A college student who was detained by immigration authorities following a brief traffic stop earlier this month was granted bond on Wednesday, her attorney, Jon Hyman, confirmed to NBC News.
Caroline Dias Goncalves, 19, a student at the University of Utah, was driving on Interstate 70 outside Loma, Colorado, on June 5 when a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy pulled her over because she was driving too close to a semitruck.
The deputy released Dias Goncalves with a warning, but shortly after she exited the highway, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped her, arrested her and took her to an immigration detention center.
Her detention raised questions over how ICE became aware of her location and immigration status so quickly after the traffic stop in Colorado, which has state laws restricting coordination between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.
An administrative investigation from the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office revealed that the deputy who stopped Dias Goncalves was part of a communication group that included local, state and federal law enforcement partners participating in “a multi-agency drug interdiction effort focusing on the highways throughout Western Colorado.”
Federal authorities began using the information collected in that communication group for immigration enforcement purposes, the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday evening outlining their administrative investigation. “Unfortunately, it resulted in the later contact between ICE and Miss Dias Goncalves.”
“The nature of the stop raises concerns whether the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office violated state law or whether the deputy’s communication through the task force inadvertently notified ICE agents of Caroline’s legal status,” Hyman told NBC News. “It is difficult to determine the intention of the deputy or ICE in using this information as a means to unlawfully detain immigrants.”
The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office has said it was “unaware that the communication group was used for anything other than drug interdiction efforts” and have since removed all members of their office from the group.
Hyman previously told NBC News that Dias Goncalves “has no criminal record and she was not shown a warrant” at the time of her ICE arrest.
Dias Goncalves had her bond hearing two weeks after she was first placed in ICE custody at the Denver Contract Detention Facility.
“She was ordered to be released on bond this morning,” Hyman said in an email.
Born in Brazil and raised in Utah since she was 7 years old, Dias Goncalves is one of nearly 2.5 million Dreamers living in the United States. The word “Dreamer” refers to undocumented young immigrants brought to the United States as children.
Relatives of Dias Goncalves told The Salt Lake Tribune she arrived in the U.S. as a child with her family on a tourist visa, which they overstayed. Finding a way to remain in the country legally, Dias Goncalves applied for asylum. That case remains pending.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told NBC News in an email Wednesday that the visa Dias-Goncalves had come in with had expired over a decade ago.
McLaughlin added that President Donald Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem “are committed to restoring integrity to the visa program and ensuring it is not abused to allow aliens a permanent one-way ticket to remain in the U.S.”
Dias Goncalves is a recipient of the TheDream.US national scholarship, which helps undocumented youths with financial needs go to college.
Dias Goncalves’ case mirrors that of fellow 19-year-old Dreamer and TheDream.US scholar Ximena Arias-Cristobal in Georgia.
Police in Dalton wrongly pulled over Arias-Cristobal last month, putting her on the radar of immigration authorities and making her susceptible to deportation.
Since her release from immigration detention, Arias-Cristobal has been speaking up about the growing risks Dreamers face as the Trump administration steps up the pace of deportations.
Asked about possible plans for immigration protections for Dreamers, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told NBC News in a statement June 4, “The Trump Administration’s top priority is deporting criminal illegal aliens from the United States, of which there are many.”
