The University of Utah student who’s been detained at an immigration center in Colorado for nearly two weeks will be soon released.
On Wednesday, a judge granted bond for 19-year-old Caroline Dias Goncalves, setting up the process for her to come home, her lawyer and family confirmed.
It will take 24 to 48 hours, a relative said the family has been told, for Dias Goncalves to be let go, but they are relieved.
“It doesn’t mean it’s over,” the relative said. “It’s a long ways still. But we’re just happy.”
The Salt Lake Tribune has agreed not to publish her relative’s name, as he is in the process of applying for a visa. He said he fears he and his family might be targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for speaking out. The Tribune has verified his identity.
Dias Goncalves’ Denver lawyer, immigration attorney Jon Hyman, also released a statement celebrating the bond and that Dias Goncalves will be “returned to her family and community in the coming days.”
[Earlier story: University of Utah student is being held at Colorado immigration detention center]
Hyman added: “Caroline’s arrest and detention should not have happened in the first place.”
Dias Goncalves was first pulled over on June 5 while on a trip to Denver. A deputy near Loma, Colorado, stopped her and issued her a warning for driving too close to a semi truck. Shortly down the road, near Grand Junction, she was then stopped again — this time, by ICE agents who detained her.
Her family saw her phone location pause in Aurora, where she was taken to a detention center. They didn’t hear from her for two days, until she was able to call and tell them what happened, her relative said.
The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office, whose deputy had first pulled her over, later discovered that messages in a Signal chat was being shared — without its knowledge or permission — with ICE agents.
Those agents, the sheriff’s office says, used the information the deputy wrote about Dias Goncalves to quickly find her down the road and arrest her.
(Mesa County Sheriff’s Office) Caroline Dias Goncalves, a University of Utah student, is seen in this screenshot from the body camera footage recorded by the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office deputy who originally pulled her over in Colorado on June 5, 2025. She was later detained by immigration officers shortly after the traffic stop.
“This use of information is contradictory to Colorado law,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release. “… Unfortunately, it resulted in the later contact between ICE and Miss Dias Goncalves.”
ICE agents were not part of the group chat, which was meant to be used for drug interdiction efforts in western Colorado. The deputies in that chat share information in the private messaging app for all traffic stops, even if drugs are not involved.
The sheriff’s office says it appears agents with Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI — which falls under ICE’s jurisdiction and is considered the federal enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — shared the messages with their ICE counterparts.
Colorado law does not allow for officers to inquire about residency status. The state also prohibits its officers from sharing information with federal immigration authorities. It doesn’t appear, though, that federal officers are beholden to that. The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office has said it has since removed all of its employees from the communications group.
The deputy who first pulled over Dias Goncalves — identified by the sheriff’s office as Alexander Zwinck — did ask Dias Goncalves where she was from when he said he noticed “a little bit of an accent.” Her friends and family have told The Tribune that she does not have an accent.
On Monday, the sheriff’s office released the 19-minute footage from Zwinck’s body camera captured during the traffic stop.
In the video, Dias Goncalves tells Zwinck that she has lived in Utah for the past 12 years.
“Born and raised, or no?” he asks.
“Uh no, I was born in Brazil,” Dias Goncalves responds.
Dias Goncalves’ relative has told The Tribune that she originally came to the United States with her parents in 2012, when she was 7. The family had a six-month tourist visa, which they overstayed. They were afraid to return to Brazil, the relative said, after experiencing violence there, including being robbed and held as hostages by gangs several times.
Dias Goncalves and her parents applied for asylum three years ago, the relative said, and that’s still pending.
Zwinck also asked her where she was going to school, and she responded at the University of Utah, where she is studying nursing. He said that he first thought her driver license was a student ID.
(Caroline Dias Goncalves family photo) Pictured is Caroline Dias Goncalves, who has been held at a Colorado immigration detention center since Thursday, June 5, 2025, according to her family.
Her detainment comes as President Donald Trump has pushed his administration to crack down on illegal immigration across the country, including increasing quotas for ICE arrests.
Messages from The Tribune to the ICE media office were not immediately returned Wednesday.
Friends and family are trying to raise money to cover legal costs that will continue when Dias Goncalves is released. They launched a GoFundMe campaign, which reads: “Caroline has always followed the law, passionately pursued her education and dreamed of a future full of opportunity.” As of Wednesday, more than $28,000 has been pledged in the campaign.
Dias Goncalves has been attending the University of Utah on a merit scholarship from a national “Dreamer” organization that provides funding for students who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DREAM program. That was established by former President Barack Obama in 2012 to protect young immigrants from deportation who were brought to the United States by their parents outside of the legal immigration system.
Trump has previously sought to end the DREAM program during his first term in office.
Gaby Pacheco, the president of TheDream.US — the organization that has supported Dias Goncalves’ scholarship — said in a statement Wednesday that she’s grateful the judge granted bond.
“We stand with Caroline and her loved ones as she prepares to return to her family and heal after the trauma of the past two weeks,” Pacheco said.
Dias Goncalves’ relative said her parents are aching to hug their daughter. Her mom, he said, has been crying every day since she learned Dias Goncalves was detained.
“It’s going to be a long process,” the relative said.
But the family, he added, will fight for her to be able to stay in the United States permanently.
