This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at coloradosun.com.
Carolina Suarez Estrada and her 7-year-old son, Luciano, returned to Colorado on Monday after nearly one month in immigration detention in Texas.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement released the mother and son Monday with orders for Suarez to appear in immigration court at a later date.
The Colorado Sun previously reported on the arrest of Suarez, 33, whom ICE agents handcuffed inside the Chaffee County court complex Aug. 19. Luciano was detained by ICE later that day.
Suarez was working at a construction company in Buena Vista with a government work permit at the time of her arrest. Luciano was just about to return to elementary school for second grade and to his soccer team’s fall season.
Suarez’ arrest has raised concerns among Upper Arkansas River Valley residents about how vulnerable immigrant neighbors are to the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan. Donors have contributed more than $17,000 to a fundraiser for them.
On Monday night at Denver International Airport, Suarez carried only a shopping bag as she and Luciano made their way from the plane to the passenger pick-up area. Once there, she and Luciano shared a tearful embrace with a family member.
“You’re a boy who is big and …” the family member said, in Spanish.
“Strong!” Luciano yelled.
Suarez said she feels very scared to be in public.
“They treated us like we were criminals,” she said.
ICE followed Suarez, originally from Colombia, and her partner as they were leaving the courthouse complex in Salida on Aug. 19 and tried to arrest them.
ICE is not allowed to arrest people who are going to or coming from a courthouse, per a 2020 Colorado law.
Suarez and her partner drove back to the probation department and ran inside, hiding from the immigration agents in an office.
No criminal charges were filed
Footage from body cameras worn by Chaffee County sheriff’s deputies and incident reports obtained by The Sun show that Sheriff Andy Rohrich and deputies urged Suarez and her partner, Darwin Arriche-Sierra, to leave the office, saying they were obstructing government operations. Suarez told the deputies she had a 7-year-old son in Buena Vista.
The sheriff and a deputy told the ICE agents to wait outside where Suarez and Arriche-Sierra couldn’t see them so that the agents could arrest them when they left. Suarez and Arriche-Sierra left the office and waited in the lobby, where ICE agents arrested them.
ICE agents drove Suarez to Alamosa and then demanded her family member bring Luciano to meet her. Fearing for his own safety, the family member asked a friend to drive the boy to the holding office in Alamosa, where ICE detained him, too. The next day, ICE sent the mother and son to the South Texas Family Residential Center, about an hour southwest of San Antonio, where they remained until Monday.
Arriche-Sierra is still being held at the ICE detention center in Aurora, according to the agency’s website.
Before being arrested, Suarez was scheduled to appear in front of an immigration judge in Denver to make her asylum claim in April 2026, said Kymberly Renaud, the lawyer who represented Suarez while she was in Texas.
At a hearing last week, an immigration judge agreed to release the mother and son.
Now, Suarez will likely be scheduled to appear in immigration court at a later date to make her case for asylum, Renaud said.
The ICE officers who arrested Suarez told Chaffee County deputies that she had broken the law by returning to the county building and hiding. But Renaud said Suarez has no pending criminal charges.
“Carolina’s case specifically shows a waste of government resources,” she said. “You have this mother and child detained for a couple of weeks for no real purpose. They already had a court date set, an application for asylum. They did not need to be detained, they followed all the rules. We’re doing a lot of work that doesn’t need to be done.”
The Trump administration has dramatically increased immigration arrests, sweeping up mostly people who have not been convicted of crimes.
About 65% of the people arrested and detained by ICE in the U.S. as of Sept. 7 had no criminal convictions, according to TRAC, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group at Syracuse University. At the same point last year, 63% of people arrested and detained by ICE had a criminal conviction.
Colorado Capitol Alliance
This story was produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and The Colorado Sun, and shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations across the state. Funding for the Alliance is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
