AURORA, Colo. — Before this, she had never been away from her daughter for more than a week.
Aurora Yadira Mireles Terrazas has spent the past two months struggling to stomach meals or get any real sleep in the detention dormitory where she’s been locked up with around 20 other women, also separated from their families and loved ones.
Talking into a phone wired through a glass panel at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Aurora, Terrazas’ eyes well over with tears every time she speaks about her only child. Terrazas has lived in Ouray since 2009 and worked for four different restaurants in the community under a work permit since 2015.
But for the past two months, the 31-year-old woman has been held at the federal detention facility. It’s more than 300 miles away from her teenage daughter, who hasn’t been able to come visit. Her ability to remain and work in the country legally is being challenged by the Trump administration’s campaign to detain and deport all types of immigrants, even those with legal status or protections.
Terrazas had protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a federal policy created for people like her, who were brought to the U.S. as children. It granted them renewable protection from deportation and the ability to work legally in the country.
ICE officers detained Terrazas in early February after she bonded out of the Montrose County Jail. She had been arrested by the Ouray County Sheriff’s Office on felony and misdemeanor charges that have since been dropped. Although a Ouray County judge dismissed her pending criminal case on March 16 and sealed the case last week, Terrazas remains in ICE custody. Her charge in immigration court is for simply being undocumented.
She has a bond hearing on Friday that may allow for her release while her civil immigration case — her fight against deportation — plays out. If she’s able to pay the bond — which could be as much as $11,000 to $80,000, according to Terrazas’ immigration attorney, Matthew Lagoe — it’s likely her only shot at getting out of the detention facility before an immigration judge rules whether she can remain in the country. The process could take years.
The hardest part
Terrazas’ large, dark eyes are also circled in darkness, evidence of her lack of rest in months. She’s started taking anxiety and sleeping medications to cope with the depression she was diagnosed with after she arrived.
She often struggles to regulate her emotions and finds herself suddenly crying.
But the hardest part of it all is knowing how her detention has affected her daughter’s wellbeing and not being able to care for her. She’s been staying at a friend’s house since Terrazas was taken.
“Her whole life changed from one day to another,” she said, referring to the events on Feb. 3, when she was first arrested, then detained a day later by ICE.
Her daughter was born in Montrose and has grown up in Ouray.
“So it’s just hard having someone depending on you, and you not being there,” she said of the past two months.
“I’m supposed to be the one taking care of her.” When Terrazas lifts her arm to wipe her eyes, the tattoo of her daughter’s name on her left wrist appears from under her bright red sleeve. She’s still required to wear the red uniform to identify her as a suspected felon, even though prosecutors dropped the charges and the case is closed. Here she goes by her first name, Aurora — the same name as the city where she’s been held — though people back home call her Yadira.
She misses the small things about her daughter, like chatting together while cooking dinner, and the bigger things, like helping her prepare for her driving test or planning her Quinceañera.
While she’s been held at the detention facility, her daughter turned 15, a major milestone for young Mexican women, marking the transition from girlhood to adulthood.
“It was hard for me to take,” she said about missing her daughter’s milestone. “The whole day I was thinking about it in a way, to see if someone could make her feel special, just because I know she’s resentful for me not being there.”
It’s hard for Terrazas to think about how much help and guidance her teenage daughter still needs. Every day she thinks about what her daughter is doing, how her grades are, and wonders if she’s in trouble. She thinks about all of the everyday things she might need, like picking up sports equipment in Montrose.
As her immigration and bond hearings loom, she also worries about managing daily duties of her life back home, such as trying to pay bills and taxes on time, all while being unable to work for the money.
She tries to stay busy by reading the Bible, braiding other detainees’ hair and teaching English to other women in the facility.
But despite those distractions, the center is a constant hum of distress as detainees wrestle for time on shared phones to take calls from their lawyers and families, trying to navigate their paths out. When she listens to their stories, especially hearing about detainees with lawful permanent residence and those who had already been granted asylum who are struggling to get out, the worry returns.
“Once they start talking about it you can’t help but think about your own situation,” she said.
How it happened
The Ouray County Sheriff’s Office arrested Terrazas on Feb. 3 for alleged domestic violence, child abuse and second-degree assault after a fight with her husband. She was booked into the Montrose County Jail, exposing her to potential federal detainment.
That’s where it appears the Montrose County Sheriff’s Office violated Colorado law, according to Lagoe, who lives in Telluride and took on her case pro bono.
Jail security camera footage shows Terrazas signing her bond papers the next day, Feb. 4, which should have allowed her to walk out freely. The judge gave her a personal recognizance bond, meaning she just had to promise she would show up in court for her hearings.
But Terrazas was not free to leave. Instead, a jail officer asked her to wait in a room. Nearly five minutes later, the security footage shows an unmarked SUV arriving with two individuals who are not in uniform – ICE officers.
The video shows the ICE officers greeted and shook hands with the Montrose County Jail officers when they entered the facility before being led to her location in the waiting room. One of the ICE officers pulled a small, flat item out of his pants pocket and handed it to one of the Montrose County Jail deputies during the handshake. The deputy briefly looked at the item, then placed it in his pants pocket. It’s not clear what the item is from the video. They also shook hands when they exited, with Terrazas in handcuffs, about 10 minutes after she bonded out.
“It does appear that not only did they violate the law by calling ICE and reporting to ICE that she was there, but also holding (her) so that ICE had time to show up,” Lagoe said.
Since 2019, Colorado law has prohibited sheriffs from holding inmates in their county jails at the request of ICE to detain those inmates, for the purpose of allowing ICE enough time to come pick them up.
“Colorado law, very specifically, does not allow them to hold somebody purely for the purposes of ICE showing up. But police departments in Colorado, some of them, not all of them, have taken it upon themselves to decide, ‘We don’t feel like following the law,’ which is pretty sad for a group of people whose job is to enforce the law,” Lagoe said.
Montrose County Sheriff Gene Lillard did not respond to a request for comment from the Plaindealer by deadline.
The 7th Judicial District Attorney’s Office filed motions March 14 to dismiss the two criminal cases against Terrazas, citing “the interest of justice” and her husband’s request to drop the charges. A judge granted the motions on March 16, then sealed the cases on April 3.
In the hands of immigration court
Terrazas felt shock and disbelief the moment she understood why she was asked to wait in the Montrose County Jail after bonding out. She realized something was wrong when she saw the officers wearing regular clothes and carrying a different type of handcuffs with a chain that wraps around a person’s body. When Terrazas told the ICE officers she had a valid work permit, she said they told her the charges against her outweighed it.
She told them the charges were alleged. They detained her anyway, taking her first to an ICE facility in Grand Junction, then to the detention facility in Aurora.
Terrazas was detained as part of a massive push to increase ICE arrests that first week of February, when the Department of Homeland Security announced it completed “enhanced immigration enforcement actions” across the country. The operation was part of “fulfilling President Trump’s promise to Make America Safe Again by removing violent criminal illegal aliens.”
In the first 50 days of the Trump administration, Homeland Security announced it had made more than 32,000 arrests. About one-third of those detainees had pending criminal charges, like Terrazas.
Terrazas was detained by ICE before, in 2011, after she was arrested as a teenager for driving without a valid license. According to Terrazas, after the ICE officers found she had no criminal record, they offered her the chance to bond out of custody for $5,000 before seeing a federal immigration judge or being brought to a detention center. She then went through the immigration courts to receive protection through DACA, which took about four years. Because she was brought to the U.S. from her native Mexico when she was young, and met the other conditions of DACA, she was eligible for the administrative protection from being deported.
This time things feel much different. A criminal record could have jeopardized her protections under DACA. But since the criminal cases were dismissed and sealed, it should have no impact on her ability to live freely, protected under DACA, according to Lagoe. Still, she remains in custody.
This is the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Aurora, run by private prison contractor GEO Group for the federal government. The facility is where Terrazas has been held since she was intercepted at the Montrose County Jail on Feb. 4 and taken by ICE officers after she bonded out. Photo by Lia Salvatierra – Ouray County Plaindealer
Terrazas said it feels like no one is safe now, even if they have valid immigration status.
“The way that I have been putting it is, you’re guilty until proven innocent, and even then you’re still guilty,” Lagoe said.
Terrazas was not offered the chance to bond out when she was originally detained by ICE officers and taken to the Aurora detention facility. When she appeared for two immigration hearings in the past two months, the judge asked for more time to receive the documents for her case from the Department of Justice, effectively holding her in custody an extra month away from her life and family.
Lagoe said the wait is not unusual — that immigration courts have been backed up after a push to detain immigrants for political reasons.
An unknown future
It’s not clear what will happen next for Terrazas, or how long it could take for her to come home. The immigration judge could dismiss the case because of her DACA protections, but that’s not guaranteed.
Lagoe said the Trump administration is not honoring the promise to not act on deporting individuals protected by DACA, as other administrations historically have since the policy was adopted in 2012.
He hopes a judge grants her bond request on Friday before her removal proceedings are scheduled to begin April 16, assuming her case isn’t pushed back again.
During that hearing, Lagoe will ask the immigration judge to cancel her removal proceedings and issue her a green card, which would be one avenue allowing her to stay in the country. Another option is to apply for a green card through her relationship with her husband, via common law marriage under federal and state law.
Terrazas tries not to think about the possibility of deportation and what that may mean for her daughter.
“I don’t want to just be thinking on negative stuff, just because of the law of attraction,” she said about the belief that negative thoughts lead to negative outcomes. “I hope that I don’t have to go through that just because of [my daughter].”
Lagoe said the reality is the entire situation never should have happened in the first place.
“As broken as this system is normally, there’s at least some level that there’s supposed to be due process,” Lagoe said.
“We’re in a different world where the law doesn’t matter so much, or I guess the law doesn’t matter as much as it used to.”
Co-publisher Erin McIntyre contributed to this report. Lia Salvatierra is a journalist with Report for America, a service program that helps boost underserved areas with more reporting resources.
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HOW WE REPORTED THIS STORY
The Plaindealer has been working on this story about a Ouray woman who has been held in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility for the past two months. We thought it was important to find out what happened to her. All we knew was, Aurora Terrazas disappeared after she was picked up by ICE officials after she bonded out of the Montrose County Jail for charges that have since been dropped.
We discovered the immigration system is complicated and secretive, difficult for both those involved and those seeking information. Report for America journalist Lia Salvatierra attempted to contact Terrazas in the facility by mail and phone – and she ended up traveling to the ICE facility in Aurora to visit Terrazas in person.
Terrazas agreed to talk with her for the story after consulting with her attorney. She gave us permission to publish her name. Salvatierra and Terrazas were able to meet twice at the facility and had another interview on the phone with her attorney for this story.
The goal of our reporting was to show the effects of recent immigration enforcement actions on a local woman. She has been able to legally work for restaurants here for years, and she and her family are members of the community.
At this point, Terrazas’ future is uncertain. It’s unclear if or when she will be released.
