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.
Through our Administrative Investigation, we have learned that the federal representatives within the communication group began using the material collected for drug interdiction efforts to extrapolate immigration information for the purposes of ICE enforcement. This use of information is contradictory to Colorado law and was initially intended for the purpose of reducing illegal drug trafficking in Colorado. Unfortunately, it resulted in the later contact between ICE and Miss Dias Goncalves.
link (emphasis mine)
I wanna see a fucking arrest.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
So it doesn’t sound the like the local sheriffs are intentionally targeting people for immigration things in this case, but rather when the traffic stop happened, the data got put into a system that is completely unrelated to ICE, but ICE is apparently using anyway.
So it doesn’t sound the like the local sheriffs are intentionally targeting people
I would be curious to know how ICE got access to the sheriffs’ systems. Whomever they’re contracting with needs to have it terminated yesterday, or they might as well be complicit.
It is explicitly illegal in Colorado for state agencies to share data with ICE due to two laws passed in 2021 and 2025
I would be curious to know how ICE got access to the sheriffs’ systems.
The way the article reads, the Sheriff voluntarily joined the info sharing system in question:
“An administrative investigation from the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office revealed Zwinck 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.””
Whomever they’re contracting with needs to have it terminated yesterday, or they might as well be complicit.
There’s no contractor to fire here. The Sheriffs office voluntarily joined for drug enforcement efforts. ICE use information shared for drug enforcement for immigration enforcement violating the purpose of the group. The Sheriffs left.
I see this as a good thing. While most of us don’t trust trump’s ICE, this is yet another example of other law enforcement arms also losing trust and cutting ICE off.
Sounds like the structure put in place after 9/11 with Homeland Security is starting to work in the ways predicted….
I am not so sure this is unintentional. Mesa County is the very strange place that brought us Lauren Boebert and Tina Peters. Their respective Wikipedia pages are astounding.
I could see your point about the questionable traffic stop for other possibly illegitimate reasons, but the Sheriffs actions to remove themselves from this information sharing with ICE afterwards is highly suggestive that its not doing the traffic stop for immigration enforcement reasons. I’ll take the small win.
The sheriffs removed themselves because information sharing with ICE is in violation of Colorado law
My take is “plausible deniability”. The sheriffs were delaying their target so that ICE gravy seals can stuff themselves into their KKKop cars and start pursuing their prey.
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.
Fucking gestapo cunts.
“Dias Goncalves was released from the traffic stop with a warning,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release Monday.
The warning was “We’re going to show up to your house and snatch you up later.”
Read the article. It was a normal traffic stop, there’s a “communication group” the sheriff’s office was on that ICE is part of, ICE picked up on it and decided to be fascists. The sheriff’s have since removed themselves from this group because of this.
The warning was “
We’reThey’re going to show up to your house and snatch you up later.”
For the record, this should always be the assumption if you have an interaction with ICE and are allowed to walk away. They’re not going to just forget about you. Prepare accordingly.
The initial interaction was not with ICE.
