A Gunnison man born in Colorado was picked up by immigration officers after a court appearance and illegally detained for days because he is Latino, according to two federal lawsuits.
Bernardo Medina, 22, was born in Montrose in May 1994. He and his parents moved to Mexico before his first birthday, but Medina moved back to the Western Slope when he was 18, settling in Gunnison.
On Jan. 27, 2015, he went to the Gunnison County Court for a sentencing hearing on a DUI guilty plea. Afterward, he was approached by two men later identified as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. When they asked who he was, he produced his Colorado ID.
What happened over the next three days still remains largely unclear, even to Andy Richmond, the Crested Butte lawyer who filed both federal lawsuits, which described Medina’s ordeal as a “nightmare.”
One lawsuit was filed against at least nine ICE agents who either detained Medina in the first place or took part in his continued detainment, despite what Richmond says were Medina’s continued attempts to tell them he was a U.S. citizen.
The other lawsuit names the GEO Group, which operates the Aurora ICE facility where Medina eventually ended up after being taken across the state to various facilities. In another lawsuit against GEO Group, a federal judge last week certified as a class about 62,000 people who were held in an Aurora immigration detention center and required to work, sometimes for $1 a day, while they awaited possible deportation.
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