Colorado sheriffs alerted federal immigration authorities before releasing hundreds of inmates who were wanted for deportation in 2024.
Seven Front Range sheriffs’ offices — including in Denver and Boulder — and one on the Western Slope notified U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents about more than 400 upcoming inmate releases in 2024, giving ICE officers the chance to visit those jails and take newly released inmates into federal custody for civil immigration proceedings.
The notifications are allowed in Colorado despite the state’s sanctuary laws, which limit the role police departments and sheriffs’ offices can play in federal immigration enforcement, experts said. But the practice is close enough to the line that the sheriffs’ offices in El Paso and Weld counties said they don’t notify ICE.
“The way I interpret the law and the way my legal counsel interprets the law is we’re not supposed to be interacting with ICE for the purpose of serving civil immigration detainers,” Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams said. “And notifying ICE when we are releasing folks we suspect have civil immigration detainers awaiting them I think facilitates the same process.”
As President Donald Trump returns to office amid promises to carry out mass deportations and suggestions that local law enforcement could contribute to that effort, The Denver Post examined to what extent Colorado sheriffs currently coordinate with ICE under the state’s sanctuary laws, and what could change under the new presidential administration.
The Post found that most Front Range sheriffs’ offices, including in the state’s liberal strongholds, notify ICE in at least some cases before releasing inmates wanted on civil immigration detainers. The Republican sheriffs in Weld and El Paso counties both cited restrictions in state law as the reason they don’t.
Boulder County Sheriff Curtis Johnson said his agency can’t withhold inmates’ release times from ICE officers.
“It’s not that we’re working with ICE, but we’re not denying them public information we would give to anyone else,” he said. “If you had someone you cared about in our jail and called us and said, ‘When are they getting out of jail?’ We would tell you. So it’s public information and we don’t feel we can withhold that or pick and choose who we share public information with.”
Immigration advocates and state officials are bracing for a more aggressive approach to immigration enforcement under the new administration and are taking steps to prepare, but any effort by Trump to boost the role of Colorado law enforcement in immigration enforcement will have to contend with significant new state protections for immigrants.
Since 2019, Colorado lawmakers have passed laws that block ICE officers from arresting people at or around courthouses, stop probation officers from giving people’s personal information to federal immigration authorities, prohibit sheriffs from entering into agreements to house ICE civil detainees, and bar local jails from holding inmates solely at the request of ICE.
“I don’t think it’s a test of our laws, it’s a test of whether law enforcement and local officials will follow the law or whether they will follow an authoritarian,” Denver immigration attorney Hans Meyer said about Trump’s return to office. “It’s a testing of whether or not our state local officials believe in the laws we have. They are mandated to follow them, and the question is, will they do so?”
Some conservative officials are challenging limits state lawmakers put on local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE. Douglas County — with support from five other Colorado counties — pursued a lawsuit in 2024 aimed at reversing some of the restrictions; it was dismissed late last month, but county officials said they plan to appeal.
State Republicans last year and this year introduced bills to repeal cooperation limits and return the state to its 2006 approach to immigration enforcement, when police officers were required to report all suspected illegal immigrants to ICE.
“My hands are tied under Colorado law,” said Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario, who supported the lawsuit.. “…People say, ‘You’re the sheriff, you can do anything, you can hold them.’ It’s like, ‘No, I am not an emperor.’ I’m a state law enforcement officer, and I still have limitations I have to follow in state law.”
What are civil immigration detainers?
Colorado sheriffs cannot hold an inmate in jail solely because ICE asks them to.
But the federal agency can still ask — and it does, in the form of civil immigration detainers.
Those detainers are requests from ICE for sheriffs to hold inmates jailed on local criminal charges but set for release for an extra 48 hours so that ICE officials can pick the inmates up from jail and take them into federal custody for immigration proceedings.
Colorado law has prohibited sheriffs from honoring ICE detainers since 2019. Sheriffs cannot hold inmates in their counties’ jails past their regular release time solely because of a civil detainer request from ICE.
Still, most Front Range sheriffs’ offices do give ICE a heads-up before releasing inmates who are wanted on such detainers. Those notifications can happen days or hours before an inmate’s scheduled release, and give ICE officers advanced notice so they can try to take the inmate into federal custody.
The notifications are key to ICE officers’ goals of deporting people who are in the country illegally who present threats to national security or public safety, said Kelei Walker, acting field director for Denver ICE. ICE officers issue detainer requests only when the person meets a designated threat threshold, she said.
“Officers are trained very skillfully on identifying cases that meet the priorities of the administration, current or future,” Walker said. “We pay close attention to cases that are threats to national security, egregious public safety threats or security threats. There’s a lot more that goes into that — whether or not they have a final order, been in custody before, deported before — so it’s quite layered.”
The notifications from jails about upcoming releases allow officers to take custody of an inmate more efficiently and safely than tracking someone down in public, she said.
“Once we’ve decided an individual meets our priority, we are going to execute the mission to arrest that individual, whether that is in the jail or at their home,” she said. “And when it’s at their home, we have to send more officers to do that, we involve more of the public in that enforcement action, and it just changes the dynamic of what we are doing.”
Some jails will arrange for ICE to take custody of an inmate in a jail sally port, sometimes ICE contacts the person in the jail’s lobby, and sometimes ICE officials don’t get to the jail in time to make the immigration arrest there, she said. Some sheriffs give more notice than others. Denver faxes its notifications; some other agencies use email.
“It’s hit and miss,” Walker said. “I think all of the law enforcement professionals that we work with in the state of Colorado have the same idea in mind, which is to protect public safety. We get notified on a case-by-case basis in some places. And in some places we get notified pretty regularly.”
Denver alerted ICE before 63 inmates were released in 2024 through mid-December. Boulder County sent seven notifications to ICE, Jefferson County sent 186, Larimer County sent 25, and Douglas County sent 78 through late-November, according to the agencies, several of which noted that the notifications to ICE impacted a very small percentage of their jails’ overall annual population. Vallario estimated he notified ICE about roughly 50 inmates in Garfield County.
The sheriffs in Denver and Jefferson counties declined to speak with The Post about their practices.
In Boulder, Johnson said deputies do not delay the release of an inmate to give ICE more time to pick them up because doing so would violate state law.
“If ICE does not show up, that person still gets released,” he said. “We will not hold them beyond their release time. So they are getting released when they are getting released, whether ICE is waiting for them or not.”
The same applies in Douglas County, where Sheriff Darren Weekly said he has seen a noticeable increase in the last few months in the number of inmates ICE officers are actually picking up after being notified about releases, he said.
“Five or six months ago they would rarely come down,” he said, adding he didn’t know what prompted the change.
Jefferson County sheriff spokeswoman Karlyn Tilley said in an email that the agency gives ICE about two hours of notice before releasing inmates who are wanted on immigration detainers.
“If at that time ICE is interested in picking up someone being released, we will work with them the best we can to set a specific time for a release,” the statement said. “…We release them from our custody and once they are outside the walls of our facility, it is up to ICE what they decide to do.”
The sheriffs’ offices in Arapahoe and Adams counties confirmed they make notifications but did not answer records requests seeking how frequently they did so in 2024 before this story’s publication.
Summit, Weld and El Paso officials said their sheriffs do not notify ICE ahead of inmates’ releases.
Both the Weld and El Paso sheriffs’ offices had policies posted on their websites that said officers were required to notify ICE before an inmate wanted on an immigration detainer was released from jail — until The Post asked about the practice in early January. Both agencies then changed their written policies to match what they said was their actual practice of not making such notifications.
“The law is clear that we can’t work with them,” El Paso County sheriff’s spokeswoman Cassandra Sebastian said. “We do not communicate with ICE at this point in time.”
Reams, the sheriff in Weld County, said his agency posts basic information on arrests and inmates online that is available to any member of the public, including ICE officers.
“We think that is most in adherence with the House bill that was passed,” he said, referring to the 2019 law that stopped sheriffs from honoring civil detainers. “Just to make it clear, I am not a supporter of HB19-1124. I’ve hated it since the day it was passed. But I also understand I have to live within the confines of the law.”
The notifications in and of themselves are not surprising, said Meyer, the immigration attorney. But they raise some concern that sheriffs are in practice delaying releases to accommodate ICE, which would violate state law, he said.
“We are starting to see some county jails flirt with the idea of trying to cheat the system,” Meyer said. “Slow-walk when they release someone from jail when they post bond, and hyper-communicate with ICE to coordinate a pickup during the window when a person is released from jail. …It’s basically some sheriffs’ department violating the spirit of the law and walking right up to the line of violating the law.”
In Garfield County, Vallario said he is careful to follow the letter of the law. He is required to release all inmates — regardless of their immigration status — within six hours after they post bond. He looked into holding inmates wanted by ICE for that full six-hour period, but found he could not do so under state law, which says sheriffs can’t unnecessarily delay releases.
“If we only have one guy that ICE wants and he is the only one being booked out, it is going to take an hour, and chances are they aren’t going to get here,” he said.
In Douglas County, Weekly emphasized that he follows the state’s laws even as he and his county pursue a lawsuit seeking to overturn the restrictions.
“I’m not some rogue sheriff that is making up the rules as I go along,” Weekly said. “I’m following Colorado law. … I think you can still accomplish that and keep your community safe.”
What’s next under Trump?
Sheriffs who spoke with The Post expect little to change around their cooperation with ICE after Trump returns to office Monday — largely because of the limits already spelled out in state law.
But two sheriffs speculated that the federal agency might start relying more heavily on the criminal process to take custody of immigrants, instead of civil detainers.
“If it were a criminal charge signed by a judge and made into a warrant, that changes everything,” Weekly said. “It would give more latitude to the feds to do their job… I don’t think for a second the Trump administration is going to play around with this issue — they’re not.”
Reams, in Weld County, said he’d welcome increased immigration enforcement under Trump.
“I deal with folks who come into my jail because they haven’t obeyed the law here,” he said. “And then when I find out that they’ve also entered the country illegally, it’s maddening to have to release these folks out onto the street, knowing they entered the country illegally and yet they don’t even try to adhere to the laws of our country once they’re here.”
Walker, the Denver ICE director, said she could not comment on what might change after Trump takes office.
“Anything we say now would be speculation,” she said.
Advocates worry the federal government’s efforts to greenlight mass deportation will embolden sheriffs to push the limits of state law — a move that could undermine what trust immigrants have in the legal system.
“Word is going to get out that the community can’t trust cops, because sheriffs are cheating and violating immigrants’ rights left, right and center, handing them over to ICE,” Meyer said. “If local law enforcement is looking for ways to cheat, then why would you trust them? That genie is out of the bottle, and we haven’t even hit Jan. 20 yet.”
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Wednesday sought $1.2 million to hire three new attorneys for the next two years who’d be dedicated to “challenging unlawful federal government actions,” according to a budget request.
Weiser told The Post he is prepared to defend Colorado’s laws in court during a second Trump administration. In 2019, Weiser sued the federal government when federal officials withheld $2.7 million in law enforcement grant money because of Colorado’s immigration policies. Colorado won that lawsuit in 2021.
“We have made a choice in Colorado that we want our law enforcement officers doing law enforcement, and not immigration or deportation efforts,” Weiser said. “That is the job of the federal government, and in so far as the federal government tries to force or coerce local law enforcement to act contrary to Colorado law, our job is to defend Colorado law.”
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