"We shouldn't be afraid," said María Jimenez, an advocate and immigrant. "Life in another country isn't always easy. We all go through difficult situations, and we've confronted many obstacles to get here...we have to keep fighting to make sure they don't separate our families and our communities."
The event, which had been postponed from inauguration day because of even colder weather on January 20, filled the amphitheater of Aurora's Fletcher Plaza. The protest's main organizer was the Denver branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a national political advocacy group that held similar actions in other cities this week. Other local groups, such as the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, endorsed the protest and had members among the dozen speakers.
Protesters held the flags of Palestine and Mexico, alongside signs reading "fuck Donald Trump" and "put ICE on ice," referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency that deports immigrants. A handful of the speakers added pro-Palestinian messages. Khaled Hamu, a member of the Denver branch of Students for a Democratic Society, mixed chants of "no more deportations" with calls to "stand with Palestine" and "fight Trump's agenda."
All of the speakers offered a message of resistance, however.
"We're not going to sit around and do nothing for the next four years. We're going to continue resisting. We're going to continue going out into the streets," said Kat Draken, an organizer with the Denver branch of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a national political advocacy group. "We're going to do everything we can to make the U.S. ungovernable."
Three of the speakers were high school teachers. Bryan Lindstrom, a history teacher and an unsuccessful candidate for both the Statehouse and Aurora City Council, said he has "students missing class out of fear of the [Trump] administration." Liz Waddick, a teacher and vice president of the Colorado Education Association, said that "Colorado schools cannot be a collection point for ICE."
Nearly a quarter of Aurora's 400,000 residents are foreign-born, according to the city, but its reputation as "the world in a city" was overshadowed during the election by national headlines claiming the city had been taken over by gangs of violent Venezuelan migrants. On January 24, Aurora officials announced that eviction notices had been posted on the doors of the Dallas Street apartment complex where the controversy started in August.
One of the speakers, Mateos Alvarez, introduced a new organization: Somos Aurora. Alvarez led the nonprofits that responded to the migrant crisis in Aurora, and Somos Aurora is designed to continue supporting migrants and "to push back on Operation Aurora," the name of Trump's plan for mass deportation. Alvarez wants to stop people from thinking "there are immigrant, migrant gangs roaming the streets of Aurora," he said.
"Our communities in Aurora have been under attack nationally with Operation Aurora rhetoric and pundits taking out of context what really happened here," he added. "Our migrant newcomers were demonized and made national news, and ever since then, Aurora is being attacked on a national scale. ... Now we find our communities to be burdened by the Operation Aurora rhetoric and the fear of mass deportation. The fear and nervousness in our communities is palpable."
