The gates leading into Aurora’s private immigration prison were locked on Saturday as a lone guard in tactical gear peered over the roof. Hundreds were gathered below.
He watched through binoculars as they walked together up and down the block. But he likely couldn’t hear them as they paused on the sidewalk. There was no yelling, just soft speech and prayer.
The Denver Contract Detention Facility, off Peoria Street, has long been the stage for protests and vigils pushing back on the nation’s dysfunctional immigration system. That’s been especially true in the last year, as federal crackdowns have spurred activists to hold weekly gatherings outside, supporting people incarcerated there.
But this occasion was led by a less usual figure, Denver’s outgoing Catholic Archbishop Samuel Aquila, who guided the mass of people through 12 Stations of the Cross.
This was not a protest, but politics were unavoidable in this prayer service. American bishops and Pope Leo recently made statements criticizing the nation’s treatment of immigrants. Archbishop Aquila didn’t mince words as he carried that message home.
“We must remember the dignity of every human being. That dignity is not bestowed by any government. That dignity comes from God and God alone. And both political parties have failed horribly when it comes to immigration,” he said. “They have treated immigrants as pawns for their own elections, for their own desires. And they have failed every immigrant.”
The service was, first, a message to people locked inside.
A recent “special message” from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was a big deal, Father Luke Barder said on Saturday. It was a rare proclamation, which called on the nation’s believers to support immigrants and preach their humanity to the world.
The service outside on the sidewalk was an expression of that mandate, he said, most importantly for people being held here.
The prison has held over 1,000 people almost every day since late 2024, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Local immigration arrests have grown under President Donald Trump, and have increasingly targeted people without criminal records.
“It's not meant to be a political protest. In many ways, it was us being able to come to the place where our brothers and sisters have been suffering — who've been perhaps feeling isolated and lonely, who may have been feeling forgotten — to know that, at the very least, the church is with them,” Barder said. “Many of them are Catholics.”
Barder, who leads the congregation at Federal Boulevard’s St. Dominic Church, added this was also a message to communities outside the prison. Families have been too afraid to attend mass or buy groceries. They needed solidarity.
K.C. Matthews, a member of Park Hill’s Cure d'Ars parish, said he’s been motivated to lend that kind of spiritual support.
“Knowing someone out here is praying for you, especially those who are spiritual people or who are believers, is sometimes enough to sustain you,” he said. “If you don't have faith, it's hard to have hope. And so we hope to give them hope.”
It was also a message to the world.
Taking a public moral stand isn’t unusual for Catholics, Barder said. The church is meant to influence broader culture.
Though he said faith transcends politics, and despite Aquila’s distrust of politicians, the archbishop was clear that a solution does lie within government.
In his closing remarks, Aquila called for the passage of the “Dignity Act,” so long as Congress didn’t “mess that up.” It would give longtime undocumented residents a way to obtain legal status.
“They may not have come with documents, but they have been living here peacefully for 10, 20, 30 years. And many of us know them. And they need a path to citizenship,” he told the crowd.
Barder said the muted procession was also a signal for anyone who feels a need to make a moral stand. He worries Americans have become too quick to dehumanize each other as they brawl into deeper polarization. Protests consumed by anger, he said, lead down a dark road.
“The church responds not with violence, but with preaching this truth,” he told us. “That we came out and we don't need to shout, and that so many came — that gives me hope.”
