Questions are surfacing about the immigration detention of a 19-year-old college student from Utah after a traffic stop in Colorado this month.
Caroline Dias Goncalves, a student at the University of Utah, was driving on Interstate 70 outside Loma on June 5 when a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy pulled her over.
The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office did not say why. Relatives told The Salt Lake City Tribune the deputy claimed she was driving too close to a semi-truck.
The stop lasted less than 20 minutes, and “Dias Goncalves was released from the traffic stop with a warning,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release Monday.
Then, shortly after she exited the highway, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped her, arrested her and took her to an immigration detention center.
“She has no criminal record and she was not shown a warrant,” her attorney, Jon Hyman, said in an email.
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.
Dias Goncalves was born in Brazil and was brought to the United States as a 7-year-old. She has lived in Utah since she was 12 and has an asylum case pending.
Friends and relatives question how immigration authorities were alerted to her location.
As part of an ongoing “full administrative review,” the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office determined that the deputy who stopped Dias Goncalves was part of a communication group that included local, state and federal law enforcement partners participating in “a multi-agency drug interdiction effort focusing on the highways throughout Western Colorado.”
“We were unaware that the communication group was used for anything other than drug interdiction efforts, including immigration,” the sheriff’s office said. “We have since removed all Mesa County Sheriff’s Office members from the communication group.”
Colorado law restricts coordination between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities, but it does not fully prohibit it.
Online records show that Dias Goncalves remains in ICE custody at the Denver Contract Detention Facility.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
Dias Goncalves’ immigration detention mirrors that of fellow 19-year-old Dreamer Ximena Arias-Cristobal in Georgia.
Police in Dalton wrongly pulled Arias-Cristobal over last month, putting her on the radar of immigration authorities and making her susceptible to deportation.
Since her release from immigration detention, Arias-Cristobal has been speaking up about the growing risks Dreamers face as the Trump administration steps up the pace of deportations of immigrants who do not have criminal charges or convictions, despite Donald Trump’s campaign promises to prioritize deporting violent criminals.
Arias-Cristobal and Dias Goncalves are recipients of the highly regarded TheDream.US national scholarship, which helps undocumented youths with financial needs go to college.
Dias Goncalves said in a TheDream.US survey of scholars, “I want to succeed, have a family, make a change living in America.”
Gaby Pacheco, president of TheDream.US, told NBC News on Monday that scholars like Dias Goncalves are doing everything in their power “to regularize their status.”
“She has a pending case, which is the aggravating and terrible thing that we’re seeing,” Pacheco said, adding that the organization is in contact with Dias Goncalves’ family.
Polls and surveys have consistently found that most U.S. adults favor granting permanent legal status and a pathway to citizenship to Dreamers. Trump even said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” in December that he wanted to work with Democrats and Republicans on a plan “to do something about the Dreamers.”
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.”
