The Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (RMIAN), based in Westminster, announced in a press release on Monday, January 27, that it had to suspend several programs to comply with a stop-work order issued in connection Trump's executive order titled "Protecting the American People Against Invasion."
The RMIAN received its stop work order on Wednesday, January 22, just two days after Trump's inauguration.
According to the RMIAN, it has to stop its legal orientation, family group legal orientation and immigration court help desk programs to comply with the stop work order. These programs educated immigrants on their rights and court procedures, ensured due process and fair trials and connected them with pro-bono attorneys, among other services, according to the organization.
“Taking away access to these essential and life-saving immigration legal service programs while simultaneously ordering increases in immigration enforcement and detention that will trample community members’ rights is a shocking and gross violation of the fundamental principles of due process, equal access to justice, and to our values for caring for our community members and loved ones,” Mekela Goehring, the RMIAN executive director, says in a statement
According to the White House, deportation flights have ramped up, the military has been deployed to the southern border with Mexico, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies have arrested hundreds of undocumented immigrants in raids across the country, including one that nabbed fifty suspected Tren de Aragua members partying at an Adams County warehouse on Sunday, January 26.
The RMIAN legal orientation program operates out of the Aurora ICE facility, where the U.S. Department of Justice has three immigration judges assigned. The family group legal orientation and immigration court help desk programs operate out of the Denver Immigration Court at 1961 Stout Street, where there are nine immigration judges assigned, according to RMIAN. The organization also offers these programs in other states, including Washington, California and Florida.
The RMIAN performs more than 200 "know-your-rights" presentations at the Aurora ICE facility a year and more than 300 at the Denver Immigration Court. These presentations inform immigrants about their constitutional rights, options and resources, but they also connect people with pro-bono attorneys, according to RMIAN. The stop-work order will put an end to these presentations because they're part of the affected programs.
In 2023, RMIAN gave these presentations to more than 3,000 immigrants in detention in Aurora and to more than 5,000 people at the Denver Immigration Court. With the help of these presentations, RMIAN referred more than 400 immigrants to pro-bono attorneys and represented more than 800 with its own staff attorneys that year, according to the nonprofit.
Data published by the RMIAN in October shows Colorado has more than 78,000 immigration cases pending —about 31,000 cases for Venezuelans — and the worst rate of attorney representation for immigrants in the nation. About 85 percent of immigrants going through the immigration court system in Colorado face it without an attorney representing them.
Immigrants have the right to be represented by an attorney, but in immigration court, an attorney won't be provided for them, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Immigrants with attorneys are ten times more likely to avoid deportation, and are nearly four times more likely to be granted bond and be released from detention, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, a national criminal justice reform nonprofit.
"Without access to legal representation, countless people are left to navigate life-altering immigration proceedings alone, facing immense challenges without guidance or defense," an announcement from RMIAN says. "This is a serious threat to our communities, as it fosters fear, destabilizes families, and strips individuals of the ability to advocate for themselves within the legal system."
Having an attorney also helps clear a backlog of cases in the immigration system "as judges go out of their way to make sure people understand their rights and extend cases for years so people have enough time to submit evidence," RMIAN notes.
Having an attorney also helps clear a backlog of cases in the immigration system "as judges go out of their way to make sure people understand their rights and extend cases for years so people have enough time to submit evidence," RMIAN notes.
The organization has 41 employees, including attorneys, social workers, administrative staff and paralegals, and relies on dozens of volunteer attorneys each year, according to its website, which says the RMIAN was founded as a nonprofit in 2000 by a group of immigration attorneys upset with what they saw while volunteering at the Aurora ICE detention center in the 1990s.
The former director of Denver's Newcomer Program, Sarah Plastino, worked as a senior staff attorney for the RMIAN for four years. Denver ended its Newcomer Program in December and moved most of its services to the Office of Human Rights and Community Partnerships.
On January 27, congressional Republicans called on Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and mayors from other supposed sanctuary cities to come to Washington, D.C., and testify for the House Oversight Committee on February 11. Johnston's comments in November saying he would go to jail to protect immigrants from federal law enforcement like ICE were cited in the letter calling for his presence.
According to the White House, since Trump took office last week, his other immigration orders including stopping the asylum seekers process and refugee resettlement for ninety days and shutting down CBP One, the app that migrants were using to get paroled into the country to wait for court cases.
According to the White House, since Trump took office last week, his other immigration orders including stopping the asylum seekers process and refugee resettlement for ninety days and shutting down CBP One, the app that migrants were using to get paroled into the country to wait for court cases.
