Immigration agents arrested 63 people in Denver as part of a four-day operation that netted nearly 500 arrests in cities federal officials say are “sanctuary” cities, despite Denver’s claim it isn’t a sanctuary city.
According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the operation, dubbed Operation “Safe City,” “focused on cities and regions where ICE deportation officers are denied access to jails and prisons to interview suspected immigration violators or jurisdictions where ICE detainers are not honored.” The four-day operation wrapped up Wednesday.
The office of Mayor Michael Hancock said it was not made aware of the ICE sweep, and pushed back at some of the agency’s claims that Denver is a “sanctuary city.”
Denver has made it clear that ICE needs to obtain a criminal warrant before an immigration detainer is granted (doing otherwise has been ruled unconstitutional), and that it does honor notification of release requests from ICE. The mayor’s office also said that the local ICE office “has not asked to conduct an in-person interview in the Denver jails for quite some time.”...
CAIRCO Notes
The factual error in the story is that "federal courts have ruled" that ICE detainers are unconstitutional. This is not the case. Some federal district courts have ruled that way, but no federal court in Colorado has ruled that way. This has not been ruled in any district court in Colorado and not by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Colorado, and not by the USU Supreme Court.
Therefore, Colorado is not bound by those other rulings.
Another error in the story is that since February the Denver jail has not been sharing the daily "booking sheets" of new inmates, so ICE no longer has lists of inmates to examine and consider for interviews.
For more information, see Sanctuary Cities in America, including Denver and Aurora, Colorado
