Eliseo Jurado Fernandez on Monday posted bond and will be released from the Geo Group Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Aurora where he has been held for several weeks. He is the partner of Ingrid Encalada Latorre, who has claimed sanctuary in three Colorado churches to avoid deportation.
His bond was set at $2,500.
Jurado Fernandez, 30, was detained by ICE officers on Jan. 11 after he left his home in Westminster to run an errand. As he was pulled over, he texted the family’s emergency code to Encalada Latorre, who is currently living in sanctuary at Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder, to let her know about the encounter. When she replied, he didn’t answer. Supporters from the church went to their house to look for him, Encalada Latorre said, but no one knew where he was until he made a phone call to his father from the detention center.
Jurado Fernandez is a Mexican national who has lived in the U.S. illegally for more than a decade. He is the stepfather of Encalada Latorre’s oldest son, who is 9, and has a 2-year-old son with her. Both boys are U.S. citizens.
The day he was detained, ICE field office director Jeffrey Lynch said in a statement, ““ICE targeted Eliseo Jurado Fernandez for arrest after he came to ICE’s attention during an investigation into his spouse, Ingrid Encalada Latorre, from Peru, who is also illegally present in the United States. Jurado Fernandez has numerous criminal convictions, in addition to illegally entering the United States, which is also a crime. Contrary to misguided speculation, ICE did not target Jurado Fernandez in retaliation for Encalada Latorre taking sanctuary from deportation in a Colorado church. In accordance with its critical public safety mission, ICE targets criminal aliens whenever and however they come to our attention.”
In a release about the bond posting, Jennifer Piper, interfaith organizer for the American Friends Service Committee, said, “The targeting of family members of those in deportation is unprecedented.”
Jurado Fernandez’s attorney, Jeff Joseph, noted that his last offense was in 2009, and that he isn’t a flight risk.
Encalada Latorre first claimed sanctuary at a Colorado church in December 2016, at Mountain View Friends Meeting House in Denver, to avoid deportation while she attempted to overturn a felony conviction for falsified papers and impersonation. In May, she was granted a stay of removal through her court date in August. Encalada Latorre went to court, but a Jefferson County judge denied her request to reopen her criminal case; she appealed to Gov. John Hickenlooper for a pardon of her criminal conviction, which he declined to offer.
At the time, Hickenlooper said of the mother of two’s request, “It is just a hard issue, one of the toughest issues I’ve worked on.”
In October, when her stay of removal ended, she went back into sanctuary — first in a Fort Collins church, then in Boulder — rather than reporting for deportation to Peru. Jurado Fernandez continued to work as a contractor to support the family until he was detained in early January.
Jurado Fernandez was convicted of driving while ability impaired in 2007. He also was convicted of driving without a drivers license three times, and in 2008 on a false-information charge that stemmed from a traffic stop. During that stop, he was arrested because the name he gave the officer didn’t match the name on the vehicle registration, which was registered to his father. When a public defender suggested that he plead guilty to get out of jail, he did, Piper said.
Piper said these kinds of convictions arecommon in immigrant communities, because people are seeking to avoid more trouble.
“You’re not going to go back and fight the police when you’re trying to stop your deportation,” she said.