The evening of June 28, 2012, Claudia Valdez-Sandoval called the police for help. She had been fighting with her husband. The fight had turned physical, and she feared for the safety of herself and her three young children. So, she ran to her neighbor’s house with her kids in tow and asked her neighbor to call the police for help.

Arapahoe County law enforcement arrived and ended up arresting Claudia on a misdemeanor domestic violence charge, which was dismissed soon afterwards.

Claudia had never been arrested before. She had also never been away from her children for more than 24 hours. But, because she called the police for help, Claudia spent three nights in jail.

Claudia saw a judge on the domestic violence charge the next morning, June 29. Her husband admitted in open court that he was the aggressor, and the judge ordered Claudia released on a personal recognizance bond. But the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office refused to release Claudia. Instead, it held her for three additional days because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, had requested that the sheriff hold Claudia in jail while it investigated her immigration status. The sheriff’s office, like most others in Colorado at the time, chose to comply with the federal government’s request, and it imprisoned Claudia for three additional days without a warrant and without probable cause.

Those three days in jail were deeply painful for Claudia. She had been living in Denver since 1999, where her three children had been born. During that time, she had never had a run-in with the law, other than for minor traffic offenses. She never dreamed she would be imprisoned, especially for calling the police for help. As a result of this incident, she has come to believe that the police are not there to protect her; that she cannot trust them; and that she should avoid contact with them at all costs. This sense of isolation and vulnerability continues to plague Ms. Valdez to this day.

more on Claudia's case

June 12, 2014
DENVER – The ACLU of Colorado is excited to announce that Laura Rovner, Bob Connelly, and the late Dr. Vincent Harding have been selected to receive our 2014 Civil Rights Awards, which will be presented at the Annual Carle Whitehead Bill of Rights Dinner on Friday, October 17th.
The family of Dr. Harding, who sadly passed away on May 19, 2014, will accept the Carle Whitehead Memorial Award in recognition of his lifetime of achievement in advancing civil rights and civil liberties.
Dr. Harding worked throughout his life for what he called "the expansion of democracy,” beginning with work in the Southern Freedom Movement in the 1960s and continuing through his tenure as Chair of the Veterans of Hope Project, based at the Iliff School of Theology.  Dr. Harding was also a close associate and speech writer for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Laura Rovner will receive the Edward Sherman Award for her outstanding legal work as the Director of the University of Denver’s Civil Rights Law Clinic, and Bob Connelly will receive the Martha Radetsky Award for his many years of service and dedication as a board member of the ACLU of Colorado.
Ms. Rovner founded the active movement in Colorado to end solitary confinement of the mentally ill. As Director of the University of Denver’s Civil Rights Law Clinic, she takes on complex legal cases, while also simultaneously training law students to become civil rights lawyers.  She is also recognized as one of the nation’s foremost prisoners’ rights attorneys and as a solitary confinement legal expert.
Mr. Connelly’s years of dedicated board service have helped the ACLU of Colorado become a mature, successful organization. He was critical to our growth and development over his six years on the board.
This year’s Carle Whitehead Bill of Rights Dinner will be held on Friday, October 17^th at The Four Seasons Hotel in Downtown Denver. For more information about the event, purchasing tickets, or becoming a sponsor, please contact Rachel Pryor-Lease at 720-402-3105 or [email protected].
 

Did you catch Stephen Colbert's "debt or prison" segment last night on The Colbert Report? Stephen runs through the sadly comical ways in which being a prisoner and being a debtor are converging and starting to blur in our prisons and justice system.
Here in Colorado, we struck a major blow against debtors' prisons in the 2014 legislative session by passing HB 1061, a bill prohibiting local courts from jailing people who cannot afford to pay fines and fees. https://aclu-co.org/blog/gov-signs-debtors-prison-ban-law/

Watch the full "Colbert Report" clip below. Then check out our End Debtors' Prisons campaign page at: https://aclu-co.org/campaigns/end-debtors-prisons/