Scared, alone and heartbroken: that’s how 19-year-old Caroline Dias Goncalves said she felt the two weeks she spent in a detention center in Colorado after immigration authorities arrested her following a traffic stop.
“The past 15 days have been the hardest of my life,” Dias Goncalves, who is a student at the University of Utah, said in her first statement since being released on bond over the weekend.
Born in Brazil and raised in Utah since she was 7 years old, Dias Goncalves is one of nearly 2.5 million Dreamers living in the United States. The word “Dreamer” refers to undocumented young immigrants brought to the United States as children.
Her detention gained attention after questions were raised over how Immigration and Customs Enforcement became aware of Dias Goncalves’ location and immigration status quickly after a sheriff’s deputy stopped her in Colorado, a state with laws restricting coordination between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.
Dias Goncalves was driving on Interstate 70 outside Loma on June 5 when a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy pulled her over because she was driving too close to a semitruck.
The deputy released Dias Goncalves with a warning, but shortly after she exited the highway, ICE agents stopped her, arrested her and took her to an immigration detention center in the city of Aurora.
According to Dias Goncalves’ statement, one ICE officer who detained her “kept apologizing” and told her he wanted to let her go, “but his ‘hands were tied.’ There was nothing he could do, even though he knew it wasn’t right,” she wrote.
Dias Goncalves said she forgave the ICE officer “because I believe that people can make better choices when they’re allowed to.”
According to Dias Goncalves, while in detention, “we were given soggy, wet food — even the bread would come wet. We were kept on confusing schedules,” she said in her statement. “I was scared and felt alone. I was placed in a system that treated me like I didn’t matter.”
But that changed when officers at the detention center realized she spoke English, according to Dias Goncalves. “Suddenly, I was treated better than others.”
“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,” she said.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The sheriff’s deputy who stopped Dias Goncalves was placed on administrative leave last week pending the outcome of an administrative investigation, the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office said.
Initial findings of their investigation revealed that the deputy who stopped Dias Goncalves was part of a communication group that included local, state and federal law enforcement partners participating in drug crackdown efforts.
Federal authorities began using that information for immigration enforcement purposes, according to the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office. “Unfortunately, it resulted in the later contact between ICE and Miss Dias Goncalves.”
The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office has said it was “unaware that the communication group was used for anything other than drug interdiction efforts” and has since removed all members of their office from the group.
“I hope no one else has to go through what I did,” Dias Goncalves said, adding that over 1,300 people still in the Aurora detention facility continue living “that same nightmare.”
“They are just like me — including other people who’ve grown up here, who love this country, who want nothing more than a chance to belong,” Dias Goncalves said.
In her statement, she expressed her gratitude toward her friends, family and church community who “stood up for me” and “never stopped fighting for me.”
Now at home with her family, Dias Goncalves said she is trying to move forward and “focus on work, on school and on healing.”
“But I won’t forget this,” she said. “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.”
Relatives of Dias Goncalves previously told The Salt Lake Tribune she arrived in the U.S. as a child with her family on a tourist visa, which they overstayed. Finding a way to remain in the country legally, Dias Goncalves applied for asylum. That case remains pending.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told NBC News in an email last week that the visa Dias Goncalves had come in with had expired over a decade ago.
McLaughlin added that President Donald Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem “are committed to restoring integrity to the visa program and ensuring it is not abused to allow aliens a permanent one-way ticket to remain in the U.S.”
Dias Goncalves’ attorney, Jon Hyman, has said his client “has no criminal record and she was not shown a warrant” at the time of her ICE arrest.
Dias Goncalves is a recipient of the TheDream.US national scholarship, which helps undocumented youths with financial needs go to college.
Gaby Pacheco, president of TheDream.US, was in Aurora when Dias Goncalves was released on bond Friday evening. In a statement, Pacheco said she felt relieved when she saw Dias Goncalves walk out of the ICE detention center.
“She never should have been there,” Pacheco said. “How many more youth are being funneled into this system of cruelty, locked up for simply existing in the only country they’ve ever known?”
Dias Goncalves’ case mirrors that of Ximena Arias-Cristobal, a fellow 19-year-old Dreamer and TheDream.US scholar, in Georgia who was also in immigration detention after police in Dalton wrongly pulled her over.
Asked about possible plans for immigration protections for Dreamers, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told NBC News in a statement June 4, “The Trump Administration’s top priority is deporting criminal illegal aliens from the United States, of which there are many.”
