A day in immigration court in Aurora is filled with desperate pleas: “I’m asking you with all my heart”

As Joyner Galeano begged the federal immigration judge for another chance, his wife was at home caring for their 14-day-old daughter, who is a U.S. citizen.  

Galeano, 21 and from Venezuela, crossed the border from Mexico three years ago, got a work permit and a job, and was building a new life. He messed it all up when he drank too much at a family party in May and, he admits, drove to pick up two friends who needed a ride. Galeano was pulled over by police after they say he swerved across the center line when navigating a turn. He was charged with driving under the influence and, because he was not living in the country legally, was detained in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Aurora.

Galeano was locked up when his daughter was born.

“My wife needs me more than anything,” he said in Spanish, explaining to the judge why he deserves bond, how he will “become a better person.” 

“I will do my best. I will not let you down.”

But federal immigration Judge Matthew Kaufman was not swayed. Galeano got no bond. Minutes later, Galeano held his head in his hands in the hallway outside the courtroom as the lawyer his mother hired for him broke down his only two options — remain locked up in the detention center for the next several months to find out whether the judge will deport him after the resolution of his DUI, or ask for deportation now and return to Venezuela, leaving his wife and baby daughter behind. 

“My client is not going to want to have to sit in here for six to nine months,” Galeano’s attorney, Lucy Laffoon, said in an interview after the hearing. 

Galeano’s case was one of more than a dozen heard on a single October morning of federal immigration court held in one of three, concrete-walled courtrooms inside the Aurora detention center. Beyond the secured entrance, where visitors must leave behind their driver’s license and cellphones, Judge Kaufman decided the fate of people from Venezuela, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Belize, Mexico and Pakistan. 

He relied on a Spanish interpreter sitting to his right, and when needed, dialed into a federal translation service to request a live interpreter whose voice was patched in through a courtroom speaker — Pashto, Urdu and Belizean Creole were among the defendants’ first languages. 

The 11 men and two women in the courtroom wore Croc-style sandals on their feet, tan pants and shirts in colors that correlated to the level of their offenses. Red shirts are for those facing the most serious charges, then orange, green, and blue. Galeano wore green. 

About 750 of the estimated 1,200 people in the detention center have pending cases in immigration court, while the rest are being held as they wait for the federal government to file its case. The federal government refuses to release a daily count of how many people are held in the detention center.

About 40% of those in detention also have criminal cases, which have already been resolved or are ongoing in the criminal court system. The other 60% have been accused of no crimes beyond being in the United States illegally. 

Attorneys who work in the system say it’s difficult to determine why some people are ordered into custody while others, even those facing similar allegations of trying to enter the United States, are allowed to remain free. It’s determined on a case-by-case basis — some are sent to the Aurora detention center by customs agents at the Texas-Mexico border, and others are released and told to appear in court in Denver.

“They are the same people, the same cases,” said Monique Sherman, detention program managing attorney at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.

Some in the detention center, like Galeano, were attempting to gain legal status in the country when they were accused of committing crimes. 

A neck tattoo and a $10k electric bill

For Marcos Cordero Guanuche, it might have been the tattoo across his throat that made the difference between freedom and the detention center.

Guanuche, who was a motorcycle delivery driver in his home country of Ecuador, crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in May and has been held in Aurora since then. He said he has no criminal past and told the judge that if he would release him, he would go to Austin, Texas, to live in a nonprofit shelter called Casa Marianella, which provides housing for new immigrants. His brother-in-law, who also does not have legal residency, lives in nearby San Antonio and would help him, too, he said. 

“I’m asking you with all my heart for a minimal bond,” he said. “I just got here with the mercy of God.” 

But Judge Kaufman wanted to know more about the tattoo on his neck.

“It’s my mother’s name,” he said in Spanish of the thick-blocked letters that spell ANA. “I just want to have her present with me all the time. I got the tattoo for her birthday.” 

Guanuche, who had no lawyer, was not granted bond and was given a month to appeal. A security guard returned him to his locked dorm.

Fraidel Daniel Sena Cuevas, who came from his home in the Dominican Republic almost three years ago intending to study, was being held in Aurora after his arrest in New Jersey on a vandalism charge stemming from a house party that he said turned into “trouble.” The 22-year-old had no attorney and was representing himself. 

He said that if the judge would give him bond, he would return to live with his aunt, who submitted paperwork to act as his “sponsor.” But instead of sending a pay stub to show proof of employment, Cuevas’ aunt, who has a job caring for elderly people, sent a copy of her $9,446 electric bill.

“I have a future ahead of me,” Cuevas pleaded.

“She has got a bill for almost $10,000 just for electric? How?” the judge asked. 

Cuevas’ request for bond, like all the others that day, was denied.

Another detainee, Bahar Said Bacha, said he had no criminal charges in any country, but Judge Kaufman denied bond for him, too. Some of the questions centered on the circuitous way he got to the United States from his native Pakistan, where he said he worked in polio vaccination.

He departed Pakistan for Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, then on to Turkey and then to Mexico, where he crossed the border into the United States in July. Bacha’s attorney appeared via television screen and asked that Bacha pay a bond and be released to his father’s friend in Illinois. Bacha intends to apply for asylum, his attorney said.

No bond, said Judge Kaufman, telling Bacha through a Pashto interpreter that he is a “flight risk,” meaning he was concerned that if he were let out of the detention center, he would not return for his immigration court proceedings. 

Facing possible deportation after 30 years in the U.S.

Christian De Leon Garcia has lived in Colorado without legal status since 1996, when he crossed the border illegally at age 16. He never applied for DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which might have given him legal status. He’s been married for 10 years to a legal resident, has a 7-year-old son who was born in Colorado and makes $1,800 every two weeks working in construction in Mesa County, he told the judge.

His wife has stage 4 cancer and is not expected to live much longer. She is too sick to work, making it hard for them to make their house payment, Garcia said in Spanish, wiping tears from his eyes and nose with a tissue.

Garcia was on his way to work in Grand Junction a few weeks ago when he was picked up by immigration agents. He was sentenced to probation in 2023 after he was accused of threatening a friend with a weapon and he pleaded guilty in a deal that kept him out of jail. His lawyer speculated that a private citizen made the call to ICE, since in Colorado, a so-called “sanctuary state,” probation departments don’t usually cooperate with federal immigration officials. 

“My son needs me,” Garcia pleaded. 

“My client absolutely does not pose a flight risk,” said his lawyer, Shana Velez. “He has been here for 30 years.” 

While Garcia was begging to stay, a handful of other detainees — after arriving in the United States from South America and never making it outside the detention center — were giving up on their immigration cases and asking the judge to order their deportations.

Among them was Andrany Antique-Padrino, of Venezuela, who was apprehended by U.S. border protection trying to cross illegally into the United States from Mexico almost a year ago. She fiddled with her bleach-blond curls as she sat alone at the table before the judge, telling him she had no money for a lawyer and waived her right to postpone her hearing to look for a pro-bono attorney from a provided list. 

“How long will it take for deportation?” she asked. It was her only question. 

“I don’t know,” the judge answered. “That’s not my part.” 

Detention center is so “miserable” that some ask for deportation

Besides Antique-Padrino’s deportation back to Venezuela, Judge Kaufman ordered two other deportations — for citizens of Venezuela and Colombia. All three people answered “No” when the judge asked whether they were afraid to return to their home countries, the opposite response than immigrants give when asking for asylum. 

Some people held in the detention center, a tan building amid industrial warehouses in northern Aurora. are so miserable, they will say they are not afraid to return home, even if that’s not true, said Sherman, with the immigrant advocate network. She has clients who’ve told her they have seen maggots in their food and that they do not get medical care when they are ill or in pain. Others “develop significant mental health problems” while they are locked up, she said. 

Detainees in Aurora sleep in two-story, prison-style pods, with cells on both levels. The pods hold about 80 people, and have common rooms where they can watch TV and play games. People who are detained can use the phones to call lawyers or family, but the contractor that runs the detention center, GEO Group, charges them per phone call, so they either have to have money in their account or call collect. 

The expense of the phone calls are a sore subject for attorneys and immigration advocates, who have also claimed multiple times in recent years that the detention center is unsafe and inhumane. In 2018, the American Immigration Council and the American Immigration Lawyers Association filed a public complaint accusing the center of failing to provide medical and mental health care. The complaint centered on the 2017 death of a detainee from a heart attack two weeks after he was picked up by ICE agents.

This fall, the family of an asylum seeker who died in the detention center in 2022 filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the private contractor that runs the center, which had an operating budget of $43.8 million last year 2023. Melvin Ariel Calero Mendoza, 39, died of a pulmonary embolism linked to a soccer injury on his calf, which went untreated for weeks, the lawsuit claims. 

Living in the detention center, for some, becomes worse than the persecution they faced in their home country, Sherman said. 

“When you talk to them, you learn that the number who do not have a fear of return is minuscule,” she said, adding that if they were not afraid, they would not have made the journey. “It just isn’t a thing that you go through all of that if you are not afraid. Humans don’t do that. We are programmed to keep ourselves alive.” 

Others who work in the immigration court system had a different view about why people in the detention center would — after traveling for months through a jungle, across rivers and aboard dangerous trains to get into the United States — request immediate deportation. They want to return home so that they can make another attempt to cross the border, this time, without getting caught, federal officials said.