A sheriff’s deputy in Colorado briefly pulled over Caroline Dias Goncalves before immigration agents detained her. Now county officials are conducting a review.

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 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.

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.

  • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    70
    ·
    1 day ago

    the deputy claimed she was driving too close to a semi-truck.

    Oh I’ve seen this one in numerous YouTube videos where police make up a reason to pull someone over. In one you can see from the FOIAed dashcam and body cam videos that the stopped driver wasn’t even in the same lane as the semi.

    • qqq@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      17 hours ago

      This happened to me in Kansas on the way to college a long time back. The cop pulled out and started tailgating me and I slowly got closer to the car in front of me and then he put his lights on and pulled me over for “following too closely”.

      He wanted to search my car and tried to call in a drug dog. Put me in his car and turned the AC to fill blast while I waited for a dog that never came.

      Wish I had the courage to have asked if I was being arrested and then demand being let go otherwise

    • grue@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      48
      ·
      1 day ago

      One night when we were driving home from a trip to South Carolina, my wife and I got pulled over for “having one taillight brighter than the other.” Absolutely pretextual bullshit.

      • RBWells@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        24
        ·
        1 day ago

        I was pulled over one for “crooked license plate”, it was a little tilted. Always got pulled over in that car (67 mustang) and kind of figured they just wanted to look at the car. It got ridiculous though.

    • AmidFuror@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      17
      ·
      1 day ago

      That’s weird, because I have seen people drive too close to semi-trucks before.

      I guess our information as it applies to this specific case cancels out.

      • IamSparticles@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        23 hours ago

        Have you ever heard of anyone getting ticketed for this particular offense? Because if not, then the logical conclusion is that someone being told they were pulled over for this reason isn’t really being pulled over for this reason. It’s just being used as a pretext so they can ID the driver and see if they have any arrest warrants. Whether they were actually following too close or not is irrelevant.