PRAISE FOR MARCHERS, COUNTERPROTESTERS

Opponents and supporters of U.S. immigration policy receive high marks from police — a large police presence — at an event in Aurora.

In a scene reflective of America’s deeply divided politics, protesters chanting “Abolish ICE” lined up on the opposite side of police barricades from counterprotesters yelling “Support ICE” at the immigration enforcement agency’s detention facility in Aurora on Saturday afternoon.

After a few tense moments, the two groups went their separate ways, leaving just a collection of police officers in helmets and reflective yellow vests along the line.

Saturday’s event came just days after three people were arrested during a protest outside the Aurora home of Johnny Choate, the warden of the privately run Aurora detention facility. Police commended organizers of both groups for conducting peaceful demonstrations Saturday. Between the two sides, 400 and 500 people attended, police estimated.

“There were no injuries. There was no violence. Everyone was peaceful,” Officer Krystal Mccoy said. “It was an example of what a process should be when opposing views come together.”

The protesters, a coalition of dozens of groups that have come together to decry the Trump administration’s immigration policy and the conduct of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, started their day in City Park, marching 8 miles to the Aurora facility.

“It’s about human rights,” Fabian Ortega, an organizer with the Enough Action Coalition

and deputy director of Servicios De La Raza, said of the protest’s message. “We want this facility shut down. We want families reunited.

“Companies that are supporting this administration, we want them boycotted.”

ICE supporters began gathering on the north side of the police barricade outside the facility at 10 am. By 11 a.m., roughly 100 people had gathered around a small stage to hear comments from conservative speakers, including state Rep. Dave Williams, R-colorado Springs.

As songs from Bruce Springsteen and Led Zeppelin played over loudspeakers, talk radio host and rally organizer Randy Corporon described how the event was a response to “radical leftists” pulling down a U.S. flag from the facility’s flagpole at a protest in July.

“We want to make sure that any time there is a message that the men and women of ICE and this facility are Nazis and child abusers and torturers that there is a substantial number of American citizens that know better and will say so,” Corporon told The Denver Post before his onstage comments.

American flags and red “Make America Great Again” hats were the most common accessory at the rally.

David Phipps, 60, came from Centennial to attend.

He said he was there “to support ICE and support the laws we have and support the people who follow the laws. Immigrants entering the country through established legal processes are “being left behind,” Phipps said. “Those are the good people who we like to welcome to the country,” he said.

As ICE protesters from City Park approached the facility Saturday afternoon, they directed some of their chants at the heavily armored police protecting the facility.

“I don’t see no riot here, why are you in riot gear?” they shouted, following that with calls of “Who do you serve? Who do you protect?”

The protest included a traditional Aztec dance as well as a performance from a troupe from the Mudra Dance Studio in Aurora. Speakers from local American Indian, Latino, Asian, Jewish and Muslim groups all spoke, decrying ICE’S policies and practices including detaining immigrants in the Aurora facility.

Sky Roosevelt-morris, with the American Indian Movement of Colorado, directed her comments to the Aurora police officers lining the interior fence of the detention facility.

“All of the Aurora PD is lined up in front of this concentration camp because they are scared of us, and they should be,” she said. “This will never be their homeland. This will always be our homeland. We will never stop fighting.”

Joe Rubino: jrubino@denverpost.com