This article comes by way of The Sopris Stars, a new monthly youth publication powered by The Sopris Sun.
Editor’s note: Due to the sensitivity of this article, student sources were kept anonymous.
Latino and white communities are intertwined in the Roaring Fork Valley, yet young immigrants, or children thereof, have felt threatened under President Donald Trump’s administration in the wake of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity across the country.
Though Mexican restaurants are local favorites and the Día De Los Muertos procession is a popular tradition in Carbondale, members of the immigrant community are facing a daunting reality. The Roaring Fork School District was 56.6% Latino during the 2024-2025 school year, according to the Colorado Department of Education’s demographic data. To be exact, 3,311 of the 5,842 students identified as Latino.
Interviews with local Latino students revealed the underlying fear surrounding ICE operations and other multi-cultural challenges that immigrants and first-generation Americans face.
“I consider myself American,” an 18 year old from Roaring Fork High School said. “But it can be hard to be prideful in that.”
She said her dual identity — a balance between her Mexican heritage and American citizenship — is beautiful, but can also be challenging. She is the first person in her family to be born in the United States and have experienced growing up here. She’s grateful to have access to so many new opportunities, yet humbled by some of her family members’ comparable disadvantages.
She not only has to guide her younger siblings, but her parents as well. She said that she has had to navigate school events, federal student aid and college applications alone.
“As the oldest, I’ve been forced to grow up faster than everyone else,” she said.
Growing up in the Valley, she often felt left out. She, along with other interviewees, described a social divide between Anglo and Latino students that can exist, and that friend groups are often composed of either or.
On a national scale, she feels like she has fallen victim to generalizations. “They [immigrants] are being categorized as criminals, but we’re not. It’s such a small group of people who are,” she stated.
She felt like Carbondale had always been safe, but under the Trump administration, she and her family have been afraid to travel, or even at times leave the house. Her parents, who have lived and worked in the Valley for over 20 years, began the process of switching bank accounts into her name due to the looming threat of deportation. She sometimes fears “the worst case scenarios.”
“What if they are not at my graduation?” she wondered.
Another student at Roaring Fork, 17, described how she often doesn’t feel like she is considered American, despite being born here. She feels like some only consider Americans as “white,” and, because that does not apply to her, she feels foreign.
She described the fear that surrounded Trump’s first election and the possibility of her parents being deported. In his second term, those fears have felt even more real as she’s watched the impact ICE has had on immigrant communities.
She’s also experienced an increase in discrimination directed towards her and other Latinos. She wondered if it was still there when she was little, but naivety blinded her. In January 2025, she visited North Carolina where a man yelled at her and her family, “Go back to your country.”
“We can’t even travel out of the fear of ICE,” she said.
Although she is a citizen, she said she felt relief when the school district enacted a policy promising that ICE would be unable to enter the schools without a warrant.
Voces Unidas de las Montañas, an organization based in Glenwood Springs that advocates for Latinos’ rights and well-being regionally, is helping pave a path through the uncertainty.
“Our larger mission is to make the Western Slope, and therefore Colorado, more equitable for all,” said Alex Sánchez, the president and CEO of Voces Unidas.
The organization has a 24/7 emergency hotline that acts as a tool to report and/or request information regarding missing family members, or to report ICE or supposed ICE activity. Voces Unidas investigates and verifies such reports.
“It’s critical for the times we live in. It’s important that we also confirm when it isn’t ICE, when it isn’t immigration control,” Sánchez said. “Because the people impacted by ICE are traumatized by any rumor, any insinuation that ICE is in their communities. We don’t want schools half empty, and we don’t want people to stop being able to go to work or use public transportation. We don’t want people to stop enjoying their lives out of fear.”
“It’s also critical, obviously, to confirm and report when there is, in fact, ICE activity, and when there is an operation in our community,” he continued. “Because people are literally being picked up off the streets and families are being separated.”
A third high school senior said that her parents, and most immigrants, come to the United States to try and create a better life for their family and themselves. She said that the same people who fly Trump flags may be kind to her face, but ultimately supported a government that wished her family had not come to the United States.
She described how scared she was before her mother had officially attained citizenship.
“I was terrified. ‘What if my mom doesn’t come home? What if my dad isn’t there?’” she said. “No child should have to experience that.”
“ICE is tearing families apart. What we need is to bring people together,” she added.