“ Frightened and alone ” after arrest when stopping traffic

Frightened, alone and broken heart: that’s how Caroline Dias Dias Goncalves, 19, said she felt the two weeks she had spent in a detention center in Colorado after Immigration authorities arrested him following a traffic stop.

“The last 15 days have been the most difficult in my life,” said Dias Goncalves, who is a student at the University of Utah, first declaration Since his liberation on bail during the weekend.

Born in Brazil and raised in Utah since she was 7 years old, Dias Goncalves is one of the Almost 2.5 million Dreamers living in the United States. The word “dreamer” refers to young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as a child.

His detention drew attention after the questions were raised on how immigration and customs application became aware of the location and immigration status of Goncalves dias after the deputy for a sheriff stopped him in Colorado, a state with restricting laws coordination between Local authorities in the application of laws and federal immigration.

Goncalves Dias led on the Interstate 70 outside of Loma on June 5 when an assistant of a sheriff of the county of Mesa stopped it because it was driving too close to a semi-camion.

The deputy released Dias Goncalves with a warning, but shortly after leaving the highway, the ice agents arrested him, arrested him and taken to an immigration detention center in the city of Aurora.

According to the declaration of Dias Goncalves, an ice officer who held him “continued to apologize” and told him that he wanted to let her go “, but his” hands were attached “. He could do nothing, even if he knew that it was not good,” she wrote.

Dias Goncalves said that she had forgiven the ice officer “because I think people can make better choices when they are allowed to do it.”

According to Dias Goncalves, in detention, “we have been given soggy and wet food-even the bread would get wet. We were kept in confusing hours,” she said in her press release. “I was afraid and I felt alone. I was placed in a system that treated me as if I did not matter.”

But that changed when officers of the detention center realized that she was talking about English, according to Dias Goncalves. “Suddenly, I was treated better than the others.”

“It broke my heart. Because nobody deserves to be treated like that. Not in a country I have called at home since I was 7 years old and that’s all I have ever known,” she said.

Ice did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

THE The Sheriff MP who arrested Dias Goncalves was placed on administrative leave Last week, pending the outcome of an administrative inquiry, said the Sheriff’s Bureau of Mesa County.

The first conclusions of their investigation revealed that the deputy who arrested Dias Goncalves was part of a communication group which included Drug repression efforts.

The federal authorities began to use this information for the purposes of implementing immigration, According to the Sheriff’s Bureau of Mesa County. “”Unfortunately, this resulted in the subsequent contact between Ice and Miss Dias Goncalves. »»

The Mesa County sheriff’s office said it was “Ignoring that the communication group was used for something other than drug prohibitionsAnd has since removed all the members of their group’s office.

“I hope that no one else should go through what I have done,” said Goncalves Dias, adding that more than 1,300 people in the Aurora detention center continue to live “this same nightmare”.

“They are like me – including other people who have grown up here, who like this country, who want nothing more than a chance to belong,” said Goncalves Dias.

In her statement, she expressed her gratitude to her friends, family and religious community who “stood me up” and “never stopped fighting for me”.

Now at home with her family, Dias Goncalves said she was trying to move forward and “focus on work, school and healing”.

“But I will not forget this,” she said. “Immigrants like me – we are not asking for anything special. Just a good chance of adjusting our status, feeling safe and continuing to build the life for which we have worked so hard in the country we call at home.”

Parents of Goncalves Dias before told salt lake forum that she arrived in the United States when she was a child with her family on a Tourist visa, which they have exceeded. Finding a way to remain legally in the country, Dias Goncalves applied asylum. This affair remains pending.

Tricia McLaughlin, deputy secretary of the Ministry of Homeland Security, told NBC News in an email last week that the Dias Visa that Goncalves had come with it had expired more than ten years ago.

McLaughlin added that President Donald Trump and the secretary of the DHS, Kristi Noem, “were determined to restore the integrity of the Visa program and to ensure that it is not abused to allow extraterrestrials a permanent one-way ticket to stay in the United States”

The lawyer for Dias Goncalves, Jon Hyman, said his client “does not have a criminal record and we have not shown a mandate“At the time of his ice arrest.

Dias goncalves is recipient of Laam.us national scholarship, which helps Young undocumented people with financial needs go to college.

Gaby Pacheco, president of Thedream.us, was in Aurora when Dias Goncalves was released on Friday evening. In a press release, Pacheco said she felt relieved when she saw Goncalves Dias leaving the Ice Detention Center.

“She should never have been there,” said Pacheco. “How many additional young people are channeled in this cruelty system, locked up to simply exist in the only country they have ever known?”

The case of Goncalves DIAS reflects that of Ximena Arias-Cristobal, another dreamer of 19 years and Thedream. Wrongly reaches it.

Asked about the possible plans for the protection of immigration for dreamers, the spokesperson for the White House Abigail Jackson told NBC News in a statement on June 4“The absolute priority of the Trump administration is the expulsion of the unlawful criminal foreigners of the United States, of which there are many.”