Holding ICE thuggery to local laws is about to happen in Colorado

 There has been a lot of talk about holding ICE agents to the rule of law. Here is a case in Colorado of that happening. The rough treatment of a protester will now be investigated by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Poorly trained, poorly screened ICE agent hires have created situations when they act like thugs...and violent ones at that. Not only is it "not a good look", it may also break the law...in the case of Colorado state laws. These are the legal arguments

Update 11/23/2025 Detainees not flight risks should be bonded out https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-dealt-a-blow-as-hundreds-detained-in-immigration-crackdown-ordered-to-be-freed/ar-AA1QjIWC

Update: 11.10/2025 Real people doing otherwise everything right are being destroyed by smash-and-grab ICE, and these actions are out of control. Those who think anyone without documents, still doing the right thing, deserves to be kicked out of the country . All undocumented are de facto criminals, goes the argument, so kick them out. Being undocumented is a misdemeanor (petty crime) at worst. Entering the country illegally is a misdemeanor. Overstaying a visa is a civil law problem; you get sued.. If you reenter the country after being deported, that is a criminal offense. If you get charged for a petty crime like a misdemeanor, maybe you deserve to be treated like you have committed theft, robbery, murder, and assault, too. to be. thrown into detention and having to hire a lawyer, too? . A ticket and a court date is fair...a fine and public service work for you, right? But...not for brown people? Undocumented immigrants have protection under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which guarantee due process and equal protection under the law. As a result, undocumented immigrants cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without fair legal proceedings.  

These are the legal arguments I am giving, but for the moral and religious thought, Pope Leo has some pointed thoughts. So do the protestant and Catholic clerics now activated to protest. Catholic Group Sues Trump Administration for Access to Immigration Facility - The New York Times

Pope Leo, Catholic bishops come out against 'vilification' of immigrants in U.S. | CBC News

Sometimes we get tied up in knots over the legal issues surrounding ICE operations. What we also need to do is to take stock of the moral issues. I have seen posted on this and other FB sites hateful attacks on all immigrants that do not reflect the poster's preference for who they want to let come into this country and who they want to expel. In reflection of this, while I am not a Catholic (I am a white protestant), the Catholic church has come out against "vilification" of migrants. This hatred of migrants who are not like the majority White Chirstians here, is not a Christian value.

Besides, snatching people who speak another language and look like they are south of the Rio Grande is race-based profiling and sweeps up those lawfully here, but the snatchers themselves are acting illegally themselves. Grab first and sort it out later flies in the face of both civil rights and human rights. and due process, and the courts are ruling, the ICE snatchers are acting illegally.

\ Trump promised to deport the rapists, murderers, and gang members, but he has made this into getting rid of everyone who looks brown, which goes way past his promise. I give him credit for closing the border, but I condemn the method of using ICE snatch and grab and total disregards of key provisions in the bill of Rights and amendments, from violence against protestors to unlawful detainment of so many, to racial profiling and acts of cruelty and paramilitary masked forces who are contracted and loyal to their employer, Department of Homeland Security, but not to the Constitution. It is not just a "bad look", it is not the America I know...and is worthy of some other bad acting country we once condemned..

• Constitutional violations: Racial profiling is illegal because it is a form of racial discrimination that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Additionally, if a stop and frisk is based on race rather than reasonable suspicion of a crime, it is considered an unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment.
• Legal precedent: In the 2013 case Floyd v. City of New York

Update: 11/6/2025 In New Jersey, in he governor's race on Tuesday, highly Hispanic counties with 41% voting in 2024, for Trump voted 15% for the GOP gubernatorial candidate per reports I have seen.. That is a dramatic shift in less than a year. Trump erased any gains in the Hispanic community for a good reason: ICE thuggery and overreach.

I have the advantage of being in contact with Hispanics, living in a resort area in Colorado that relies heavily on Hispanics for construction, maintenance of short-term rental properties, restaurants, and landscaping. Nearly all Hispanics I come in contact with, including some long-term tenants of my rental property, mostly had green cards, thought they were safe in a remote small community, and knew to keep a low profile, work hard, were ultra law-abiding, and were valued members of the community. That was until ICE came along, and we have had some very public examples of ICE thuggery in Colorado's western slope small towns. One case now being investigated by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation that resulted in an assault on an anti-ICE demonstrator in Denver, who was protesting the grabbing of a father and his two kids on the way to school, was admitted by ICE as a case of mistaken identity, though the father they picked up was undocumented with no criminal record.. The Durango community is up in arms...and some are pointing fingers at their local police for collaborating with ICE in the violent assault on a woman anti-ICE demonstrator being hurled to the ground and injured, the act caught on phone video by a bystander.. This may become more of an issue, as it will be one of the first cases in which ICE is held accountable for breaking state criminal laws.

Hispanics I know who have green cards tell me they are terrified of the violence of ICE and indiscriminate grabbing of otherwise law-abiding members of the community. None of course vote, but nearly all have relatives who do since their families are often mixed status, with citizens, too, in Denver or elsewhere, some of whose members have also been swept up in ICE overreach.. Terrified is the term they most often use lately. At first, Hispanics I knew were happy Trump was getting rid of drug dealers and gang members; now they are terrified of the overreach of ICE. I am not Hispanic, and I am happy the border is closed. I thought Trump was promising to limit ICE to getting already adjudicated criminals (murderers and rapists), but their total defiance of due process and indiscriminate...grab, detain, anyone who looks Hispanic, and sort out later... is outrageous, and then assaulting protestors is even more outrageous. The father and his two kids are still in detention somewhere in Texas. No wonder the Hispanic community is now "woke".