Aurora, CO – On February 5, 2018, poets, musicians, family members of detainees, and other community members will gather outside the for-profit GEO ICE Detention Center in Aurora, CO for the ninth year in a row.

Among the nearly 1500 detainees inside this detention center is the husband of sanctuary leader Ingrid Encalada Latorre (who Unicorn Riot has been reporting on). Eliseo Jurado was arrested by ICE agents on January 11, 2018 and has been detained at the Aurora center since then.

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and Coloradans for Immigrant Rights have been hosting this vigil year-after-year “to stand in witness and solidarity with those inside these walls, to raise awareness of this detention center in this community, and to ultimately defeat the practice of profiting from pain.” 

This detention center, the sole one in Colorado, is being sued in a class-action lawsuit, which accuses it of paying detainees $1 a day to help run the facility, and if the detainees refuse, they risk being placed in solitary confinement.

Although the suit was served in 2014, it wasn’t until February 27, 2017 when the class-action was certified and officially representing about 62,000 detainees.

AFSC will be collecting handmade valentine cards to deliver to detention center detainees and day laborers on February 13, 2018.

Unicorn Riot live streamed the 2017 vigil and will be live streaming this year’s vigil.

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Previous Unicorn Riot coverage of immigration and the border crisis:

• Humanitarian Arrested After Group Releases Report Implicating US Border Patrol (Jan. 23, 2018)
• Ingrid Encalada Latorre Returns to Sanctuary; Four Claim Sanctuary in CO (Oct. 27, 2017)
• Ingrid Encalada Latorre Leaves Sanctuary After Six Months; Granted Temporary Stay (May 27, 2017)
• Indonesian Undocumented Immigrant Detained at ICE Check-In (May 24, 2017)
• Jeanette Vizguerra, Among Others, Celebrate Victories Against ICE Deportation Attempts (May 17, 2017)
• Chile: Fifty-One Arrested During May 1st Protest for Labor and Immigration Rights (May 4, 2017)
• Sanctuary Movement Leader, Arturo Hernandez Garcia, Detained by ICE While at Work (April 30, 2017)
• Jeanette Vizguerra Named One of Time’s 100 Most Influential People as She Remains in Sanctuary (April 22, 2017)
• Crisis: Borderlands (March 14, 2017)
• Arizona Anti-ICE Demo Meets Arrests and Chemical Agents (Feb. 17, 2017)
• Deportations Begin Under Trump’s Regime (Feb. 14, 2017)
• Love Knows No BAN No Walls Vigil at GEO ICE Detention Center (Feb. 8, 2017)
• Controversial Mural Elicits Condemnation, Community Backlash (Oct. 7, 2016)
• Hundreds of Students Walkout in Minneapolis to Protest Deportation (Jan. 22, 2016)