening,” Polis wrote. “The federal government should prioritize apprehending and prosecuting dangerous criminals, no matter where they come from, and keep our communities safe instead of snatching up children and breaking up families.”
Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., took to social media to denounce “the cruel actions of an ICE raid that separated a family,” saying he was “outraged” that in response to peaceful protests, federal agents resorted to tactics he classified as “inhumane.”
“These immigration actions are inhumane, and attacking the First Amendment rights of Coloradans is un-American,” Bennet wrote.
The La Plata County Board of Commissioners, for their part, said they were also “deeply concerned” about the way protesters exercising their First Amendment rights were treated by federal immigration agents outside the ICE field office in Durango.
“We share the community's desire for transparency, accountability, and respectful and legal exercise of residents' First Amendment rights,” said Commissioner Marsha Porter Norton, chair of the Board of County Commissioners in La Plata County. “Federal actions must honor the human, civil and legal rights of people and the rule of law."
In a statement Wednesday, a spokesperson for ICE said that while the agency respects First Amendment rights to peaceful protest, “extreme protestors often misrepresent ICE’s mission.”
“Attempts to disrupt operations at the Durango sub-office only delay justice and jeopardize public safety by inadvertently pushing for the release of the worst of the worst offenders,” the spokesperson said, as he provided the names and crimes of three individuals not connected to Jaramillo-Solano or his two children.
The spokesperson further claimed protesters chained the gates of the ICE field office in Durango.
Regarding the Jaramillo-Solano case, the spokesperson said the agency was only “executing its mission of identifying and removing criminal aliens and others who have violated our nation’s immigration laws.”
The spokesperson said that the father of two had been moved to an ICE facility in Dilley, Texas, pending immigration proceedings.
Immigrant rights advocates say the family had sought asylum before detainment
Enrique Arturo Orozco-Perez, the co-executive director of Compañeros: Four Corners Immigration Resource Center, told Denver7 the family sought asylum after arriving in Colorado from Colombia and has an active immigration case in the state.
The children’s mother, who was the main applicant in the asylum form, was not with her husband and her children at the time they were detained, Orozco-Perez said.
Sources confirmed with Denver7 Investigates earlier Thursday that ICE agents made attempts to reunite the children with their mother, but she refused to come get them in fear of being detained herself due to her legal status.
"Initially, ICE agents advised Durango Police Department officers that they attempted to release the children to another parent but were unsuccessful. Durango officers then offered to facilitate the release of the children back to their mother, but were informed that it was no longer an option," according to a spokesperson with the City of Durango.
Orozco-Perez told Denver7 on Thursday that things played out differently than what authorities say happened.
“Our volunteers tried to grab the kids to bring to the mother, ICE refused, put them in the car, and brought them to the ICE building, which is an administrative building where they have two makeshift cells," Orozco-Perez said.
He also claimed the 12-year-old suffered abuse at the hands of ICE agents at the Durango field office, calling their treatment in the 36 hours they were housed there “violent.”
“We know that the ICE agents pushed around [the 12-year-old] whenever she asked for something and that her father and her brother have scrapes and bruises across their body because they wanted to protect her,” Orozco-Perez claimed.
While those claims cannot be fully corroborated, City of Durango officials said Wednesday its police department “received a report that one of the children may have been in distress and potentially experiencing abuse,” and added that officers tried to conduct a welfare check on the children and to bring food. “Unfortunately, federal agents denied officers entry to the facility.”
City officials said that in the future, the Durango Police Department plans to partner with local schools and other entities “to try to facilitate the safe and immediate transfer of children in comparable situations.”
Orozco-Perez told Denver7 Thursday the children were later reunited with their father at the ICE facility in Dilley, Texas.
“That doesn’t mean their conditions are good, but they are all together, which is something at a bare minimum we can take a little, and I mean a little, comfort in,” he said.
Orozco-Perez said Compañeros, along with the rest of the community, will continue fighting for immigrants in Durango and southwestern Colorado.
“We are ready to put everything on the line, as you saw in those videos, and we are going to continue doing that because kids are not going to get kidnapped from our town. Innocent people are not going to get kidnapped from our town,” he said.
Orozco-Perez also had a message for Coloradans who oppose immigration or immigrants' rights.
“When you say they should do this the right way, this family is actually trying to do it the right way, and that’s being taken away from them. They are following the law, they are doing it to the T, and that’s being ripped away from them,” he said. “There’s no excuse for this.”
Denver7's Micah Smith contributed to this report.
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