MAGNA — Luis Angel Colon had just dropped his son off at Copper Hills Elementary School in Magna when the federal agent pulled him over.

After entering the school and leaving his son, Colon "got in his truck. They let him drive off like three or four houses down and they pulled him over and arrested him there," said his sister Ale Jaimes, who also lives in Magna. "He stopped and they said, 'Luis Angel Colon,' and then they just said, 'You're being detained.'"

It was just one agent, wearing clothing emblazoned with the insignia of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations team, and Colon, originally from Mexico, didn't resist during the Jan. 27 encounter. The officer, later joined by an agent in another vehicle, "was nice enough to let my brother use his phone," Jaimes said. He called her, told her what was happening and asked her to care for his son.

Media representatives from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, wouldn't provide details about Colon's case. But the ICE online detainee database shows he's being held at the Nevada Southern Detention Center in Pahrump. Jaimes, now caring for her brother's 5-year-old son, her nephew, has been in daily phone contact with him and said that although he faces deportation to Mexico, he'll challenge removal.

"He says he's going to fight it," she said.

Colon, though he's had brushes with the law, is hardly the highest profile of detainees since ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies launched the ongoing crackdown on immigrants here illegally following the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Donald Trump. But as reports multiply of purported immigrant detentions across Utah and beyond, prompting nervousness and alarm in the immigrant community, his case offers a glimpse into the enforcement action unfolding across the nation.

Jaimes, for her part, worries in particular about the fate of her nephew, Luis Jr. She has been vocal about her brother's case in a bid to drum up support via a GoFundMe campaign in providing for the Utah-born boy and, if possible, preventing the separation of him and his dad as the specter of deportation looms.

"It's not like (Colon is) going to be deported to China. He's going back to Mexico, which is where he was born. My parents are over there. I have other siblings over there, so it's not a whole bad situation. I'm worried because of my nephew," said Jaimes, who was born in California and is a U.S. citizen. She has family members who live on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and her grandmother, a dual national, goes back and forth between the countries.

The Trump administration has characterized the crackdown as focused on immigrants here illegally with criminal records, particularly violent criminal records. Posts on the ICE X feed and ICE press releases especially focus on detentions of immigrants accused of kidnapping, rape, homicide and other high-profile crimes. "Targeted enforcement operations are planned arrests of known criminal aliens who threaten national security or public safety," reads a Jan. 24 ICE post on X.

Colon, 38, crossed the border from Mexico into the United States around 2004 and has lived in the country for about 21 years, 18 of them in Utah. He has a string of misdemeanor traffic offenses on his record dating to 2008, according to online Utah court records. In 2021, he pleaded guilty to lewdness involving a child, a class B misdemeanor, for having sex with a woman while his daughter was present, according to court documents. Jaimes said the girl, now living with her mother in another state, opened the door on her father while he was with his girlfriend at the time, surprising them. In 2023, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of driving under the influence of alcohol and received a sentence of two days in jail and 30 days of home confinement, court records show.

'Never, ever, ever asked for food stamps'

Jaimes said her brother paid the fines and otherwise complied with the sentences imposed in each of the cases, including community service in the lewdness case. "He's not a killer and not a rapist," she said, referencing the background of other immigrants here illegally who have been rounded up as part of the increased immigration enforcement efforts. "I know the kind of brother I have. He has a lot of people who are rooting for him."

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In fact, as far as she knows, her brother didn't have a deportation order against him. Colon, she said, made a living installing hardwood floors and paid taxes, and his detention came as a surprise.

"He was his own boss," Jaimes said. "Never, ever, ever asked for food stamps or Medicaid or anything like that."

Whatever the case, many have clamored for the deportation of those here illegally, an issue that helped propel Trump to his second term as president. Jaimes isn't quite sure how she'd answer them. "I don't even know what to say, to be honest. I just don't because they're not all the same situations, unfortunately," she said. "If ... this is not affecting you directly and you don't have nothing nice to say, don't say anything."

What she does know, however, is that she needs help. Her nephew, an American, doesn't have paperwork to go to Mexico should his father be deported, and with the boy's mom out of the picture, his future, in particular, weighs on her. As the crackdown on illegal immigration continues, she worries other families could be split as well.

"I need help with finding how to fix my nephew's situation and make sure he's safe. That's all I care about at this point, and that's why I'm reaching out and talking to people," Jaimes said.

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