Protesters gathered outside the Colorado state capital to remonstrate against the Trump’s administration raids on immigrants. Credit: Guardian

Protesters in Colorado express solidarity with the undocumented after dramatic raids throughout Denver

Thousands took to the streets of Denver, Colorado last week following a series of dramatic raids by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) throughout the city as protesters expressed solidarity with the undocumented and rage at Donald Trump’s war on immigrants.

A local artist at the protest, who had been handing out literature to immigrants on their legal rights, said they were there to fight for their neighbors and to stand together and say no to the threats from the Trump administration.

An estimated 2000 people gathered at the Colorado State Capitol after federal immigration raids began early last week. Similar gatherings happened nationwide, organized online by the “50 protests, 50 states, one day” or 50501 movement, which coordinated protests in all 50 state capitols.

The protests have denounced deportations, attacks on LGBTQ+ rights and other planned initiatives by the Trump administration. It comes as political organizing in Denver swells, with the People’s March on Jan. 18, just days before Trump’s inauguration — inspired by the 2017 Women’s March, which brought 100,000 people into the city.

The US president seems to have taken a special interest in the historically immigrant-friendly state of Colorado, calling his deportation plan for alleged gang members Operation Aurora, named for the Denver suburb claimed by him and echoed by conservative media to have been “taken over” by the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA).

One of the executive orders signed on Trump’s first day in office was to cut funding and send a stop-work order to the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (Rmian), a Colorado non-profit offering free legal services to the undocumented. Due to the large volume of those in need, Colorado has one of the lowest rates of legal representation for undocumented immigrants.

With about 167,000 undocumented immigrants in Colorado fearing for their safety, many local residents have rallied to show their support however they can. Despite the setbacks they have encountered, the Rmian was recently able to offer a crash course in immigration law to 100 Colorado attorneys who, despite not working in that field, have volunteered their legal services.

Whenever Ice raids are spotted, volunteers from groups like the Immigrant Legal Resource Center often are on hand to offer literature on the legal rights of those under siege. At the recent rally outside the state capitol building in Denver, activists with megaphones led a call-and-response chant of legal advice, prompting the crowd with “When Ice shows up?” followed by a collective roar: “Don’t open the door!”

Protesters outside the state capitol in Denver recently. Credit:AFP

Many of the activists speaking at Saturday’s rally expressed contempt for the New York-based property management company CBZ Management, which oversee several properties in Aurora and Denver that have been fined or shut down for squalid and neglectful living conditions. In August 2024, Zev Baumgarten of CBZ Management, accused of being “an out of state slumlord” by the Aurora mayor, claimed one of their Aurora apartment buildings had been overtaken by TdA gang members, which was why they were unable to provide needed repairs and services.

This unfolded just in time for Trump to parrot the claims during his presidential debate against Kamala Harris weeks later, eventually making Aurora an unlikely campaign stop for the Republican candidate, since Colorado has been a reliably blue state since 2008.

For decades Colorado has cultivated a reputation for welcoming immigrants who have come across the US-Mexico border, especially when they are under siege from many across the rest of the nation.

In the 1990s, when Democrats were being pulled to the right on issues like immigration, Denver’s mayor, Wellington Webb, pushed against that tide, criticizing federal persecution of immigrants in a 1998 executive order and declaring the state capital would “welcome all to share in Denver’s warm hospitality”.

He insisted: “We must respect this diversity and ensure the rights of all our residents are protected,” and Denver “would not tolerate discrimination in any form”.

However, a movement of hard-right, anti-immigrant activists in the Republican party found representation at this time in Colorado, such as in the form of Congressman Tom Tancredo, who built his political career attacking Denver libraries for stocking Spanish language books, calling for the deportation of a Denver high school student, stripping “sanctuary cities” of their federal funding, and calling on America to reject the “cult of multiculturalism”.

Many local residents in Colorado have rallied to show their support however they can. Credit: AFP

Tancredo’s decade as a congressman from 1999-2009, along with his failed bids for the presidency and governorship, helped build the narrative architecture of what would become the Make America Great Again conservative movement’s anti-immigrant rage.

Despite the protests in Denver, portions of the state still hold enough conservative voters to keep Trump loyalists like Representative Lauren Boebert in office.

Boebert recently joined forces with two other Colorado representatives to pressure the state’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, to repeal a series of laws protecting immigrants’ rights in Colorado. Often referred to as a “Democratic libertarian”, Polis himself had earlier endorsed the core of Trump’s deportation plan.

“Hey Polis, where are you? We have courage, how about you?” the crowd at Saturday’s rally chanted, as it moved away from the capitol building and through downtown Denver.

The march eventually made its way peacefully back to the capitol, where more literature was handed out and future gatherings were announced.