The 15 days that Caroline Dias Goncalves spent in a federal immigration detention center, she said, were “the hardest of my life.”
In her first statement since being released on bond Friday, the 19-year-old University of Utah student described what she experienced while in custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“I was placed in a system that treated me like I didn’t matter,” she wrote, calling it a “nightmare.”
The food detainees were given at the center in Aurora was soggy and wet, Dias Goncalves recalled — “even the bread would come wet.” The schedule that they were expected to follow was also “confusing.”
Dias Goncalves had told her family in her limited phone calls from the center that she was sharing a cell with 17 other women. In her statement Monday, she said they were all treated poorly. But staff there started treating her slightly better, Dias Goncalves added, after they realized she spoke English.
“That broke my heart,” she said, “because no one deserves to be treated like that.”
Most of the time she was detained, she said, she felt scared and alone.
Caroline Dias Goncalves, a University of Utah student, is seen in this screenshot from body camera footage recorded by the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office deputy who originally pulled her over in Colorado on June 5, 2025. She was detained by immigration officers shortly after the traffic stop. (Mesa County Sheriff’s Office)Mesa County traffic stop turned into ICE arrest
Dias Goncalves was arrested by federal agents on June 5 while driving through Colorado to visit a friend. They learned of her location after secretly accessing communications from a deputy who had earlier pulled her over during a traffic stop, according to an investigation by the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office.
During the traffic stop, the deputy could be heard on recently released body camera video asking where Dias Goncalves was born. That deputy — identified by the sheriff’s office as Alexander Zwinck — has since been placed on leave.
Colorado law doesn’t allow for officers to ask about a person’s immigration history. The sheriff’s office is also investigating whether Zwinck shared information about Dias Goncalves’ legal status in any Signal messages, which ICE agents were allegedly able to access.
“Any repercussions will be determined by the outcome of the full administrative investigation,” the sheriff’s office added in its latest statement from Friday.
After ICE took her into custody, Dias Goncalves was then taken to and held at the Aurora detention center, near Denver.
One of the ICE officers who originally detained her, Dias Goncalves recalled, “kept apologizing and told me he wanted to let me go, but ‘his hands were tied.’” In her statement, Dias Goncalves said she forgives him.
Her detention has drawn national attention as President Donald Trump has pushed his administration to crack down on illegal immigration across the country, including increasing quotas for ICE arrests. Messages from The Salt Lake Tribune to ICE throughout Dias Goncalves’ detention have not been answered.
A judge granted bond for Dias Goncalves at her first court appearance Wednesday, and it took nearly 36 hours for her release to be processed after that. She stepped out of the detention center Friday at 5:30 p.m.
Her family has asked for privacy as they work to heal and keep Dias Goncalves in the United States permanently.
Family asylum case still pending
Dias Goncalves originally came to the U.S. from Brazil with her parents in 2012, when she was 7. The family had a six-month tourist visa, which they overstayed, afraid to return to their home country where they’d experienced violence.
They applied for asylum three years ago, and that’s still pending.
In her statement, Dias Goncalves said the U.S. is “all I’ve ever known.”
She is currently a student at the University of Utah, where she is studying nursing.
Dias Goncalves said she’s going to “try to move forward” with her education.
“But I won’t forget this. And I hope others won’t either,” she said. “Immigrants like me, we’re not asking for anything special — just a fair chance to adjust our status, to feel safe and to keep building the lives we’ve worked so hard for in the country we call home.”
She’s on a merit scholarship from a national “Dreamer” organization that provides funding for students who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA program. That was established by former President Barack Obama in 2012 to protect young immigrants from deportation who were brought to the U.S. by their parents outside of the legal immigration system.
Gaby Pacheco, the president of TheDream.US — the organization that has supported Dias Goncalves’ scholarship — said in a statement that Dias Goncalves’ detention was “not just a policy failure. It is a moral one.”
“When Caroline walked out of the detention facility, I saw two other young people released beside her,” she added. “My heart broke. How many more youth are being funneled into this system of cruelty, locked up for simply existing in the only country they’ve ever known?”
There are roughly 1,000 people currently being held at the same detention center in Aurora where Dias Goncalves was.
“They are just like me — including other people who’ve grown up here, who love this country, who want nothing more than a chance to belong,” Dias Goncalves said.
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