Laura Larkins
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This story was first published by American Community Media, a national nonprofit that reports on America’s diverse communities from the inside out.
Plainclothes officers arrested Chantal Morales Rojas, a 27-year-old Ecuadorian woman, as she was boarding her Southwest Airlines flight from Denver to Oakland on the night of July 20.
Friends of Rojas, fellow passengers, and airline employees watched as immigration agents detained Rojas on the jetway before taking her by force to a Homeland Security van waiting on the tarmac.
The arrest comes amid a dramatic uptick in immigrant detentions, with ICE reporting some 43,000 arrests in June of this year. ICE’s presence at airports also appears to be increasing, with recent arrests at SFO and at LAX, where ICE agents reportedly left a Vietnamese man handcuffed.
Rojas was visiting friends and her former employer in Denver for an ultimate frisbee tournament. She went through the TSA Security checkpoint Monday evening without any issue.
Upon arrival at her gate for her flight to Oakland, a non-uniformed agent approached Rojas and asked if she could answer questions about her visa. Unaware that the man was an agent (he provided no identification), she said no.
Alicia Dantzker, along with an attorney, both from the Bay Area and friends of Rojas’ former employer who also attended the tournament, happened to be traveling on the same flight. Rojas explained to them that she felt threatened and had no idea who the man was or why he was asking her about her visa.
Within minutes, several other men, all in civilian clothing, arrived at the gate. The group stood by watching Rojas for the next thirty minutes.
According to Dantzker, the men were visibly making Rojas feel uncomfortable. She suggested that they ask to board early; the Southwest gate agent agreed. The attorney remained at the gate and waited to board the plane with her assigned group.
Dantzker says when she and Rojas scanned their boarding pass and stepped onto the jetway, the scanning console sounded an alarm and the Southwest agent asked them to wait. It was then that the men who had been surveilling Rojas pushed both women into the jetway and the door slammed shut, effectively trapping them. It is unclear who shut the door.
“They said, ‘We are going to be polite. We have a warrant for your arrest,” Dantzker recounted. “You have to come with us. We have a warrant. Do you want to see it?’”
Dantzker says she told the agents to show the warrant to her lawyer friend, by then standing on the other side of the door. That is also when she began to film the encounter.
In the video, Rojas is seen being removed from the jetway and forced by several individuals out an exterior door. It is unclear if the individuals, including one woman, were agents, airport employees, or bystanders, though they appeared to be wearing all-access badges issued by airport authorities.
A spokesperson for Denver Mayor Mike Johnson told a local news outlet after Rojas’ arrest that his office had not been informed of activity at the airport, adding the mayor does not have the legal authority to impede federal law enforcement at Denver International.
Officials with Denver International Airport released a statement noting that federal agents do have jurisdiction there and are “not required to inform the airport of their activity.”
Rojas was taken down the exterior stairway onto the tarmac and placed in a white van marked Homeland Security parked amongst the Southwest Airlines baggage carts. The warrant was never shown to the attorney present, despite the request for agents to do so.
In the video, a federal agent confronts Dantzker, warning her not to interfere. Dantzker is later heard shouting epithets at the agents before she is approached by a Southwest employee. “I am just going to give you a heads up, if you’re on this flight and you speak to them [agents] like that, you will not board this flight,” he says.
Dantzker, who was visibly upset and yelling, was ultimately not allowed to board the flight home.
In an emailed response, ICE stated, “On July 20, 2026, ICE arrested Chantal Alejandra Morales Rojas, an illegal alien from Ecuador. She entered the country on October 20, 2024, on a visa that would allow her to stay in the country until January 4, 2025. In violation of our nation’s laws, she overstayed her visa. She remains in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.”
Rojas’ attorney, Laura Lichter, disputes ICE’s account.
”Chantal came to the United States lawfully in early 2023 on a J-1 exchange visitor visa as an au pair,” said Lichter. “She followed the rules of her program and, before it ended, timely filed an application with U.S. immigration authorities that allowed her to remain in the country while her case has been pending.”
Lichter added, “For more than three years, she has continued to live here with federal authorization and has worked legally under employment authorization issued by the U.S. government.”
Rojas has been working as a software developer for an inclusive recycling app company in Oakland. She had never been issued a deportation order or been notified that she was on any list of people targeted for deportation.
Rojas was taken to the Aurora ICE Processing Center, also referred to as the Denver Contract Detention Facility, where she is currently being detained.
In a blog post, Austin Kocher, assistant research professor at Syracuse University who has spent nearly two decades mapping immigration enforcement, notes daily ICE arrests have spiked to over 1,300 in June. Some 65,765 people are also now in ICE detention.
“Of those people held in detention, the largest group continues to be immigrants with no criminal history whatsoever,” writes Kocher, “reinforcing the now longstanding observation that the agency is not targeting the worst of the worst.”
Colorado has a history of such arrests. On May 12, 2026, U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson found that federal immigration officers in the state had been arresting individuals without proper warrants in violation of their due process rights, and without checking to see if the person being arrested was likely to flee.
The court order required additional training for immigration officers in Colorado and laid out specific protocol for documentation of flight risk and identification of officers in warrantless arrests.
In 2018, Southwest Airlines joined a coalition of Texas businesses publicly backing immigrants by supporting the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative.
“We do not wish to have involvement in the process of separating children from their parents,” the airline said in a statement at the time.
Southwest did not respond to requests for comment on Rojas’s arrest or their current policy regarding cooperation with immigration enforcement.
The Transportation Safety Administration does share traveler information with ICE. Both agencies are under the Department of Homeland Security.
Rojas’ friends and family, meanwhile, are working with an attorney to ensure her safety and right to due process.
“I care for her like she is my daughter,” said Lauren Cahr, the mother for whom Rojas worked as an au pair. “She is a part of my family. She has never hurt anyone and just lives a quiet life. She came here legally and tried to do everything right.”
Laura Larkins is a graduate student at Harvard University. She works as a writer and educator based in Denver and witnessed the arrest at Denver International Airport.
