Amsalu Kassaw came to the United States from Ethiopia 17 years ago. As he left, he feared arrest by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, a left-wing paramilitary group then in charge of the African country.
The 42-year-old father of three now works as a lieutenant for the GEO Group, the private contractor that runs the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Aurora.
That juxtaposition will no doubt be in mind during Kassaw’s swearing-in ceremony Monday, as he becomes the first immigrant of color to take a seat on the Aurora City Council. Last month, the council chose him, in a 6-4 vote, from a field of three hopefuls to fill an at-large seat vacated in the fall by former Councilman Dustin Zvonek.
Kassaw, now a U.S. citizen, sees nothing odd about the intersection of his job overseeing detained immigrants in Aurora and his story as a refugee from Ethiopia who sought new opportunities overseas.
“I give myself as an example of how to follow the rules,” he said.
Kassaw is launching his political career in a city that has become a flash point in the nation’s immigration debate. President-elect Donald Trump staged a campaign rally in the city in October amid headlines about members of a Venezuelan prison gang attacking and intimidating residents at a trio of apartment buildings in the city.
Recriminations between Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston — over the surge of migrants Colorado has seen in the last two years, and whether Denver has quietly pushed some of them into Aurora, as Coffman alleges — have become a contentious topic of late.
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