An Oakland resident who was detained by immigration agents at the Denver International Airport on July 20 and is being held in the Aurora ICE Processing Center in Colorado is getting legal help.

On Thursday, attorneys for Chantal Morales Rojas filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court. Habeas corpus petitions are essentially lawsuits that force the government to legally justify why they can continue to incarcerate someone, or else release the person.

Morales Rojas’ attorneys with the Lichter Immigration law firm say that ICE didn’t follow the law in her case.

In an email, ICE maintained that its actions were legal and proper.

According to Morales Rojas’ attorneys, ICE arrested her without a proper warrant and without making an individual determination that her detention is necessary.

“Nobody is arguing that the government can’t enforce the immigration laws,” Laura Lichter, Morales Rojas’ lead attorney, said in a press release. “All we’re saying is that those laws apply to the government, too.”

According to Lichter, Rojas, a 27-year-old software engineer and student, originally entered the United States in 2023 as a J-1 visa exchange visitor. Originally from Ecuador, she worked as an au pair in the Bay Area. Before her exchange visitor program ended, Morales Rojas “filed an application with U.S. immigration authorities that permits her to remain in the country while her case is under review, but doesn’t provide her with formal immigration status while she waits,” Lichter said.

Over the past three-and-a-half years, Morales Rojas has lived openly with the government aware of her pending application, according to her attorneys, and she passed background checks and had work authorization. She also has no criminal history, they said.

Morales Rojas was detained while attempting to board a Southwest Airlines flight from Denver to Oakland. Video of her arrest has been widely shared on social media. Her employers and friends were shocked by her arrest and organized a fundraising campaign to help pay for legal aid. Several people close to her, who’d been traveling with her, also stayed in Denver to coordinate support.

Asked about the claims made by Morales Rojas’ attorneys, an unnamed spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Morales Rojas entered the U.S. in 2024 and “overstayed her visa,” which only allowed her to remain in the country until Jan. 1, 2025.

“A pending asylum case and work authorization does NOT confer any type of legal status in the United States,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. 

Morales Rojas’ attorneys and friends haven’t said whether she ever applied for asylum, only that she had some type of application under review with federal immigration authorities at the time of her arrest.

“If a person enters our country illegally, they are subject to detention or deportation. Each illegal alien receives due process,” the DHS spokesperson said.

“You might not know it from watching the headlines for the last 18 months, but ICE generally can’t just arrest someone because they think they’re violating the immigration laws,” Lichter said. “They can put a case in front of an immigration judge if they think someone is here illegally, but unless there’s a special circumstance, they can’t legally detain someone without a proper arrest warrant and taking the time to review each case to see if a person is actually a flight risk or a danger.”

Lichter said the habeas petition filed yesterday asks a federal judge to immediately order Morales Rojas’ release, or to require the government to provide specific reasons why they believe she needs to be detained.

The facility where Morales Rojas is being held, Aurora, is under scrutiny right now because of an ongoing tuberculosis outbreak among some detainees. The center is run by the GEO Group, a private prison corporation that saw its net income jump by 800% in 2025, largely due to the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy.

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