As a member of Colorado’s Keep Families Together coalition, RMIAN strongly condemns the recent USCIS memorandum that may require certain green card applicants to leave the country to continue their applications. This policy risks disrupting the lives and livelihoods of international students, tourists, individuals on certain temporary work visas, humanitarian parolees, certain family members of U.S. citizens, and many others by forcing them to bear burdensome travel requirements, including the potential emotional, developmental, and social toll of separation from dependents or other loved ones. Read the full statement here.

This recent piece from The Denver Post examines how fear of detention, legal uncertainty, and mounting pressure are impacting immigrants and their families across Colorado. “When we’re working with folks who are detained, the financial strain and emotional strain on the family and community is making it less likely that people will fight their case when they have a legal right to do so,” said Cindy Schlosser, a social worker who oversees the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network’s social service project.”…It’s not just the detention, but the detention without the hope of reasonable release that puts families and their loved ones who’re detained in these impossible situations to decide, ‘Should I be deported or not?’”

The Colorado Sun ran this moving and insightful opinion piece, written by an attorney who attended a RMIAN immigration training, about his experiences with immigration court and a habeas case.

As ICE enforcement increases in our communities, many more of our clients are being wrongfully detained and held in prolonged detention. RMIAN is fighting to ensure immigrants' rights are protected by utilizing its litigation expertise to bring habeas petitions before the federal court—a way to challenge this unlawful confinement. This Denver Post article covers the surge in habeas cases. As Shira Hereld, RMIAN Staff Attorney, said in the article "habeas is the only way that most folks are getting out of detention, and more folks are being both arrested and held in detention than ever before.”

During President Donald Trump’s first year back in office, 4,750 people without legal status were arrested by federal immigration authorities in Colorado, new data shows, reflecting a near-quadrupling of the prior year’s arrest rate.

“They’re not at all surprising,” Laura Lunn, an immigration attorney with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, said of the numbers. “They’re (emotionally) deflating, but not surprising.”

“Obviously, so much has happened since this administration took over, but I think a lot of folks don’t necessarily remember that Trump announced Operation Aurora shortly (before) he took office,” she continued. “Communities in Denver and Aurora were targeted for mass enforcement actions. We saw military-grade vehicles rolling down the streets of Denver before we saw the same thing happening in L.A., Chicago, Minneapolis.”

RMIAN Executive Director, Mekela Goehring, and Children’s Program Managing Attorney, Ashley Harrington, will be presenting at the Iliff School of Theology to share about actions community members can take today to advocate for our neighbors. Wednesday, April 29, at 12:00 via Zoom. Register here.

RMIAN’s Executive Director, Mekela Goehring, and Director of Advocacy & Litigation, Laura Lunn, discuss immigration detention with RMIAN founding Board Member Hiroshi Motomura on his podcast “Unsettled: Immigration in Turbulent Times.” Have a listen to this insightful conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Castbox or Zolberg Podcasts.

Habeas Training by RMIAN and Colorado Bar Association

On April 28, 2026, RMIAN and the CBA-CLE are providing a half-day training on the nuts and bolts of representing clients in habeas petitions. A group of experts will walk you through the ins and outs of filing habeas petitions, answer burning questions, and offer robust materials that will ease the burden of learning how to file and present habeas petitions in the District Court for the District of Colorado with a litigation goal focused on securing clients’ freedom from detention. The event is free for anyone committing to take on a pro bono case in the next two years and the program has been submitted for four General CLE Credits.

The Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network has a “robust attorney-referral program,” according to Laura Lunn, its advocacy and litigation director. “Knowing the rules is absolutely the best tool we have at our disposal,” she says.

RMIAN and 23 other Colorado organizations sent a letter to the members of our Congressional delegation demanding an investigation into and accountability for the death of Delvin Francisco Rodriguez , a Colorado resident from Summit County, who died in ICE detention after being transferred to an ICE detention center in Mississippi.