Sixth Judicial District Attorney Sean Murray is one of just a few prosecutors across the country who have pursued criminal charges against federal agents for their actions during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

On Tuesday, he filed misdemeanor assault and petty offense criminal mischief charges against U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer Nicholas Rice.

Murray told The Denver Post on Thursday that he did not consider that broader political landscape when he filed the case.

“Affirmatively no,” he said. “I tried to set that aside. I don’t think it is relevant to that decision-making process.”

He was aware of the political implications, he added, and he did consider federal statutes and federal use-of-force guidelines as he considered the case. Politics, though, didn’t factor into the decision-making, he said.

“At the end of the day, it shouldn’t matter, as long as there is an analysis about supremacy clause immunity,” he said, referencing the broad legal protections federal agents have when acting in the course of their official duties.

“It is a slightly different posture, procedurally, than a typical case when someone can’t claim that,” he said. “So there is an added layer of analysis to the charging decision in that regard. But I think it¶¶Òőap incumbent upon state and local prosecutors to enforce the criminal code.”

Murray emphasized that all defendants are considered innocent unless and until proven guilty, and declined to discuss the specifics of the case against Rice.

The began investigating the case in October at the request of Durango police Chief Brice Current in the wake of a widely-circulated video that showed a masked federal officer snatch protester Franci Stagi’s phone, drag her across a street and throw her to the ground during an at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Durango.

Stagi, a retired hypnotherapist, said she reached for the officer’s shoulder to get his attention after she lost her phone. She said he put her in a chokehold and threw her down an embankment next to the street. She said she still experiences pain in her arm while doing everyday activities, like putting on her jacket.

“It did open my eyes to how quickly I can be under someone else’s control, and it¶¶Òőap frightening,” said Stagi, whose legal name is Anne Francesca Stagi.

The Justice Department has taken a hard line against state efforts to arrest or prosecute federal agents, citing the broad legal protections. Late last year, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said arrests of federal officers performing their duties would be “illegal and futile,” citing the Constitution’s supremacy clause and federal law.

Legal experts say those protections are significant but not absolute and that the supremacy clause does not provide blanket immunity.

In a statement on the Colorado charges, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said states do not have the authority to investigate such cases.

“Federal officers acting in the course of their duties can only be investigated by other Federal agencies,” the statement read.

The department said it was still investigating what happened in the incident.

Murray said Thursday he expects Rice’s case to move to federal court for the debate on federal immunity. He added he considered that potential defense as he decided whether to bring charges.

Stagi said Wednesday she was disappointed Rice was charged with less serious crimes. The assault charge, a misdemeanor, carries a maximum sentence of just under a year in jail. But she hopes the prosecution sends a message that immigration officers can’t tackle people indiscriminately and use excessive force.

Across the country, at least two other federal agents have been charged with crimes amid the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement effort.

Earlier this month, a federal immigration agent was charged with two counts of second-degree assault by a county prosecutor in Minnesota amid investigations into the actions of several officers during the immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis area.

ICE officer Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. is accused of pointing his gun at occupants of a car after pulling alongside them on a Minneapolis-area highway. Investigators say Morgan said he feared for his safety after the vehicle swerved in front of him.

Outside Chicago, an off-duty ICE agent has been charged with misdemeanor battery for throwing to the ground a 68-year-old protester who was filming him at a gas station in December. The Homeland Security Department says the agent acted in self-defense.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

A Colorado prosecutor said Wednesday that the officer has been charged with third-degree assault and criminal mischief following an investigation into the treatment of a protester in October.

U.S. border protection officer charged with assault after southern Colorado ICE protest

Multiple videos show a masked federal agent seizing a 57-year-old woman, who says she was put in a chokehold, during the protest in Durango.

Colorado is among several states to prohibit or severely limit the use of chokeholds and neck restraints by police officers. But immunity provisions under the U.S. Constitution and federal law limit the reach of local authorities in prosecuting federal agents.

Here’s what to know:

Investigations underway in Minnesota and Chicago

The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics have spurred an array of investigations by state and local authorities.

Earlier this month, a federal with two counts of second-degree assault by a county prosecutor in Minnesota amid investigations into the actions of several officers during the immigration crackdown .

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. is accused of pointing his gun at occupants of a car after pulling alongside them on a Minneapolis-area highway. Investigators say Morgan said he feared for his safety after the vehicle swerved in front of him.

Minnesota officials also have for investigations into three shootings during the crackdown, including those that resulted in the deaths of and .

Outside Chicago, an off-duty ICE agent has been charged with misdemeanor battery for throwing to the ground a 68-year-old protester who was filming him at a gas station in December. The Homeland Security Department that oversees ICE says the agent acted in self-defense.

In California, the shooting death of 43-year-old Keith Porter by an off-duty ICE agent on New Year’s Eve has prompted protests and calls for an independent investigation.

Federal officers and the supremacy clause

Federal law enforcement officers have broad legal protections when acting in the course of their official duties, and the Justice Department has taken a hard line against state efforts to arrest or prosecute federal agents.

Late last year, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said arrests of federal officers performing their duties would be “illegal and futile,” citing the Constitution’s supremacy clause and federal law.

Legal experts say those protections are significant but not absolute and that the supremacy clause does not provide blanket immunity.

In a statement on the Colorado charges, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said states do not have the authority to investigate such cases.

“Federal officers acting in the course of their duties can only be investigated by other Federal agencies,” the statement said.

Conduct by ICE officers is under additional scrutiny amid a rapid hiring spree and .

Flashpoint in Colorado mountain town

The altercation in Colorado arose from demonstrations over the detention on Oct. 27 of three Colombian asylum-seekers -- a man and two children — while they were on their way to school in the morning. In late October, protesters gathered outside an ICE facility in Durango, a college town and destination for outdoor recreation in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado.

Multiple videos show a masked federal agent placing Franci Stagi in what she described as a chokehold. Chokeholds have been at the center of public discourse and state legislative initiatives about what constitutes an unreasonable use of force since died in New York in 2014 after he was put in a chokehold by a police officer.

Stagi, a retired hypnotherapist, said she reached for the agent¶¶Òőap shoulder to get his attention and that he then grabbed her by the hair, put her neck in the crook of his arm and carried her across the street by her head before throwing her down an embankment next to the street.

Court documents allege that Customs and Border Protection officer Nicholas Rice committed third-degree assault by causing bodily injury to Stagi, but the documents don’t describe how she was injured or make mention of a chokehold. Court documents didn’t list any attorney as representing the officer.

A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which launched its own investigation, didn’t immediately respond to questions about the charges.

Stagi says she’s disappointed Rice was charged with less serious crimes but hopes the prosecution sends a message that immigration officers can’t tackle people indiscriminately and use excessive force.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer Nicholas Rice, 47, is facing a misdemeanor and petty offense charge after he “was involved in an immigration enforcement activity in Durango,” the Sixth Judicial District Attorney’s Office said in a news release Tuesday.

The DA’s office did not provide further details about the case, only referring to the “incident at (the) ICE facility in Durango” on Oct. 28 that was investigated by the .

CBI officials began investigating after a widely shared video showed a masked federal officer snatched a woman’s phone, then grabbed her and threw her to the ground when she tried to take it back during a protest outside the ICE facility in southern Colorado.

Protesters gathered outside the facility after immigration agents arrested a Durango father and his two children while he was taking them to school the morning of Oct. 27. An ICE official later testified that the agents pulled over the wrong person but decided to arrest the man, Fernando Jaramillo-Solano, and his 12- and 15-year-old children anyway.

Jaramillo-Solano, who is Colombian, later requested voluntary departure from the U.S. because of “mental, physical and emotional trauma” he and his children experienced while detained in Texas, advocates said in November.

The family, including the children’s mother, who was not detained, was living in Durango with a pending asylum case at the time of the arrest.

Customs and Border Protection officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday night. Rice could not be reached for comment about the case.

The case against Rice was filed less than a week after with assault for allegedly pointing his gun at people in a car on a Minneapolis-area highway.

Both cases raise questions about whether they could intensify clashes between the states and President Donald Trump’s administration over immigration enforcement. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, has warned that the Justice Department could investigate and prosecute state or local officials who arrest federal agents for actions performed during their official duties.

Rice was issued a court summons for the charges on Tuesday and is set to appear in court for an advisement hearing on May 27, court records show.

Denver District Court Judge A. Bruce Jones found that the new subpoena sent to last month was substantially the same request that Polis fought to be able to fulfill last spring. Jones found that complying with both the new request and the first subpoena, which had sought identical employment and personal information about the sponsors of children without permanent legal status, would likely violate state law prohibiting information-sharing with federal immigration officials.

“It is impossible to reasonably look at the March 13 subpoena and not consider it against the backdrop of what has happened in this case before,” Jones said about the more recent subpoena, at the end of Tuesday’s two-hour hearing. “Because it’s the same people being asked about. It’s the same agency. It’s the same apparent-looking subpoena.”

His order specifically prohibits Polis from ordering officials in the labor department’s Division of Labor Standards and Statistics to comply. While Jones said complying with the subpoena would likely violate state law, he did not block Polis from otherwise complying with the subpoena or directing other state employees to do so. It’s similar to the ruling Jones issued against Polis in June.

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama said the governor was “committed to working with our federal partners on criminal investigations, and will follow state law and will abide by the court’s decision regarding this particular subpoena.”

“The Governor is grateful that this is a limited ruling and the court did not preclude the state from complying with all other subpoenas or strengthening ongoing efforts with all law enforcement, including local and federal, to tackle serious crime,” Maruyama wrote.

Polis’ attorneys said Tuesday that the governor essentially trusted an ICE agent’s word that the agency wanted the information for a criminal probe, rather than so that ICE could arrest and deport immigrant children or their guardians, as the groups suing Polis have alleged.

State officials and Polis’ staff would not say if the state intended to comply with this latest request when asked by The Post last month.

Jones’ verbal order did not go as far as had been requested by attorneys representing a former state labor official, Scott Moss, as well as the state employees union. They had asked the judge to issue a far more sweeping injunction limiting compliance with future immigration subpoenas sent to the labor department.

The governor had argued he could comply with the 2025 subpoena because, he claimed, it was part of a criminal investigation — which would make information-sharing allowable under state law. But Jones rejected that claim in June, and did so again about the latest request, which seeks the same employment information — about 10 of the same people — as the prior subpoena.

In the new subpoena, however, ICE agents repeatedly said the information was now needed as part of a specific criminal investigation. Polis’ attorneys argued that was sufficient to allow information to be shared under state law.

But Laura Wolf, one of Moss’ attorneys, argued that the new subpoena’s language was evidence only that ICE agents were monitoring the lawsuit and knew what they needed to say.

Jones agreed.

“I think it’s a pretty fair inference (to make), that somebody out there were with the authority to issue subpoenas is looking at this (case) and saying, ‘The governor really would like to cooperate with us, if we just provide him with the means to do so,’ ” Jones said. “And apparently, the means to do so is to use a talismanic phrase — ‘criminal investigation’ — at which point, boom, we cooperate.”

Christopher Beall, one of the attorneys hired by the state to represent Polis, told Jones that the court should look at the new subpoena on its own and not draw conclusions about ICE’s intentions based on the prior request.

“I did not wake up in a new world today,” Jones said in response. He looked across the room at Beall. “And nobody here did, either.”

Last week, Polis was deposed under oath by Moss’ attorneys. The transcript of that exchange has not been publicly released, though Wolf referenced excerpts in court Tuesday. She said that a lawyer from the state attorney general’s office had emailed ICE officials, requesting that they obtain a subpoena authorized by a grand jury if they wanted the information they were seeking.

But in his deposition, according to Wolf, Polis indicated that the state attorney’s request wasn’t made at his office’s direction, and he said the state’s new subpoena policy — which gives the governor broad discretion to determine when to turn over records to ICE — did not require a grand jury subpoena.

Indeed, Polis’ policy prioritizes swift responses to subpoenas that mention criminal investigations, while also seeking to shield discussions of compliance from ever being made public.

Tuesday’s hearing came after Wolf learned that the labor department received the second subpoena in March. Wolf had previously requested that Jones issue a more sweeping injunction against Polis in case state officials receive more subpoenas seeking similar information to the one rejected last year.

Polis’ attorneys responded to that request dismissively, arguing that there was no indication that such a subpoena was imminent.

In fact, the new subpoena had been sent to state officials a week before Polis’ attorneys asked Jones to deny Wolf’s request.

Manuel went after the dog in their Colorado Springs neighborhood. A stranger ran with him, trying to help, and when they reached the startled animal, the dog bit the stranger.

Law enforcement showed up. Manuel was given a court hearing for the dog bite.

The case was later dismissed. But when Manuel left the courthouse in September, he said two cars followed him. The 23-year-old stopped for gas and was quickly surrounded by federal agents from .

The undocumented immigrant, who had come with his parents from Mexico when he was 3 years old and had never been in trouble with the law before the dog bite, was detained in the state’s only immigration facility in Aurora for the next two months.

“It was not very pleasant,” he said. He spoke on condition that he only be identified by his middle name to speak candidly about his experiences with the federal government. “I’ve never been in trouble before. It really takes a toll on you mentally.”

As federal authorities pursue President Donald Trump’s goal of arresting and deporting millions of immigrants without legal status, they moved last summer to block longtime U.S. residents from requesting bail in immigration cases, and they have kept others, who would have been released under previous administrations, detained indefinitely.

Caught in that cycle, Manuel was only released after his attorneys filed — and a judge granted — a habeas petition in federal court.

Once a technically complicated legal rarity used to challenge improper incarcerations, habeas corpus petitions have become the predominant avenue for immigrants seeking release from detentions that increasingly end only with a deportation order.

With bail sharply curtailed and other avenues of release all but closed off, Colorado has seen an explosion of habeas cases: In the first 100 days of 2026, more than 370 detained immigrants have asked federal judges to either grant them bail hearings denied by ICE, or to release them altogether. The surge is an unprecedented increase from 2025’s total of 104 and 2024’s total of a bare dozen.

In his first 19 years as a lawyer, Denver immigration attorney Hans Meyer said he’d filed six habeas cases. In the past six months, his firm filed 60. When ICE first moved to withhold bail from a broad swath of detainees last summer, few people in detention were aware that filing habeas petitions was an option.

“The first three months, very few people understood the issue,” Meyer said. “For the next three months, people might know it was an option, but didn’t know much more. But now people in detention always go to habeas first.”

So significant is the crush that attorneys from the , which oversees ICE, have stepped in to help federal prosecutors deal with the cases. The highest-ranking federal prosecutor in the state, U.S. Attorney Peter McNeilly, has also personally handled some of the petitions. It’s the only time this century that a U.S. attorney has made personal appearances on such cases, The Denver Post found.

The declined to comment for this story. Jeffrey Colwell, the clerk for the , confirmed The Post’s case data.

“It does put a significant burden on our judges and chambers,” he said. “It’s 300-plus cases that we haven’t historically seen.”

In an unsigned statement, the Department of Homeland Security said it abides by court orders and was unsurprised by the habeas surge, claiming “no lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better than illegal aliens in the United States.”

Peering inside the ‘deportation machine’

Habeas petitions have been a part of American law since the nation’s founding, and they’ve been used in immigration proceedings in past years, too.

They’re used generally to challenge someone’s detention or incarceration, though not necessarily the underlying case that led to that confinement. Immigrants who are released or given bail hearings through habeas cases are still subject to deportation proceedings — like Manuel, whose immigration case remains underway.

But these petitions offer an avenue out of detention, and their prominence is surging, particularly as — which fall under the authority of the federal government — bend to the Trump administration’s goals.

The assumption that immigration courts can resolve detention questions “no longer holds,” the . Instead, immigration lawyers are taking their arguments out of immigration hearings and into federal court, where appointed judges can’t be removed on a whim. Indeed, they’ve shown a “striking willingness to intervene” in detention cases, the association wrote.

Because habeas cases are complicated — but the need for them is now enormous — immigration attorneys have also worked to train more lawyers on how to file them. Laura Lunn, of the , said she’s hosting a “massive training” at the end of April with the to bring non-immigration lawyers up to speed on writing and filing habeas petitions.

For this story, The Post reviewed scores of habeas petitions and hundreds of pages of court filings, along with publicly available arrest and court data detailing ICE practices. If the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is a “deportation machine,” as Meyer describes it, then the habeas petitions provide a glimpse into that machine’s inner workings. The filings describe both how immigrants end up in detention as well as the efforts that Trump officials have undertaken to keep them detained.

One man was arrested at an Ace Hardware. A Colombian father was arrested in Lakewood the same day he and his wife were set to close on a house. Several said they were arrested after they showed up for routine immigration check-ins at ICE offices in Colorado. A man from Guinea arrived at his case worker’s office to have his ankle monitor removed and found ICE agents waiting for him instead.

One man showed up for work at the , where he was directed to wait for a new ID badge in a side room, his lawyers later alleged. ICE agents came instead.

Upending nearly three decades of federal law, Manuel and many of those who’ve filed habeas petitions were denied bail during their detention proceedings. That about-face is the primary cause of the habeas crush: Since the mid-1990s, federal immigration authorities and the court system that oversees them would release immigrants who had no criminal record and were arrested within America’s interior.

Under the Trump administration, however, ICE and the courts have moved to keep those immigrants in custody, denying them bail under a separate federal law previously reserved for people arrested at the border.

The that ICE is now employing to block many immigrants from bail also requires mandatory detention — which attorneys argue is the point. Detention centers are like prisons, and 65% of immigrants arrested in Colorado over the past year have never been convicted of a crime. They’re likely not used to facilities like the one in Aurora, where the lights stay on at all times and the food, Manuel said, is often soggy or inedible.

Without access to bail, many detainees choose to leave: Aurora has seen a jump in deportation orders in the past year, including an unprecedented surge in immigrants asking for immediate removal.

Surging cases tied to size of Aurora facility

The increase in Colorado habeas filings is also partially driven by the size of the Aurora detention center, which can hold more than 1,500 people at any one time. It’s one of the largest facilities in the United States and attracts arrestees from across the country — meaning more people seeking release.

Attorneys for a Maryland man said he was arrested after ICE checked license plates in his neighborhood and discovered he had a “derogatory immigration history.” A teenager in New York, brought to the U.S. as a minor, was arrested after he got into a fender-bender in a snowstorm. Several men were arrested during traffic stops in Florida. All eventually were brought to the detention center in Aurora.

The filings detail myriad other ways the Trump administration has sought to keep immigrants detained.

When bail is granted, ICE appeals, prolonging detention for 90 more days. Some people with years-old removal orders have been re-arrested. For years, deportations could be indefinitely delayed if an immigrant successfully argued that they’d be tortured or persecuted if they were returned home. They would often be released and told to check in regularly with federal authorities.

Now, however, ICE will hold those individuals — who are often religious or political minorities, or members of the LGBTQ+ community — while they try to find another country to send them.

The Post reviewed more than a dozen habeas petitions filed in recent months by those immigrants detained in Colorado. Several detainees were transgender and feared they would be harmed or killed if they were returned home. One gay man from a country in North Africa was nearly deported to Cameroon, , before his habeas petition was granted.

If another country won’t take the detainees, then they languish in detention.

For those cases, as well as for detainees seeking bail, “habeas is the only way that most folks are getting out of detention, and more folks are being both arrested and held in detention than ever before,” said Shira Hereld, an attorney with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.

Indeed, immigration arrests in Colorado surged nearly 300% during Trump’s first year in office. The Aurora detention center has also flexed to its maximum capacity, and by the end of 2025, the facility regularly housed more than 1,400 people at a time.

Federal judges push back

As the flood of habeas petitions washed into federal courtrooms in Denver, judges have repeatedly rejected ICE’s effort to rewrite federal law and have ordered bail hearings or the immediate release of immigrants. They’ve also ordered the release of some people held indefinitely while ICE searches for a country to take them.

Of the more than 100 habeas petitions that have already been closed this year, a federal judge rejected only one, The Post found, while a few dozen more were duplicates or were dismissed voluntarily.

One attorney wrote to a Colorado judge that ICE’s position has been rejected more than 1,500 times nationwide. In their petitions, some attorneys have taken to listing the individual habeas cases that the Trump administration has lost, a tally that stretches over multiple pages.

In its unsigned statement, the Homeland Security Department said it was “applying the law as written. If an immigration judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period.”

In January, U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson wrote that “the court has concluded, many times over,” that ICE’s interpretation was incorrect. In March, U.S. District Judge Regina Rodriguez granted another petition and wrote that she was “once more (joining) the chorus of courts in this district and around the nation that have overwhelmingly rejected (ICE’s) position.”

“Sometimes it is difficult to arrive at conclusions or resolve issues, due, perhaps, to an issue’s complexity, or the lack of guidance available to help resolve it,” U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney wrote in another case from January. “Neither circumstance is present here.”

Still, the lower-court rulings have not shifted ICE’s posture, and immigrants arrested in Colorado are still routinely denied bail.

A class-action lawsuit challenging the practice, filed by Meyer, the Denver immigration lawyer, and the , earned an initial favorable ruling but is now awaiting a higher court’s intervention. A judge in California struck down ICE’s new bail policy in December, but that ruling has also been held up as a higher court considers it. Another federal appeals court has backed the policy.

The regional rulings point to a prolonged legal battle.

“This is an alley knife fight,” Meyer said. “It’s going to play out circuit court by circuit court, and then end up at the Supreme Court.”

Until the Supreme Court weighs in, “we’re all running around like chickens with our heads cut off every day,” Lunn said, “because the law changes every day depending on which court rules. And we’re having to bring individual challenges for each and every client when the fundamental issue is these massive policies that impact everybody across the country.”

‘A dream that ended up becoming a nightmare’

In the meantime, the number of habeas cases filed in Colorado will only grow. For people like Javier Campos, it offers the only way out.

In July, ICE agents pulled Campos over in Aurora and arrested him. He spent nearly 100 days in the Aurora detention center before he was released last fall. He lost weight because the food was inedible, he said in an interview. He struggled with Bell’s palsy, a neurological condition that causes paralysis in facial muscles.

Through a translator, Campos described his experience in the immigration system as “disgraceful.” A citizen of Mexico, he’d been in the U.S. for 30 years. He worked in the construction industry. He had a wife, and four children who were U.S. citizens. In another time, detention would have been unlikely, and bail a given.

He was initially granted bail in August — $10,000, a sum far higher than what was typical in previous years, immigration lawyers said. Attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security immediately appealed, blocking Campos’ release for three more months. That prompted the habeas filing.

He was finally released shortly before Thanksgiving, but his immigration case continues.

“A lot of the people would just give up their rights and leave because it gets really difficult to not have money to pay for an attorney,” Campos said. “A lot of people would just give up and leave and be deported. It was very sad seeing the things that went on there because a lot of guys came here for a dream that ended up becoming a nightmare — such a bad nightmare that it would cause stress and nightmares we couldn’t wake up from.”

The investment that Denver International Airport made in the new security checkpoints certainly paid off during the government shutdown. The wait times were hardly affected, and my visitors had no troubles at all. Great job, DIA!

Tobi Howell, Idaho Springs

Support public health intervention at immigration center

Re: “Adams Co. Health Department admonishes ICE detention center,” March 30 news story

It is appalling to read that the ICE detention center in Aurora is acting with impunity in not complying with the public health inspection and not following recommendations intended to protect the health and safety of detainees and staff alike. All the Adams County Health Department can do at this point is “admonish” them!

The appalling conditions inside the detention center have been well-documented by the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, including insufficient medical and prenatal care, extreme temperatures, nutritional neglect, and deteriorating mental health.

We cannot accept these injustices and the human suffering that is being inflicted on our community members. We are not helpless! is making its way through the state legislature. It would expand the health department¶¶Òőap authority and subject the detention center to a civil penalty and/or revocation of its license for failure to comply with its directives.

I implore everyone to contact their state legislators today and demand the passage of this bill.

Maureen Daly, Wheat Ridge

Troubled waters for our republic

America is the Titanic.

Trump 2.0 is the iceberg.

The 99% are the steerage class.

The 1% get all lifeboats.

It took the Titanic 2 hours and 40 minutes to sink. It’s taken America 250 years. Democracy isn’t unsinkable after all.

Scott Stoddard, Aurora

Don’t cut the education all Americans need — especially now

Re: “,” March 28 news story

No, no, no to cuts to social studies testing and learning. Inflation is spiking because high-level decision makers didn’t understand the importance of the Strait of Hormuz, and Colorado thinks we should de-emphasize both geography and economics? It’s never a good time to tell teachers, students, and parents that civics doesn’t matter, but now? When our democracy is in peril? To save a million bucks? What’s tested is taught, and what’s not tested is not taught. Our state and our country depend on people who understand civics, history, geography and economics. Cutting it is foolish.

Joan Jacobson, Lakewood

Go ahead, try out that turn signal

Modern-day automobiles can drive themselves and park themselves. They come with global tracking systems that direct motorists to their destinations. Cars are capable of providing verbal answers to spoken questions, playing favorite songs on demand, brewing coffee, showing films, placing bets and reciting poetry.

Many even come with something called “turn signals” that indicate a driver’s intention to turn. However, these require thoughtfulness and respect and, therefore, here in the United States, they are rarely used.

Craig Marshall Smith, Highlands Ranch

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

The data provides detailed insights into the dramatic effects of the Trump administration’s mass arrest and deportation efforts in the state and across the country — what one immigration attorney previously described as the federal government’s “deportation machine.”

The share of arrestees who have criminal convictions has plummeted, the data shows, while deportations of those with no criminal history have surged, despite federal officials’ claims that they’re pursuing the The Denver Post analyzed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data . It included arrests in the full year ending Jan. 20, the anniversary of the start of Trump’s second term.

Of the thousands arrested in the state, 78% had a listed date of departure — indicating that they’d already been removed from the United States.

The people arrested in Colorado came from more than 80 countries spread across five continents. Two thousand and one came from Mexico and 782 from Venezuela. Among others, 316 were from Guatemala, 22 from China, a dozen from Afghanistan and four from the United Kingdom.

They ranged in age from a 91-year-old Mexican man deported last year to two children who were, at most, a  year old; one of them has also been deported, the data shows. At least 121 people were younger than 18. Ten of the arrestees were Iranians, all arrested within days of the in June.

Five Venezuelans were removed under the statute created by the Alien Enemies Act, the 18th-century law that . All five were transferred to a Texas facility and then were removed on March 15, 2025, the data set shows. The men then disappear from the data. On that same day, nearly 300 people were sent to the prison in El Salvador from the same Texas detention center, .

In the 12 months prior to Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, 1,202 immigrants without legal status were arrested in Colorado. More than 58% of them had prior criminal convictions, while nearly 24% more had pending charges. Only 17.7% had no criminal history.

Looking at the Trump-era arrests, those trends flipped. Of the 4,750 people arrested over the ensuing 12 months, the largest group — 38% — had no criminal history, compared to nearly 35% with prior convictions and 26% with pending charges.

Surge in ICE presence, arrests

The Post analyzed ICE arrest and detention data obtained and released in full by the , which is composed of researchers and lawyers based primarily at the University of California, Berkeley.

For the purposes of its analysis, The Post examined arrests that occurred in Colorado during the 12-month period that began when Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025, and compared it to arrests made during President Joe Biden’s final year in office.

The Deportation Data Project, using data obtained from public records requests, has released four broad batches of ICE data detailing arrests and detentions since Trump’s return to office. ICE has released far more limited information on its operations, often focusing on arrests of immigrants with criminal backgrounds.

Using unique identifiers attached to each arrestee, The Post excluded a number of apparent duplicate arrests from its analysis. In both 2024 and 2025, The Post examined only the arrests that the data identified as occurring in Colorado or at a specific location within the state.

The Post used publicly available information and multiple datasets to match more than a dozen specific arrests — of a Colombian family from Durango; of a Brazilian-born college student on I-70; of a Peruvian school teacher and her family; of a who later died in a Mississippi detention center — to corresponding entries in the Berkeley data.

The surge in arrests came as ICE has significantly ramped up its presence in the state. Gregory Davies, a senior ICE official in Denver, testified in court last month that the number of deportation officers in the area has more than doubled — to roughly 200 — since Trump’s return to office. The Denver field office also has responsibility for Wyoming.

A recent of internal ICE data identified more than 5,200 ICE arrests in Colorado and Wyoming between Trump’s inauguration and mid-December. In the Denver area, the Times found, arrests peaked last summer and have declined since.

The Post’s analysis found a similar trend in Colorado: There were more than 500 arrests in both June and July, averaging more than 17 per day. Over the fall and winter, they dropped, averaging between 12 and 14 per day.

The ICE detention center in Aurora has flexed its capacity to the maximum possible and can now hold more than 1,500 detainees, according to federal contracting records. When Trump was inaugurated, the facility held just over 1,000 people. By the end of the year, its daily population regularly topped 1,400, the Berkeley data shows.

Federal officials have also pursued plans to open one or more additional detention facilities in Colorado.

In an unsigned statement Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said the data — which was obtained by the data project through public records requests — “is not accurate.” An unidentified media office representative did not say what part of the data was incorrect and did not directly address questions about The Post’s findings.

“The facts are: ICE is targeting criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, criminals, gang members and more,” the DHS representative wrote in an email to The Post. “Nearly 70% of ICE arrests nationwide are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S.”

Numbers are ‘not at all surprising’

In October, attorneys suing ICE for its arrest practices questioned the now-former head of ICE’s Denver field office about a prior Post analysis of the Berkeley data. That official, Robert Guadian, said he didn’t know exact numbers but didn’t dispute The Post’s findings.

Davies, the other senior official, testified last month that the agency now averages between 15 and 25 arrests per day. The Post’s analysis shows ICE has arrested just under 15 people per day on average since late January of this year and 13 per day since the start of Trump’s term.

The findings also align with what immigrant-rights advocates and immigration attorneys are seeing in real time.

“They’re not at all surprising,” Laura Lunn, an immigration attorney with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, said of the numbers. “They’re (emotionally) deflating, but not surprising.”

“Obviously, so much has happened since this administration took over, but I think a lot of folks don’t necessarily remember that Trump announced Operation Aurora shortly (before) he took office,” she continued. “Communities in Denver and Aurora were targeted for mass enforcement actions. We saw military-grade vehicles rolling down the streets of Denver before we saw the same thing happening in L.A., Chicago, Minneapolis.”

The surge in arrests has led to an accompanying growth in deportations, particularly as federal officials have moved to keep immigrants detained indefinitely by, among other things, granting bail far less often to longtime residents of the United States.

Over the past year, according to earlier Post reporting, an unprecedented number of Aurora detainees have been granted voluntary departures — essentially deportations without a more punitive court order. More than 1,700 people have requested voluntary removals from the facility since the start of 2025, according to — a level unparalleled by any period since the researchers began tracking it nearly 30 years ago.

Of the 4,750 people arrested in Colorado during Trump’s first year back in office, 3,710 have already left the United States, the Berkeley data shows.

More than 62% of those arrested and removed last year had never been convicted of a crime, while more than a third had no criminal history.

Polis had attempted to fulfill a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement subpoena last year, only for the judge to tell him that doing so would be illegal under state laws limiting cooperation with ICE. It was baseless, the governor’s attorneys argued, to suggest that a similar subpoena would come anytime soon.

That argument was submitted to the court on March 20. But a week earlier, ICE had sent a subpoena to state officials that bore striking similarities to the request Polis had tried to comply with last spring.

The new subpoena, which has not been previously reported, was also sent to , according to a copy obtained by The Denver Post. Last year’s request sought information on the sponsors of minors without legal status who had been separated from their parents and were in the custody of relatives or guardians; the recent subpoena says ICE wants information on “sponsors” and requests the exact same employment and personal information that the 2025 version sought.

The latest subpoena comes as a Denver judge this week rejected Polis’ request that the 2025 litigation end with no additional limits placed on the governor’s authority to respond to ICE subpoenas. The disclosure of a new subpoena also comes as

At the same time, the governor’s staff has quietly rolled out a new policy that would keep deliberations about subpoena responses secret from the public.

In an unsigned statement to The Post on Tuesday evening, the labor department said it had not yet responded to the latest ICE subpoena, which requested a response by March 30. Asked if the state intended to fulfill the subpoena, a representative who didn’t provide their name said Wednesday that the agency was still working through Polis’ new policy. That policy gives final authority on subpoena compliance to the governor’s office.

Eric Maruyama, a spokesman for Polis, referred comment on the subpoena to the labor department and did not respond to questions about Polis’ legal filings.

The subpoena was disclosed this week in ongoing litigation against Polis by a now-former state employee, Scott Moss. Moss sued Polis last year over the earlier ICE subpoena, challenging the governor’s intent to comply with it.

Laura Wolf, Moss’ attorney, accused Polis’ legal team this week of withholding the new subpoena. She wrote that she received the subpoena through a public records request after asking Polis’ legal team for it.

In the subpoena, because the names of the sponsors are redacted, it’s unclear if ICE is seeking information on any of the same people as last year, though the list of sponsors is shorter this time.

“It is clear the governor intends to share personal identifying information with ICE to support the agency’s lawlessness and inhumane practices,” Wolf said in a statement to The Post.

Colorado’s laws limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities have come under fire from the Trump administration. But on Tuesday, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice against state and Denver officials, rejecting the federal government’s attempt to strike down their limitations.

At issue: Is an investigation criminal?

Under an , state officials can comply with ICE subpoenas if they’re related to criminal investigations. Polis had tried to argue that the 2025 request fit under that exemption — a claim that Denver District Court Judge A. Bruce Jones rejected as baseless.

Moss, who left the labor department last summer, argued that complying with the 2025 subpoena would violate the state law limiting information-sharing with ICE. He had worked as director of the Division of Labor Standards and Statistics.

ICE’s 2025 subpoena said the agency wanted the information so it could check on the well-being of the children who were separated from their parents. But in the new subpoena, an ICE agent wrote that the information was now being sought as part of an “active criminal investigation into specific human trafficking crimes.”

The document does not provide any additional information about the investigation, and the document states elsewhere that the subpoena is part of an “investigation or inquiry relating to enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.” The subpoena is not signed by a judge.

The new and explicit reference to an “active criminal investigation” is evidence only that ICE has paid attention to the litigation, Moss’ attorneys argued in a legal filing Monday. The agency, the lawyers argued, appears to have realized that it needs to adjust “the language of its subpoenas to sanction the production of (personal information) for purposes of federal immigration enforcement, in violation of state law.”

Moss and other immigrant-rights advocates have argued that ICE wants information on undocumented children so that it can arrest them and their relatives. Laura Lunn, an attorney with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, said Wednesday that she has clients who are unaccompanied minors and are being held in ICE detention.

The new subpoena’s attested link to a criminal investigation also comes amid the state’s recent changes to its subpoena policy that emphasize fulfilling those types of requests.

The directive tells state employees to consult with agency heads and consider statutory limitations that might prohibit compliance. But when it comes to immigration enforcement subpoenas, the policy also states that information should be released “promptly” if it’s sought as part of a criminal inquiry “because lives might be at stake.”

Failing to respond to a subpoena, the policy states, “could result in legal action” while preventing “legitimate law enforcement activities that make Colorado safer.” Ultimately, the decision to comply with the subpoenas falls to the governor’s office, after consultation with other state officials and attorneys.

The policy seeks to keep those discussions from public view. It directs employees to mark emails about subpoena compliance as “attorney-client privileged” — a designation that would then shield those communications from disclosure under the Colorado Open Records Act. The subpoenas themselves could still be obtained through records requests, said Jeff Roberts, the executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.

In a statement, Maruyama said the new policy “is simple, and it follows the law: We cooperate on criminal investigations with the federal government regardless of whether an individual is here legally or not, and we do not cooperate on non-criminal matters that are only for civil immigration enforcement.”

The governor’s office denied that the subpoena policy was an attempt to restrict court or public oversight of subpoena discussions.

State Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat who sponsored legislation that now limits ICE cooperation, criticized the new policy.

“That strikes me as being wildly inefficient,” she said. “And I fear that it can lead to less transparency and more opacity when it comes to these matters.”

Ongoing litigation

The disclosure about the new subpoena comes as Polis struggles to extricate himself from the Moss litigation, which has successfully — and publicly — blocked the governor’s efforts to turn over information to ICE.

After Jones said that it would likely be illegal to fulfill the 2025 subpoena, Polis’ legal team has tried to turn over more limited information to ICE and to dismiss the challenge altogether.

When those efforts failed, Polis’ legal team asked Jones in February to end the litigation and permanently block the governor from complying with the 2025 subpoena — in part because ICE apparently didn’t need the information anymore.

But Jones denied that request Monday, saying it lacked “any legal authority.” Moss’ attorneys have also resisted Polis’ attempts to summarily end the litigation, and they were scheduled to depose the governor last month as part of the lawsuit.

To end the case, Moss’ lawyers asked Jones to prohibit Polis and the labor department from complying with any other ICE subpoena, absent a court order.

Moss wants that prohibition, his attorneys have written, because he’s worried that ICE would simply send another subpoena seeking similar information that Polis could then quickly and quietly fulfill.

The $150,000 contract with Axon Enterprise is for a year, allowing 50 cameras. The deal replaces the city’s contract with the controversial company Flock Safety, which expired Tuesday.

Seven of the 13 council members voted in favor of the deal, siding with Mayor Mike Johnston and citing the benefits to public safety. Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez cast one of the consequential swing votes, ultimately supporting the contract despite her concerns over possible misuse of the data.

“If we start to see subpoenas or other concerns come up, then I’m happy to address those,” she said. “But I’m not going to not use this technology (just) because that might happen.”

Alvidrez voted in favor of the contract with council members Darrell Watson, Kevin Flynn, Chris Hinds, Diana Romero-Campbell, Amanda Sawyer and President Amanda Sandoval. Council members Sarah Parady, Shontel Lewis, Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, Stacie Gilmore, Paul Kashmann and Jamie Torres voted no.

Those opposed to the contract said they were concerned about ways the system could be exploited.

“The possible misuse of this system cannot be ignored,” Kashmann said. Axon and companies providing similar technology “are only a few clicks away from being one giant surveillance system.

“If that doesn’t terrify us, I wonder why?”

Johnston, whose administration proposed the Axon contract, has been an ardent supporter of the license plate-reading technology, saying it¶¶Òőap a vital tool to help solve crime in the city.

Last year, the technology played a significant role in 16 homicide investigations, according to the mayor’s office. The cameras also helped in the recovery of more than 400 stolen cars and the removal of more than 60 firearms from the streets, the office said.

Car thefts decreased in Denver during the Flock pilot program, a drop that officials attribute to multiple factors beyond just the cameras. In 2023, more than 12,000 cars were stolen in the city. In 2024, thefts declined to about 8,500.

“Keeping Denver safe means giving our officers effective tools to combat crime while ensuring our rights are protected. This contract does both,” Johnston said of the Axon deal in a statement following the vote. “We’re proud to have Council’s support to move forward with this common-sense technology. … And with these strengthened privacy and data protections, we are ensuring that no federal agency or federal agent can access this data — now or ever.”

Denver has used fixed license plate-reading cameras since the first one was installed at the intersection of Federal Boulevard and West Sixth Avenue in 2018. The Denver Police Department also has license plate reading cameras mounted to some of its vehicles.

Some council members asked that the mayor’s office and the council continue to work on developing a citywide ordinance that would set some surveillance safeguards even as the new contract rolls out.

Johnston’s office convened a Surveillance Task Force last year that is in the process of developing that policy. Parady, one of the task force members, said she couldn’t say how long that would take, but said a draft was being developed.

“There will be an ordinance coming forward at some point,” Flynn said. “But I think it¶¶Òőap appropriate to do the contract ahead because, again, I believe the contract has stronger safeguards and recourse than an ordinance will have.”

The council had been scheduled to vote on the Axon contract last week, but Flynn, a supporter, used a council rule that allowed him to unilaterally postpone it by a week. Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, three former Denver mayors — Michael Hancock, Federico Peña and Wellington Webb — penned an opinion article in The Denver Post encouraging the council to adopt the contract.

A change from Flock

Denver started a pilot program with Flock’s license plate readers at Denver International Airport, which had been struggling with high vehicle thefts, in 2023. The next year, officials expanded the program to other parts of the city, placing 111 cameras at 70 intersections.

In April 2025, Johnston’s administration attempted to extend the contract for two more years, but the council rejected the proposal, citing concerns about the company creating a mass-surveillance network.

The company also faced national scrutiny after to help carry out President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation efforts.

In August, nearly 1,400 times in 2024 and 2025, before the city asked last April to be removed from Flock’s national database.

After the council’s initial rejection, Johnston’s office extended Flock’s contract twice without council approval by signing agreements below the $500,000 cost threshold that requires a council vote.

The cameras snap photos of passing cars, capturing images of license plates and any identifiable features — say, a scratch or a dent — and using the information to help investigate crimes, such as car thefts, hit-and-runs, kidnappings and homicides.

Flock’s cameras were taken down Tuesday, said Tim Hoffman, the director of policy for the mayor’s office.

Axon has other city contracts

Johnston’s team announced the contract with Axon in February, saying that it would provide a more secure option compared to Flock. Unlike Flock, the company doesn’t have a nationwide database system. Denver also wouldn’t share its data with other jurisdictions unless they have agreed to certain restrictions. Axon will have a shorter retention period for photos — 21 days, instead of 30 under Flock.

The mayor’s office opted to bring the contract to the council despite it being well below the council-approval threshold. The council also hosted a one-hour courtesy public hearing last week to hear feedback from residents about the contract.

Axon already contracts with the city for some other police equipment, including body-worn cameras, Tasers and a livestream camera system called Fusus that uses hundreds of cameras throughout the city. The new license plate cameras have livestreaming capabilities as well.

Sandoval cast the deciding vote on the new contract Tuesday, saying she had wrestled with which way to go.

“I’ve made a lot of hard decisions,” Sandoval said. “And I can’t remember making a harder one.”

After the original contract vote was delayed last week, several council members have seemed hesitant to approve the deal, leaving its chances unclear amid continuing concerns about the risks of surveillance technology.

“I don’t know that we need this tool,” Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez said Friday. “I don’t know that it¶¶Òőap actually helping.”

A contract with the city’s current provider for the license plate cameras, a controversial company called Flock Safety, will expire Tuesday. Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration proposed that the city begin a new contract for the service with Axon Enterprise.

If the council rejects the one-year contract — which would cost $150,000 and provide 50 cameras at a maximum of 20 intersections — Johnston’s administration has said the program will shut down. Axon’s network would have roughly half as many cameras as Flock’s.

“Losing this technology would weaken our police department¶¶Òőap ability to investigate homicides, sexual assaults, hit-and-runs and auto thefts,” said city spokesman Jon Ewing in an email. “In short, it would make our city less safe and would leave Denver as one of the only large cities in the country without a license plate reader system.”

Johnston’s office and the council have been at odds over the cameras for months after in its efforts to carry out mass deportations. After the council rejected a contract with Flock over concerns about the company last year, Johnston’s administration extended the city’s relationship with the company twice more, calling it a vital crime-fighting tool.

Denver District Attorney John Walsh recently sent a letter to council members in support of the contract, calling the automatic license plate recognition, or ALPR, technology “uniquely powerful and effective.”

“In case after case, ALPR has been the key initial tool to identify suspect vehicles and suspects – often providing the only initial avenue for investigation,” he wrote.

The technology played a significant role in solving 16 homicide investigations in 2025, he said. The mayor’s office also credits the cameras for the recovery of more than 400 stolen cars and the removal of more than 60 firearms from the streets.

During a public hearing last week, the council heard an , with 55 people signing up to speak. Forty-two of them were opposed, 12 were in favor and one person was neutral.

Councilman Kevin Flynn triggered an option that delayed the vote by one week. Now, the council will take its sole vote on the contract on Tuesday. The council is meeting a day later than usual because Monday is “SĂ­, Se Puede Day,” a city holiday renamed recently after a New York Times investigation reported sexual abuse allegations against CĂ©sar ChĂĄvez, the holiday’s former namesake.

Though the council normally votes only on contracts valued at over $500,000, Johnston’s office opted to bring the Axon deal through that process in an effort to be more collaborative.

Last week, the council asked some questions of Axon, the mayor’s office and the Denver Police Department. Several of them signaled they had major concerns about the contract.

“With the current person who is occupying the White House 
 I don’t have faith that if we expand this, what happens (as a result). That’s why I’m concerned about a security breach,” council President Amanda Sandoval said.

Tim Hoffman, the director of policy for the mayor’s office, acknowledged those concerns during the meeting.

“We aren’t in the world that we were in a year ago. We aren’t even in the world we were in a couple of months ago, in terms of what we have seen out of this federal government,” he said of President Donald Trump’s administration. “What we have done with this contract is try to balance the very real benefit to public safety that it provides with the very legitimate privacy and civil liberty considerations.”

The cameras work by snapping photos of passing cars, capturing their license plates and any identifiable features — such as a scratch or a dent — and using that data to help investigate crimes like car thefts, hit-and-runs, kidnappings and homicides. The city now has 111 Flock-operated cameras doing that work.

In February, Johnston announced that the city would end its relationship with Flock because of the concerns raised by council members and residents. Johnston said Axon was chosen as a replacement because it doesn’t have a national database and has a high degree of data security.

Axon already contracts with the city for police officers’ body-worn cameras, Tasers and a livestream camera system called Fusus that uses hundreds of cameras throughout the city. The new license-plate cameras would have livestreaming capabilities as well.

Councilwoman Sarah Parady, one of the most vocal council opponents of Flock, cited the Fusus network as one of the reasons she still had concerns about the technology.

“They are integrated into so many other systems,” she said. “We are sort of trading what was basically a national ALPR company for a company that is not primarily focused on ALPRs, but is layering all of these different forms of surveillance — and we do not have all the information on that yet.”

Parady is one of the members of the city’s Surveillance Task Force, which Johnston’s office convened last year in response to the concerns over Flock. Some council members have said they want to see that task force develop an overall city ordinance related to surveillance before they approve a new contract for license plate readers.

“Even if the contract has some good provisions, those are not laws,” Alvidrez said. “Remedies are different when you’re talking about a contract, versus city ordinance.”

Alvidrez, who is one of a few key undecided votes on the contract on the 13-member council, said she was leaning toward “no” on Friday. Councilwoman Jamie Torres, another undecided member, said she was also more likely to vote against it.

“I’ve heard evenly from folks who want (Denver Police Department) to be able to solve crimes 
 and others who frankly just can’t get over the apprehension that was developed during this whole Flock era. That’s going to leave a bad taste in people’s mouth,” she said.

If the contract doesn’t pass, Torres said she would be interested in seeing the city try again after developing more protections.

Alvidrez said she would want to see whether not having the tool made much of a difference in crime solving in the city.

The council’s meeting is set to begin at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.