Community Art, Music & Joy for Aurora ICE Detainees

Sheets of cardboard were laid across the overgrown, tall grass as organizers walked across them carrying speakers, tables, tents, and even a trombone. Along the street, a dozen people greeted one another, some holding picketing signs and others hefting cases of water bottles over their shoulders. The large public parking lot closed by a concrete barrier haphazardly placed in its drive, they glanced at the no parking signs lining the street knowing their first civil disobedience of the evening would be to ignore them.

In Aurora, Colorado, at the private prison facility owned by GEO Group and currently being contracted by the federal government as the ICE Processing Facility for the region, the mood was light but serious. Ahead, there was an evening ahead of community, music, making art, and sharing food with a very real purpose.

To demand Jeanette Vizguerra’s freedom.

Community members, activists, and state-level officials picket and carry protest signs demanding the release of political prisoner Jeanette Vizguera outside of the GEO private prison facility licensed as the federal ICE processing center in Aurora, CO on July 7, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellowscene)

An indigenous Mexican mother, author, immigrant rights advocate, and community leader, Jeanette rose to national prominence in 2017 when she successfully evaded the first Trump Administration’s attempts to deport her by seeking sanctuary inside a unitarian church.

In a game of cat and mouse played out on television screens and broadsheets she never silenced her voice, writing and speaking from the church – occasionally even surprising crowds of thousands by appearing in-person under community protection. As federal policies like family separation and intentional cruelty in detention became standard by the federal administration, the Colorado Congressional delegation stepped in and a judge blocked the deportation order until 2019.

In 2021, still living in the church, the Department of Homeland Security announced that she would not be deported. It was the Biden Administration, and while many of the practices created by the first Trump Administration continued, Jeanette was able to return to her family and her life.

Regaining control in 2025 with the re-election of President Trump, Stephen Miller pushed plans to punish dissenting voices and make an immediate example of those who had used legal protections to usurp his authority in the previous term.

Churches, hospitals, schools – so-called “sensitive places” – would no longer be safe and accessible places for every person in the United States. Elementary school students would face the trauma of seeing their classmates learn they no longer had parents to go home to, or worse be detained themselves with peers watching. The sick or injured had to weigh the benefits of seeking medical attention against the risks of never seeing their families again.

Places of worship had to grapple with the idea that their leadership could no longer defend their flock, the federal government was going to take their sheep.

Arriving to her job at Target one morning, Jeanette was arrested and detained. The community response was immediate, to many this was a political decision and not one about making our country safer.

An embarrassed administration, still reeling from their failures to enforce criminal actions against a peaceful working mother, had targeted Jeanette to make an example of. Because of a swift outpouring from watchful advocates, the due process afforded under the constitution to all persons within the United States were called for. She was to remain in detention while her attorneys fought in court, but her location was local – known – and direct communication was possible.

Many who are detained by ICE are not so fortunate.

Under the early afternoon sun in Aurora, the activists had cleared enough of the field that a small tent faced a crowd of fifty people, growing as the evening approached and more working folks were able to join.

Jamaican immigrant Jeneil and her grandmother Edna speak to rally attendees after traveling from Maryland to visit her detained father at the GEO private prison facility licensed as the federal ICE processing center in Aurora, CO on July 7, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellowscene)

The audience was rapt, silent, listening to the choked words pour out of the young speaker’s mouth in front of them. Jeneil, with her elder grandmother Edna at her side, spoke on losing her father to Stephen Miller’s systems of snatching and shuffling human beings; his system to lose people in the system.

An immigrant from Jamaica, she was visiting Aurora from her home in Maryland with no idea she’d find a community rallying in support of her family and all of those impacted by ICE. She shared her story, that her father had made his first ever return trip to his homeland to see family in February and on the return was detained by immigration officials for two already-dismissed and closed charges.

First being told he would be held in Pennsylvania, close to his family, the notice came down that he would instead be heading for Texas. They found him in Colorado, having celebrated his sixtieth birthday in a cage.

As she finished, Luna Vizguerra, Jeanette’s daughter, took the stage echoing the difficulties of a family losing its leader.

“I miss my mom, as many of the families here do as well,” she told the crowd, making eye contact with those with whom she’s shared this unique experience with. “It comes with a lot of hardships, a lot of turmoil. You come home to an empty space, my mom’s room is empty. It’s been four months. She’s missed not only our lives but she’s missed her life.”

To discuss the generational impact, passed down and felt in bloodlines, Courtney took the microphone next. A third generation Japanese immigrant, she spoke on her own father being kidnapped from Peru and being interned in a Crystal City, CO concentration camp during World War Two.

The children and grandchildren of those persecuted through generations of United States domestic policy then led the picket of the GEO ICE facility, walking the crowd now numbering in the hundreds across the streets to march along the sidewalk outside the private prison.

For an hour, community members, with the support of union representatives, a half dozen state level elected officials, and Notes of Dissent – a protest marching band – chanted, sang, and disrupted the quiet which had existed around the building only hours before.

Notes of Dissent, a Front Range protest marching band, plays a medley of anti-authoritarian anthems and spirituals while activists picket the GEO private prison facility licensed as the federal ICE processing center in Aurora, CO on July 7, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellowscene)

As the heat continued to climb and shade quickly shrunk over the sidewalks, water was distributed and hand fans deployed. The picket line continued to grow as people continued to arrive, some still dressed from their air conditioned office jobs, tucking work badges into pockets and out of sight, they’d come as quickly as they could.

After an hour, marshals briefly blocked traffic and the swollen crowd stepped their way from sidewalk to sidewalk, crossing the street back to the field where there was now a full resource fair for nonprofit and political organizations set up, hoping to capture their energy and funnel it to the next moment. Pupusa was sold as a fundraiser, a lecture was given on a blanket about nonviolent resistance, an art build began for an action planned later in the evening, and programming resumed.

Araseli, from Aurora, spoke about her husband – Hector – being snatched while riding his bike in their neighborhood. With no warrant, and not on the ICE list of folk to look for, she spoke from her personal experience on the importance of those who want to be allies in this moment to visit detainees, because they’re families cannot for fear of detention and deportation.

With the air heavy with angst, Yuzo Nieto of Pink Hawks kicked off the music for the evening with his song “Want to be a Gangster,” energizing the crowd, bringing a reminder that art is a tool those who would dissent can use to raise their voices.

Organizations from across the metro, including Aurora Unidos CSO and Housekeys Action Network, spoke on community organizing together and that there is infrastructure to join for those who want to help, but don’t know how to start.

Then, a roar rippled across the crowd, the largest it would be for the day, as Luna Vizguerra re-took the stage. A phone was in her hand.

Political prisoner Jeanette Vizguerra speaks to rally attendees via video call and translation provided by her daughter during a protest demanding her release from a GEO private prison facility licensed as the federal ICE processing center in Aurora, CO on July 7, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellowscene)

Jeanette’s voice, amplified from a video call through the PA system, was greeted by cheers. From inside the building across the street, the tearful and thankful grandmother spoke through her daughter’s translation for more than twenty minutes.

Grateful for the community which has continued to show up for her and all of those being swept away inside Stephen Miller’s punitive nightmare, she blasted Colorado’s Congressional delegation for using her platform to win their previous elections and failing to show up even once for her now.

Her case is moving forward in the courts, an appeal filed in the fifth district could be decided any time and her attorneys are hopeful that she’ll be celebrating her release soon, right there outside the walls she’s speaking from behind, rallying for everyone still inside.

“If worse comes to worse, my work will continue bi-nationally and I will be back sooner than later,” she closed.

The sun was starting to sink, dusk sweeping across the now-flattened field where hundreds were gathered, and the soft yellow light inside the GEO private prison illuminated out. All day, a station had been set up to cut out and decorate paper butterflies.

Now, they were carried across the street to be hung on a chain link fence which acted as a second cage outside the barred, amber-light windows. To add a little bit of color, for those who could see out. A reminder that people on the other side of the cage saw their humanity and cared about them.

Notes of Dissent played loud, solemn spirituals and demonstrators sang, silhouettes appeared in the windows. Detainees inside waved, made hearts with their hands, and held up scrawled messages for those outside – who returned the gestures.

It was a heartbreaking and powerful moment. Tears were shed by many, some having to step away as they were faced with the distant-but-intimate contact with those who the system has worked so hard to dehumanize and hide.

Protestors sing and hang a paper art installation of butterflies and streamers on the fence outside the A large crowd of people fill the tree lawn and sidewalk outside of a chain link cage and prison windows, spilling in to the street around parked cars, while hanging an art installation and singing for the detainees inside a GEO private prison facility licensed as the federal ICE processing center in Aurora, CO on July 7, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellowscene)

Darkness crept around and it was decided it was time to turn up the volume and for the final three bands of the evening to take the stage – performing over the crowd before them for those locked inside behind.

Wheelchair Sports Camp, 2MX2, and Flobots were slated to close out the evening. Former Denver Mayoral candidate and Sports Camp frontperson Kalyn Heffernan started with a warning that “they’re punk now,” before making the crowd move and whoop with their band’s signature mash-up of experimental music, observant humorous lyrics, and defy-authoritarianism brand.

Flobots frontman Jonny 5 gestures to a sign reading ICE while singing a bilingual protest song during a community action at the A large crowd of people fill the tree lawn and sidewalk outside of a chain link cage and prison windows, spilling in to the street around parked cars, while hanging an art installation and singing for the detainees inside a GEO private prison facility licensed as the federal ICE processing center in Aurora, CO on July 7, 2025. (Photo by Vince Chandler / Yellowscene)

2MX2 continued to ramp the energy up, fusing chicano melodies with rap / rock lyrics delivered in a fiery escalation. Headbanging, two-stepping, bodies were encouraged to move instinctively as the protest evolved toward the joyful party environment synonymous with many Colorado grassroots movements.

“I don’t know if Tim Hernández is still here,” Flobots’ Jonny 5 said as the Denver hip hop group took the stage, “but I’m reminded tonight of something he once said. We cannot become the thing we hate.”

Referencing the Colorado educator and former State House Representative’s assertion that authoritarianism robs the community of creativity and joy, he reminded the crowd that we have to have energy to have power, and our power is rooted in collective good.

Closing the evening with a wildly high energy set which included their Billboard charting hit “Handlebars,” the crowd amplified their reminder of joy as resistance, allowing it to ripple through the concrete and steel separating families and communities from their loved ones inside.

___________________________________

Best known for capturing striking content from the frontlines of social movements, Heartland EMMY-nominated filmmaker and photographer Vince Chandler has spent 20 years creating art and documentary visuals across the U.S. They served as Communications Director for Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, and Vince has earned national recognition for their work as a visual journalist for The Denver Post. Vince was the principal cinematographer for the feature documentary film Running With My Girls, which premiered at the 2021 Denver Film Festival. When they’re covering protest and autonomous action, you can often see the first draft of their articles as live threads on Bluesky. 

What does resistance & resilience look like in the Heartland of America?

Sometimes it’s a protest outside an ICE detention center. Sometimes it’s a rural nurse explaining how Medicaid cuts will shutter the town hospital. Sometimes, it’s a law professor teaching systemic racism at a University in a state where CRT is banned in public schools.

As Trump’s second term unfolds — and the One Big Beautiful Act guts healthcare, empowers ICE, and reshapes American life — independent journalism is more vital than ever. However, the national press rarely shows up in the places where policy has the most impact.

We do.

These American Crossroads is a collaboration between Vince Chandler, Emmy-nominated visual journalist, and Yellow Scene Magazine, Boulder County’s only independent newsroom.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month: https://fundrazr.com/Crossroads

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.