Danish company is an advanced manufacturer in the space, energy and defense sectors. The company has announced plans to locate at the Forge Campus, a center for advanced manufacturing and technology businesses in Loveland.

Ohio-based selected El Paso County as the location to expand its defense-related business.

Multicut will produce parts for the U.S. defense industry at its manufacturing site in Loveland. The company is expected to create 82 jobs, including positions for engineers and operators in machining, cutting and related manufacturing tasks.

Multicut’s current customer base includes Lockheed Martin, Planet Labs, Raytheon and Vestas.

“Multicut¶¶Òőap decision to expand in Colorado shows how our state’s strong international relationships and terrific business environment create good-paying jobs in Loveland and support the growth of Colorado’s defense industry,” Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement Wednesday.

The company has 220 employees. Multicut’s innovative approach to precision manufacturing will benefit the Colorado and U.S. space, defense and energy sectors, said Eve Lieberman, executive director of Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, or OEDIT.

The Colorado Economic Development Commission approved up to $1.03 million in performance-based tax credits for the company over eight years. The incentives are contingent upon Multicut meeting net new job creation and salary requirements.

SelectTech Services Corp., headquartered in Centerville, Ohio, provides technical support services to the Department of Defense and commercial clients. The company said it chose El Paso County to locate for its proximity to government clients, including the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force, and original equipment manufacturers in the aerospace industry.

The company is expected to create 150 net jobs at its new site. Positions will include, engineers, technicians, buyers, managers, planners and technical writers.

“El Paso County stood out to us as the right place to grow our small business because it¶¶Òőap a community that prioritizes its people, long-term partnerships and responsible growth over rapid scale,” said Heather Fattah, SelectTech president and CEO.

The state Economic Development Commission approved up to $1.9 million in performance-based tax credits over eight years, contingent on the company meeting new job creation and salary requirements.

“SelectTech’s expansion reflects the intentional work happening across our region and is a clear signal that El Paso County continues to lead aerospace and defense growth at a national level,” Bonnie Goff, vice president of economic development for the Colorado Springs Chamber & Economic Development Corporation, said in a statement.

Colorado’s aerospace industry is the country’s second-largest, behind only California. The state has the most aerospace employees per capita in the nation. Approximately 2,000 aerospace businesses employ 55,000 people directly and another 184,000 indirectly, according to

Nearly $23 billion in federal contracts went to Colorado aerospace and defense companies from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, an OEDIT analysis found.

Multicut considered California and Arizona for expansion, while SelectTech looked at expanding in Ohio.

My 8-year-old son was recently . As a competitive athlete, he was alone but very comfortable with the mountain and his skiing ability.

While the individual who hit him fled the scene, he was aided by a kind woman who helped him secure medical attention. My son suffered a concussion, facial lacerations requiring stitches, and lost an adult tooth that will require years of dental work. Despite news coverage seen by millions of people across the country, no one has come forward as a witness or perpetrator.

I understand the fear of becoming involved in contentious situations, particularly in a country where many people seem unpredictable, but I wonder where our collective empathy and humanity have gone. Have we reached a point, as a community, where we are no longer willing to stand up for those who need us? If so, how can we expect anyone else to help us when we are in need?

I urge everyone to consider how they might do better to serve their friends, neighbors, and community. If this were your son, nephew, friend, or neighbor, what would you want for them? Surely, you would want more.

Saddened, yet hopeful, mother,

Ann Lotin, Denver

Company right to defend safeguards in its AI

Re: “AI company sues, seeking to undo its ‘supply chain risk’ designation,” March 10 news story

Along with most people, I have many concerns about the ways AI will be used to help and to hurt us.

Anthropic lost out on a $200 million Pentagon contract because its CEO refused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s demands to remove the Anthropic chatbot Claude’s internal safeguards against spying on Americans and against launching weapons without human oversight. Shouldn’t we all want these safeguards in place?

By designating Anthropic a “supply chain risk” (generally used for firms linked to terrorists and foreign adversaries), the president ordered all government departments to cut ties with Anthropic, seeming to want to destroy the company. It was heartening to see that the conflict has boosted Anthropic’s reputation among some for its moral stance.

Carol Kalmes, Wheat Ridge

Documentary will remind you to ‘engage in our democracy’

In celebration of 250 years since the birth of our nation, I would like to encourage you to watch Ken Burns’ documentary, “The American Revolution.” In it, you’ll find much known and unknown history leading up to our break from the English monarchy.

My hope is that you’ll learn or be reminded of the events and reasons leading up to the end of authoritarian rule. Understanding the sacrifices made in life and property in order to create our unique government will remind you how fortunate we are. Natives, immigrants, and people freed from slavery forged this country out of ideals women and men had only previously dreamt of. Every other country in the world at that time was under authoritarian rule.

The major difference between our government and authoritarian rule is that we must each be civically engaged to make it function. It doesn’t work when individuals make decisions based on social media feeds, armchair pundit shows or prejudices.

Celebrate our 250th anniversary by reading history books, watching historical documentaries, becoming more civically engaged, and appreciating the precious gifts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I know I’m not the only person frustrated with the current state of politics where so often lies, greed, and power rule.

It is our responsibility to actively participate in our government. As it says in the documentary referenced above, if we don’t engage in our democracy, we may as well live in a dictatorship.

Michele Howard, Silt

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The White House released a list of contributors Thursday. In addition to Palantir, the roster included crypto companies and enterpreneurs; technology companies like Meta, Apple and Amazon; major businesses like HP, Caterpillar and T-Mobile; and prominent Republican donors.

It’s unclear how much Palantir, , contributed to the project. The company did not return an email seeking comment Friday morning, and the White House did not identify how much had been given by each donor.

The company was also included on a guest list for a dinner that Trump previously held for nearly 130 supporters of the ballroom,

The donations have helped pave the way for Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing and his plans to replace it with a new, 90,000-square-foot ballroom.

The ballroom project has yet to receive approvals from the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts, although White House staff secretary Will Scharf, who was also tapped by Trump to lead the planning commission, said approval is not needed. The commission vets the construction of federal buildings.

At the donor dinner earlier this month, Trump said there are no zoning requirements for him as the president of the United States and he can do whatever he wants with the construction.

Palantir’s valuation and prominence have exploded in recent years as it has increasingly offered its services of merging, analyzing and utilizing massive datasets to government agencies. Palantir is now worth more than the combined value of every other Colorado-based company tracked by The Denver Post.

Palantir’s donation to Trump brings the company even closer to the administration. The company has received more than $100 million in federal government contracts since Trump took office, including controversial contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Most recently, the company signed an $11.4 million contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs at the end of September, along with roughly $20 million in recent contracts for the U.S. State Department, according to federal contracting records.

The company has also undertaken high-profile work for the U.S. Department of Defense and, outside of the U.S., for the Israeli military — an association that drew criticism from a United Nations official.

Palantir’s billionaire CEO, Alex Karp, has long supported both Republican and Democratic causes, including some Colorado Democrats. But his donations this year have increasingly tilted conservative:

He’s spent $575,000 on a handful of groups supporting Republican Senate candidates in states like Texas, Louisiana and Maine, according to federal campaign finance records. He donated $1 million to a Trump super PAC shortly after Trump won a return to the White House last year.

The New York Times and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

After nearly 75 years, a Colorado soldier who died while fighting in the Korean War is finally returning home.

U.S. Army Sgt. , 22, of Trinidad, was reported missing in action in April of 1951 after his unit was attacked near Chip’o-ri in North Korea, according to a from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency.

A surviving member of his unit said Mestas was killed during the April 25, 1951, ambush, agency officials wrote in Mestas’s .

“At the time, the overwhelming enemy fire forced the survivors to withdraw before they could recover their fallen comrades,” officials wrote.

Four bodies were recovered from that area between May and June of 1951, but Mestas’s remains were not positively identified until Jan. 31, 2024, according to the agency.

Mestas’s body was one of 652 Korean War “unknowns” who were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, removed in March 2019 and sent to a laboratory for DNA testing, federal officials said.

Scientists were able to identify Mestas’s remains using dental records, anthropological analysis, DNA testing and chest X-rays, federal officials said.

Mestas’s name is recorded on the at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, along with the others who are still missing from the Korean War. Defense officials said a rosette would be placed next to his name to indicate he had been accounted for.

Mestas will be buried in Trinidad, his home, in June.

An incident involving pro-Palestine protesters who disrupted a classroom this week and were physically removed by two men is now being investigated by campus police, CU officials said Thursday.

Student advocacy group posted on social media, writing that it showed two students “violently assaulted by a CU Boulder professor.”

The edited video shows a person walking toward the front of a classroom before cutting to that person being dragged out of the room by two men. A different clip shows another person being grabbed and dragged by their keffiyeh — a traditional Arab headdress — by one of the men.

University officials that said the class on Wednesday was interrupted by “unidentified individuals” who were repeatedly told to leave by an instructor, and then removed from the classroom.

“CU Boulder condemns acts of violence and does not tolerate classroom disruptions, both of which violate state law and university policies,” the university said in its statement.

Nicole Mueksch, a CU Boulder spokesperson, would not say whether the instructor was one of the people involved in removing the student protestors.

The university’s statement describes “a second individual” seen on the video removing people from the class, and notes that person “was not an employee or a student.”

Mueksch said that individual was serving as a mentor for class, identified in the video as “Designing for Defense.” That class is as developing and testing hypotheses to solve real-world problems facing the U.S. Department of Defense and the American intelligence community.

The two pro-Palestine demonstrators were students interrupting the “Designing for Defense” class to protest its connection to the Defense Department and government support of the Israeli military’s bombardment of Gaza, according to .

Student organization Boulder Students for a Democratic Society that the university’s statement about the incident was misleading and downplayed what happened.

“We are horrified — but not surprised — that CU has responded to anti-genocide protest with physical repression and lies,” the group wrote.

Unedited videos of the incident on Friday by the Buffs 4 Palestine Instagram account show more of the altercation.

Two protesters are seen entering the classroom, with one staying in the back filming while the other protester, wearing a keffiyeh, walks to the front of the classroom carrying some papers. Before that protester can speak, the instructor snatches the papers from his hands and says “Get out!”

The video shows the instructor walking to the back of the room toward the person filming, saying “Get out!” multiple times and crumpling the papers in his hand. A struggle involving the instructor, the unidentified “mentor” and one of the protesters unfolds, leaving the protester on the floor shouting “No!” The protester’s video, shot from the floor, shows the instructor and mentor hovering over them.

A second video clip shows the mentor exiting the classroom with the keffiyeh in his hands. He turns toward one of the protesters outside the classroom and says “You want some, too?” in a threatening manner.

A third video clip shows the unidentified mentor outside the classroom door picking up one of the protesters by the keffiyeh and dragging them, flinging their body around. A passerby is shouting “Hey, hey!” while one of the protesters is yelling “Stop!” The mentor tells passersby to call campus security and someone responds that they will — but that he “can’t assault people like that.”

The instructor listed as teaching “Designing for Defense” did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Campus police are investigating the incident and will “vigorously” pursue charges or other action, CU Boulder officials said.

Universities across Colorado and the U.S. have been flashpoints for conflict between students, protesters, police and campus officials over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war started in October 2023 after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. and most of the living hostages have been released in ceasefire and other agreements, or were rescued by Israeli troops.

At least 100 Palestinians were , including 14 children and five women sheltering in a school in Gaza City, according to Palestinian medical authorities.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A lack of transparency by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement so far is making it difficult to determine the size and scope of activities taking place locally, including no official confirmation yet of the number of arrests in a series of raids in early February that drew wide attention. The Denver ICE office’s , however, have provided a glimpse into more than a dozen recent arrests of immigrants without proper legal status.

The promoted arrests largely have been of people with criminal pasts. On the social platform X, ICE’s Denver field office, which covers Colorado and Wyoming, has cited criminal accusations against people arrested in February and March that include sexual assault on a child, obstruction, gun and drug smuggling, and trespassing. The people were from Guatemala, Venezuela, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras.

Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., heatedly discussed one such arrest during last week’s hearing by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that featured testimony by Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and three other mayors of so-called “sanctuary” cities.

Johnston and GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio sparred about details tied to Abraham Gonzalez. The 23-year-old “suspected (Tren de Aragua) gang member” was arrested by six federal officers after a brief chase and scuffle outside a Denver jail upon his release on Feb. 28, according to .

Jordan listed a litany of criminal allegations against Gonzalez, including an arrest on a charge of aggravated assault. He said Gonzalez also assaulted an officer during last month’s ICE apprehension, though the specifics of the incident remain unclear.

An ICE spokesperson told The Denver Post that the agency had significantly increased immigration enforcement activities since Trump took office on Jan. 20, with help from other federal law enforcement and Defense Department partners.

ICE says it’s working toward publishing enforcement statistics on a monthly basis — up from a quarterly basis now, which means the most recent data predates Trump’s return to office.

ICE did not respond to questions from The Post asking how many people had been detained or arrested in the Denver area since Jan. 20 and seeking other information — including the reasoning behind the detainments, the detainees’ countries of origin, where the people were being detained and whether any had been deported yet.

What are the rules of an ICE raid? Here’s what you should know.

Recent ICE activity in Colorado

Typical ICE activity has varied in recent years. From October 2020 through September, the Denver field office made 15,333 arrests, according to the agency's .

Other cities recorded much higher rates of arrest activity during those four fiscal years, including Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Miami and Chicago.

The arrests in Denver's region broke down to nearly 3,000 in the 2024 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30; over 8,000 in the 2023 fiscal year; close to 3,000 in the 2022 fiscal year; and around 1,300 in the 2021 fiscal year.

The variance in the most recent three years meant an average weekly arrest total ranging from roughly 57 to 154 -- with either end of the range many times higher than the total arrests publicized by ICE Denver in recent weeks.

The scale of local ICE activity since September is unknown, including the results of the raids at several metro Denver apartment complexes, including some in Aurora, on Feb. 5.

The agency the arrest of a 30-year-old Honduran man that day in Thornton. And in the aftermath, Fox News reported that in the raids, with one linked to the transnational Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua -- falling short of of arresting over 100 gang members that day.

In the days since the raids, ICE has publicly confirmed at least 16 arrests and detainments, in addition to Gonzalez.

According to the agency, the people in custody were largely male migrants without proper legal status from Latin American countries -- some of whom had previous criminal convictions like driving under the influence. Others were labeled by federal law enforcement as "suspected" members of Tren de Aragua, which is sometimes referred to as "TdA" for short.

Earlier this month, a man from Guatemala following an investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies, with Homeland Security Investigations reporting that he was convicted of sexually assaulting a 4-year-old child and would remain in custody until his removal from the country.

In February, a 23-year-old man from Venezuela was arrested by ICE Denver after the agency that he was convicted of obstructing a firefighter in Douglas County and "is a suspected member of TdA."

Difficult for congressman, advocates to track

The Trump administration's limited disclosure of immigration enforcement activity so far has made it challenging for a Colorado congressman and immigrant advocacy groups, along with the media, to track its operations.

According to the  published on Feb. 3 by Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat whose district includes Aurora, the city's privately operated ICE detention facility housed 1,116 detainees, including 1,040 men and 76 women. Seventeen detainees identified as transgender.

That week, 117 detainees entered the facility and 76 exited, according to the report. The most represented countries of origin in the facility included Mexico, Venezuela, India, Honduras and Turkey.

But Crow's office that, "starting in February 2025, the Trump administration has informed us that they will no longer regularly provide updates on the Aurora Contract Detention Facility." Since then, no new reports have been published.

The has tracked ICE activity throughout the state since 2017, relying on information provided by hotline callers and volunteers in the community. Since Trump returned to office, the hotline has experienced an uptick in calls, said Jennifer Piper, the program director at , an immigrant-rights organization that helps run the network. It continues to receive calls steadily.

The group can't provide exact numbers on the results of ICE enforcement activities because it doesn't receive calls from every impacted party, Piper said, and ICE has stopped making data publicly available.

That reflects a pattern from Trump's first term, when his administration restricted access to that information, Piper added.

However, she said of ICE, "we feel very confident that they are nowhere near the goal numbers that they announced at the beginning of the Trump administration" earlier this year. In late February, ICE's acting director was reassigned about the pace of the agency's arrests.

But even if she doubts that there's been a drastic increase in detainments, she notes that "the presence of federal agents executing immigration responsibilities is definitely up."

Anecdotally, Piper says she has heard that most migrants targeted in recent enforcement activities arrived in the U.S. over the past few years.

And during the Feb. 5 raid at Denver's Cedar Run Apartments, a "disproportionate" number of Mauritanians were picked up, Piper said.

ICE wants to add 850 to 950 beds within a two-hour drive of its Denver field office or its 10 sub-offices in Colorado or Wyoming, according to a on Feb. 14.

The federal immigration agency is seeking “available detention facilities for single adult populations (male and female)” with segregation units, infirmaries and local access to hospital care. The facility or facilities should be able to house low-, medium- and high-security “adult noncitizens,” according to the document.

“Dedicated facilities solely for ICE use are preferred; however, ICE will consider detention facilities housing other detained populations if separation from ICE detainees is maintained,” the request for information states.

Denver ICE spokesman Steve Kotecki said in a statement Tuesday that the agency is “exploring all options to meet its current and future detention requirements.”

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement¶¶Òőap enhanced enforcement operations and routine daily operations have resulted in a significant number of arrests of criminal aliens that require greater detention capacity,” he said.

The request for information is meant to “obtain market information for planning purposes and to determine appropriate strategies to meet the agency’s requirements,” and is not a solicitation for bids or proposals, according to the document. The deadline to submit information was Feb. 15.

ICE currently uses a in Aurora that is run by The GEO Group, a private contractor.

President Donald Trump’s administration has been making moves to expand ICE’s detention capacity across the country.

On Feb. 26, the agency said it would in New Jersey.

“This detention center is the first to open under the new administration,” former acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello said in a statement. “The location near an international airport streamlines logistics, and helps facilitate the timely processing of individuals in our custody as we pursue President Trump’s mandate to arrest, detain and remove illegal aliens from our communities.”

The next day, CoreCivic Inc. — a detention management company contracted by federal and state departments — for up to 784 ICE detainees across three of its existing correctional and detention facilities in Ohio, Nevada and Oklahoma. It also permitted the use of up to 252 beds by ICE at its facility in Mississippi.

“We are entering a period where our government partners, particularly our federal government partners, are expected to have increased demand,” CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger said in a statement. “We anticipate additional contracting activity that will help satisfy their growing needs.”

And, as of last month, military sites — including Fort Bliss in Texas and Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora — were being eyed as locations to hold detained migrants, according to the .

Buckley officials have directed inquiries about potential holding facilities for detained immigrants to ICE. An agency spokesperson hasn’t responded to questions about the use of Buckley as a detention facility for migrants.

The soldiers form part of the 759th Military Police Battalion Headquarters and the 569th Combat Engineer Company-Armored from Fort Carson, the spokesperson said, noting they were deployed “as an immediate augmentation of military active-duty forces to the Southern Border to carry out directed missions called for by the President to secure the Southern Border and protect and defend the territorial integrity of the United States.”

The deployment of about 1,500 active-duty Army and Marine personnel, including an unknown number of troops coming from Fort Carson, was reported by our Scripps sister station KOAA-TV on Friday, the same day U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) made the announcement.

USNORTHCOM, based at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, serves as the U.S. Department of Defense’s operational lead for forces carrying out President Trump’s executive orders on the border.

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The new arrangement, which begins on Jan. 1, comes as Tricare switches third-party companies — from Health Net to TriWest — to administer its healthcare plans. Tricare is overseen by the Defense Health Agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Defense.

In , Children’s Hospital Colorado said the new deal supplants a plan that would have moved it to a non-network participation status with Tricare. Children’s said Tricare reimbursement for children’s hospitals remains “well below the cost of providing care.”

This past spring, Children’s warned that it would have to make cuts to key departments this year because of a change in how Tricare pays for care. The insurer tied the payments to what Medicare would pay for the same services, as Tricare does for services to adults at civilian hospitals.

The U.S. Department of Defense said the change, which was implemented in October 2023, would save the military up to $45 million in taxpayer funds annually, .

Children’s Hospital Colorado estimated it had lost about $2.1 million a month since the reimbursement change was put in place compared to how Tricare used to pay. The system estimated about 16,000 kids insured by Tricare receive care at Children’s Hospital Colorado facilities, and about one in five children who receive care at the Colorado Springs hospital and clinics have military coverage.

Children’s this week said it will continue conferring with the Department of Defense, and elected officials, to ensure it can maintain high-quality, specialty pediatric care for all kids in Colorado.

“We are grateful for all the individuals and families who have joined us in our efforts over the past 18 months to address these TRICARE cuts,” the hospital said in a statement. “We will continue to share opportunities where your advocacy can help us preserve critical access to healthcare services for military families like yours at Children’s Colorado.”

Students for Fair Admissions won a similar suit against Harvard College in 2023 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, and the new lawsuit comes less than a week after a federal judge in Maryland ruled against the organization’s effort to stop the

The group filed a complaint against the school, north of Colorado Springs, on Tuesday, asking a judge to declare the academy’s use of race in admissions unconstitutional and issue an order preventing officials  “from considering or knowing applicants’ race when making admissions decisions,” according to court records.

An academy spokesperson declined to comment on the case Thursday, citing the ongoing litigation.

The lawsuit, which also names the U.S. Department of Defense and top military and government officials, alleges the Air Force Academy is violating the Fifth Amendment as “one of the last remaining universities to expressly consider race as a factor in admissions.”

Attorneys for the group claim the applies to the federal government in the same way the 14th Amendment¶¶Òőap equal-protection clause applies to the states.

Students for Fair Admission has “at least one member,” a high school student, who is ready and able to apply for the academy and may be adversely affected by the admissions policy because they are white, according to the complaint.

“If the Academy is allowed to continue making admissions decisions based on applicants’ race, SFFA’s members
 will suffer harm because they will be denied the opportunity to compete for an Air Force appointment on equal grounds, solely because of their race,” attorneys for the group wrote in the filing.

Preliminary scheduling hearings are set to begin in January.