Dream.US denounces that ICE detained a Utah Dreamer after a traffic stop
TheDream.US denounced that Caroline Dias Goncalves, a Utah Dreamer and TheDream.US scholarship recipient, was arrested by ICE and faces possible deportation
Dreamer student and TheDream.US scholarship recipient Caroline Dias Goncalves, a Utah resident, was detained by ICE after a traffic stop while traveling in Colorado, The Salt Lake City Post reported. Tribune.
Family and friends said an officer first stopped her as she was passing through Fruita and told her she was driving too close to a semi-trailer truck, a relative of Dias Goncalves told The Salt Lake Tribune.
Just days after Ximena Arias Cristobal, a TheDream.US intern and college student from Georgia, testified before the U.S. Senate about her detention by ICE, another Dreamer student was arrested and detained by ICE.
When Dias Goncalves, he says, showed his driver's license to the officer in Fruita, the officer told him it looked fake and began asking him where he was from.
Dias Goncalves said she lived in Utah. The officer, according to his relative, questioned whether that was the case because he thought he had an accent. However, his family and friends told The Tribune that the young woman does not have an accent. A friend was on the phone with Dias Goncalves when she was stopped.
Dias Goncalves then told the officer that she was born in Brazil and came to Utah as a child with her parents. Her relative said that was in 2012, when Dias Goncalves was 7.
The officer told her he would let her go with a warning. A Fruita City spokesman told The Tribune that it was not one of their officers who first stopped Dias Goncalves.
Shortly after, a few miles later in Grand Junction, she was stopped again, this time by ICE agents who arrested her, according to her relative.
“We’re going to take you,” Dias Goncalves said she was told, according to her relative, and no reason was given.
For two days, the family didn’t know what had happened, until Dias Goncalves was able to call them on Saturday, according to her relative. They had been tracking her phone and noticed that her location had frozen in Aurora.
Caroline,A 19-year-old University of Utah student, who has lived in Utah since arriving from Brazil at age 7, is currently being held in an immigration detention center in Colorado.
Her friends describe her as an avid country music fan and a dedicated University of Utah student.
In this year’s TheDream.US Scholar survey, Caroline shared, “I want to be successful, start a family, and make a change living in the United States. My biggest supporter this year was my friends, family, and of course, the Dream Center team, who always helped me when I needed it.”
TheDream.US denounced its scholar’s ??arrest and possible deportation.
Gaby Pacheco, President and CEO of TheDream.US, stated, “As I said earlier this week: Dreamers are under attack. That wasn’t an exaggeration. Now, another one of our scholarship recipients, Caroline, is being held at the ICE detention center and faces possible deportation. Is this really the way forward? Does detaining young students make America safer? Not at all.”
“We are in the middle of scholarship renewal season for the fall semester. The first step for every scholarship recipient is to complete the scholarship survey, which Caroline diligently did. It was a surprise that she didn’t renew her scholarship this year, but now we understand why.”
“Caroline should be released and return to her family, community, and life in Utah as soon as possible. And we must all redouble our efforts to ensure the permanence of Dreamers like Caroline and Ximena. Education, not detention and deportation. Every day we delay is another day that students like Caroline are in danger instead of being treated like the future leaders they are.”

