As ICE has increased efforts to detain undocumented immigrants, ICE has targeted day laborers, agricultural workers, students and dreamers, even U.S. citizens who speak up.
19 year-old Caroline Dias Goncalves is one of many young adults and teenagers who have run into trouble with ICE recently. Dias Goncalves was driving from Utah to Colorado when she was pulled over for following a semi-truck too closely. She was released with a warning, but she was stopped shortly afterward by immigration. She was held in a federal immigration center in Aurora, CO for more than two weeks.
Dias Goncalves is a nursing student at the University of Utah on a merit-based scholarship from TheDream.US that provides funding for students who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The DREAM program was established by former President Barack Obama in 2012 to protect young immigrants from deportation who were brought to the United States by their parents outside of the immigration system. Trump has previously sought to end the DREAM program. ICE is also targetting Dreamers among many other groups.
Dreamers in School: Of the 500,000 undocumented students in college, 28% have DACA status. (There are an estimated 2 million Dreamers who call the U.S. home.) That means 72% of undocumented college students are pursuing the education without work permits, access to federal financial aid or protection from deportation. (Dias Goncalves’s petition for asylum has been pending for three years. Her and her family have valid work permits, driver’s licenses, etc per their asylum application.)
The officer who stopped Dias Goncalves thought she had an accent, but from the body cam footage she sounds just like anyone else who grew up in the U.S. The Salt Lake Tribune reported the story with many comments and details from her family and friends. It seems also that Dias Goncalves is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Pictures posted to a GoFundMe for Dias Goncalves show her as a young girl in a baptism dress, as a young woman holding a seminary certificate in front of a temple, and a happy college student holding her dog.

The police department said that the deputy who stopped Dias Goncalves entered information about the stop into a Signal chat set up for drug enforcement across the state. ICE agents were able to use this information which the police department did not know they could access. It is also in violation of Colorado state law. It is not known what was posted in the chat that led ICE agents to stop Goncalves or if any information other than her name drew ICE there. The deputy involved with the traffic stop was placed on administrative leave.
Last month, 18 year-old Ximena Arias Cristóbal, also a DREAM scholar, was detained in Georgia after being misidentified at a traffic stop. Police dropped all charges against her, but she was also detained by ICE. Officer O’Neal resigned after the mistaken arrest led to her detainment. Arias Cristóbal has since been released but she was held for over two weeks in a federal immigration center and still faces potential deportation. She testified about her experience to a U.S. Senate committee earlier this month. “What happened to me is not rare — it’s part of a growing pattern that is both scary and un-American,” she said.
Gaby Pacheco, the president of TheDream.US — the organization that granted scholarship to both dreamers— released a statement about Dias Goncalves’ arrest, saying: “Is this really the path forward? Does detaining young students make America safer? Absolutely not.”
Arias Cristobal also shared this through TheDream.US: “I wouldn’t wish [this] on anyone, especially not another young person like Caroline who, just like me, was trying to live her life and go to school. Being locked away from your family, your education, and your future is terrifying…Dreamers should not have to continue living in fear. We’ve grown up here, we contribute, we belong, and we need permanent protections to reflect that. No one should have to relive what I went through just to feel safe in the only home they’ve ever known.”

