What's known about detainees from Colorado who were sent to El Salvador
Tim Macdonald, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado, speaks to reporters outside the Alfred A. Arraj United States Courthouse in Denver on April 21, 2025. Macdonald represents plaintiffs who are suing the Trump administration over their potential deportation under the Alien Enemies Act. (Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline)
Immigration advocates in Colorado say they have identified about 12 immigrants in Colorado whom they believe federal authorities have removed to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador.
Some details of their cases are uncertain, because immigration authorities, both in court proceedings and through public communication, have largely refused to release information about enforcement activities.
But lawyers and community groups working on behalf of the immigrants — through contact with family members, media coverage, videos from CECOT, and scant clues from federal sources — have constructed the best available profile of people who vanished from Colorado.
As Colorado Newsline previously reported, Tim Macdonald, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado, in April first revealed in federal court in Denver that at least 11 people had been removed from Colorado to the brutal prison in El Salvador. The ACLU represents two Venezuelan nationals, as well as a larger class of immigrants, who are being held at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Aurora and fear deportation under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime law invoked by President Donald Trump to hasten deportations.
The Colorado case is one of several throughout the country that challenges the Trump administration's hyper-aggressive pursuit of mass deportations as unconstitutional, affording detainees little to no due process.
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Attorney Laura Lunn, director of advocacy and litigation at Westminster-based Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, which has worked on the federal case of the Venezuelan detainees and others in Colorado, told Newsline this week that immigration advocates think there are 'about a dozen' people the U.S. removed from Colorado to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act.
'In some instances, we were in touch with their loved ones, who said, 'We saw our loved one on the news, and he is in CECOT,'' Lunn said.
Numerous images and videos have emerged from the prison since March 15, when American officials, in possible violation of a court order, flew 238 migrants from the U.S. to be incarcerated in El Salvador. The roughly dozen immigrants transferred from Colorado to CECOT are believed to have been on one of three March 15 flights, Lunn said.
Newsline requested responses to a set of specific questions for this story from a spokesperson for ICE Denver. The spokesperson referred questions to a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, who did not respond.
The Western region branch of the American Friends Service Committee helped to confirm, largely through interaction with family members, about six of the Colorado-to-CECOT detainees, Jennifer Piper, the region's program director, said. They are Venezuelan men roughly between 19 and 25 years old. There is no indication any of the roughly 12 individuals from Colorado were legal residents or citizens of the U.S., but they were removed from the country before they could present facts on their own behalf, Lunn noted.
For some family members, the first indication a loved one had been transported to El Salvador was the release by CBS News of a list of detainees who were on the March 15 flights.
So, you know, you're talking two months, more than 60 days that you have no idea if your loved one is alive, dead, in El Salvador, disappeared into the immigration system in Guantanamo. No idea.
– Jennifer Piper, Western region director of the American Friends Service Committee
One Colorado detainee's mother whom Piper works with spotted her son in a video from CECOT just this month.
'She finally was able to see her kid's face, when they went walking down the halls,' Piper said. 'So, you know, you're talking two months, more than 60 days that you have no idea if your loved one is alive, dead, in El Salvador, disappeared into the immigration system in Guantanamo. No idea.'
Some details on at least three Colorado-to-El Salvador detainees have been reported through government and media sources. They include Jose Eduardo Moran-Garcia, Yohendry Jerez-Hernandez and Nixon Perez. Jerez-Hernandez and Perez appear on the CBS list. Sources for this story declined to give the names of other individuals they're working with.
Colorado and Aurora became a focus of Trump's plan for mass deportations as he campaigned for reelection last year, including during a rally in Aurora in October. Local and federal authorities in recent months have undertaken several operations against immigrants on the Front Range. They include the September arrests of four men in connection with a shooting at an apartment on Nome Street in Aurora, a raid on a 'makeshift nightclub' in Adams County in January, a coordinated set of operations at residences in Denver and Aurora in February, and a raid on a 'makeshift nightclub' in Colorado Springs last month.
At least some of the detainees sent from Colorado to CECOT were rounded up during these actions, Piper said, adding, 'Not a single person was convicted of a crime.'
Trump administration officials often allege that some detainees in Colorado and elsewhere have ties to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
'It's really important to understand that those ties have not been proven in any way,' Piper said. 'They haven't been able to provide any proof of that in any of the court documents where they're being sued.'
Some of the removed immigrants faced criminal charges, but they were local, not federal, charges, often filed well after the individuals were initially detained, Piper said.
'No one gets to go to their final court date to argue their case' before removal, Piper said. Some detainees didn't even face local charges and were removed to El Salvador because federal officials said, 'Oh, we didn't like your tattoo,' she said.
Lunn has appeared as a 'friend of the court' during hearings for some of the Colorado detainees believed to be at CECOT. Government attorneys have never acknowledged the detainees were sent to El Salvador, she said.
'I've been doing detained work for people in immigration proceedings now for about 15 years. It is unprecedented for somebody's case to be docketed and for ICE to show up to court and say, 'We don't know where this person is, and we're not at liberty to tell you where they might be,'' Lunn said.
The cases are devoid of typical due process and documentation.
'It would be one thing if there was like a legal basis that the government could point to as to why somebody was placed on one of those planes, but because they provided them no prior notice, because people were taken without the opportunity to review any allegations against them, that means that there really is no paper trail of what allegations existed,' Lunn said. 'We don't even know what the government supposedly alleged in order to invoke the (Alien Enemies Act) against people.'
She rejects the term 'deportation' to describe these cases.
'It's not a deportation, because they don't have a deportation order,' Lunn said. 'It's lawlessness … People were disappeared.'
Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Denver issued a preliminary injunction that indefinitely blocks the Trump administration from removing detainees in Colorado under the Alien Enemies Act while the case is pending.
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