Colorado immigrant rights groups and local officials are bracing for the possibility that President Donald Trump’s threatened “Operation Aurora” to round up and deport immigrants who have committed crimes will soon begin.
Federal immigration agents were setting up a “temporary holding” and “processing” center at Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora on Wednesday. Meanwhile, an NBC News report citing anonymous sources said that raids would begin in Aurora as soon as Thursday. The news agency reported Wednesday, however, that the raids were postponed because media leaks could create a security risk for federal officers.
“Reports of planned ICE raids in Aurora targeting immigrants under the guise of public safety are deeply alarming,” the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition said in an email. “These operations are not about safety — they are about criminalizing immigrants, tearing families apart, and fueling the private prison industry’s profits at the expense of human suffering.”
The coalition, other advocacy groups and local and state officials said they were especially concerned that people without criminal charges who are seeking asylum would be caught up in the operations.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, told The Colorado Sun on Wednesday that his office is proactively building relationships with immigrant advocates and others “on the ground” to be able to respond quickly if unlawful raids start happening.
“We’re standing ready for what happens next,” Weiser said.
His concern is that the Trump administration will indiscriminately start arresting people on suspicion of being in the country illegally and in the process round up those who have a legal right to be in the country, and maybe even are citizens.
“There are a million people in the U.S. or so who’ve gone through the entire legal process and have been denied any right to stay. They’re deportable. That’s where rational immigration enforcement should be,” Weiser said. “What is unfair, wrong and illegal, is to just round people up … and say ‘we don’t think you should be here. We’re deporting you.’ That’s un-American. That’s illegal.”
Weiser also said he will fight any effort by the federal government to force Colorado law enforcement to engage in immigration enforcement.
“To coerce Colorado law enforcement to engage in immigration enforcement goes flat against the 10th Amendment,” he said. “We are a sovereign state.”
Sheriff: “We have no interest in your citizenship status”
Federal immigration agents were setting up Buckley Space Force Base as a staging area Wednesday to detain and process “criminal aliens,” according to a statement from U.S. Northern Command released Tuesday.
Northern Command said the request from the Department of Homeland Security asked for U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement to have a “temporary operations center, staging area, and a temporary holding location for the receiving, holding, and processing of criminal aliens.” Senior ICE leaders, special agents and analysts, as well as agents from other federal law enforcement agencies, would begin setting up the space Wednesday, said Northern Command, which is leading Department of Defense operations on immigration control.
Northern Command announced last week that soldiers, including about 150 soldiers from two Army units from Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, were deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border to carry out President Trump’s orders on “protecting the territorial integrity” of the nation.
The Northern Command is “aggressively bolstering security” and at the southern border. About 1,500 active-duty members of the Army and Marine Corps were deployed last week, joining about 2,500 already there.
U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Centennial Democrat whose district includes the Buckley Space Force Base, said in a statement that he is “deeply concerned” about the Trump administration politicizing the military.
“My community and our military can expect my vigorous oversight and, if warranted, my opposition as a member of Congress,” said Crow, a military veteran who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Meanwhile, local law enforcement agencies across Colorado were inundated with questions from people concerned about immigration raids.
Larimer County Sheriff John Feyen clarified the agency’s role in a Facebook post Wednesday morning, saying the sheriff’s office does not make arrests based on ICE detainers and does not hold someone in jail solely on an immigration detainer, per state law. Feyen said he wasn’t saying anything new but it was “worth reaffirming as rumors and fears escalate in our community.”
“If you’re a law-abiding member of the community, we have no interest in your citizenship status,” the sheriff wrote. “If you’re a crime victim, we believe you deserve justice and healing. If you commit violent crimes, sell drugs, threaten people, steal cars, set fires, run a criminal operation, or otherwise endanger lives and property, it doesn’t matter where you were born — we’ll arrest you.”
Federal authorities have not confirmed reports from NBC News that immigration raids in Aurora were imminent or were postponed. Raids have already happened in Chicago and New York City.
In Adams County just north of Denver on Sunday, federal agents detained about 50 people, many of them connected to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, during an early-morning raid Sunday at a makeshift nightclub along Federal Boulevard, according to the regional office of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The DEA’s Special Agent in Charge of the Rocky Mountain region, Jonathan Pullen, told The Sun the raid was not part of Trump’s deportation efforts and that agents had been investigating the gang for months when they planned to raid a gang party. They seized four weapons, cash, cocaine and pink cocaine, which is a mix of cocaine and either methamphetamine or ketamine that gang members dye pink, Pullen said.