Colorado ICE detainers: What the House report found and what it missed

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

A Denver sheriff’s deputy filled out a notification form in late February 2025. Under the line reading “Being released to,” the deputy wrote one word.

Streets.

The man walking out was Abraham Smith Gonzalez. The committee describes him as a suspected Tren de Aragua member who had been in Denver custody close to a year on charges of aggravated assault, motor vehicle theft and felony menacing. His jail record carried a highlighted flag. Violent to staff.

A Denver Sheriff Department ICE notification form shows an inmate being released to “Streets” on Feb. 28, 2025. His jail record carried a highlighted flag reading “violent to staff.” The deputy’s name and serial number were redacted by the committee. (House Judiciary Committee interim staff report, Oct. 9, 2026)

That form now sits in a congressional report.

The House Judiciary Committee and its Immigration Subcommittee released the 24-page interim staff report on Oct. 9, under Chairman Jim Jordan and Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock. It examines Colorado’s sanctuary statutes, how the Denver and Boulder county jails handle ICE detainers, and the immigration policies of both counties’ elected district attorneys.

It is built on records the two sheriff’s departments and both district attorneys turned over under oversight, plus detainer data ICE gave committee staff.

Since January, the committee has requested records from 40 officials across 13 sanctuary jurisdictions. This one covers Colorado.

Colorado Rep. Gabe Evans signed the letters that started it. On May 20 he joined Jordan and McClintock in writing to Denver Sheriff Elias Diggins and Police Chief Ron Thomas, asking each for its records on dealings with ICE and the number of detainers it had declined. The deadline was June 3.

What the committee says it found

ICE issued 313 detainers to the Denver County Jail between Jan. 20, 2025, and Sept. 17, 2026, according to information ICE provided the committee in September.

Twenty of the people named in the report had detainers Denver did not honor this year.

They include a Venezuelan national arrested on a charge of sexual assault on a child in a position of trust, a Mexican national arrested for failure to appear whose record includes arrests for strangulation, assault and kidnapping, and a Somali national with convictions for possession and distribution of dangerous drugs and for fraud-criminal impersonation.

On Boulder, the committee names three more whose detainers the sheriff’s office did not honor this year, with records that include aggravated assault, child abuse and bribery.

It names others the office released rather than held, among them Marlon Ronaldo Pena Contreras, whose record includes an arrest for sexually assaulting a minor “multiple times between February 2023 and April 2024.”

A page of the Boulder County Jail’s written policy is reproduced in the report. The jail “will not deny, or delay release of an inmate based solely on an Immigration Detainer or Immigration Arrest Warrant.”

The page of Boulder County Jail policy reproduced in the congressional report. The third item tells ICE that an inmate with no other holds will be released as soon as bond paperwork is processed. (House Judiciary Committee interim staff report, Oct. 9, 2026)

The prosecutors

The committee says Denver’s John Walsh and Boulder’s Michael Dougherty weigh immigration consequences when resolving cases, so that defendants can avoid deportation.

The committee traces the Denver policy to a 2019 memo from Walsh’s predecessor, Beth McCann, directing the office to “take reasonable steps to mitigate” immigration consequences.

The report says that policy permits the same consideration in cases involving violent felonies. The memo says collateral consequences are “generally not a relevant nor appropriate factor in any case involving a violent felony absent exceptional circumstances.”

For Boulder, the committee quotes Dougherty’s own published policy. His attorneys consider immigration consequences in recommending dispositions, including the crime of conviction and the “[l]anguage used in disposition documents.”

The same policy says those consequences are “generally not a compelling or appropriate factor for consideration,” absent exceptional circumstances, in violent offenses, aggravated or violent sexual factual basis offenses, aggravated drug distribution, aggravated domestic violence and vehicular fatalities. The report cites three of those five categories as cases where Dougherty permits the consideration.

The committee cites three categories as cases where Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty permits immigration consequences to be weighed. His published policy lists those same three among five where such consequences are “generally not a compelling or appropriate factor.” (Top: House Judiciary Committee interim staff report, Oct. 9, 2026. Bottom: Boulder County District Attorney’s Office)

A second page says the office is “willing to move court dates for a defendant” when there is concern that immigration officers will use the hearing to find someone. It also says the office “will not notify ICE if a defendant in a pending case is undocumented.”

The committee accessed both public pages on Oct. 6, not through a records production.

The report ends with Patti Fox. Her daughter Carissa “Luu” Aspnes was hit in Parker in March 2025 by Valeria De Los Angeles Bermudez Marcano, a Venezuelan national the report says entered the country illegally in 2023. Marcano was unlicensed and uninsured, ran a stop sign and fled.

Carissa survived. She is nonverbal, uses a wheelchair and eats through a feeding tube.

Marcano was out on a $500 bond within two days. ICE arrested her in January 2026 and removed her from the country that April.

“Public safety cannot operate exclusively in hindsight,” Fox told the subcommittee in September.

The counties the report left out

The committee examined Denver and Boulder. Among detainers ICE recorded an outcome for, neither county posts Colorado’s highest rate of declines.

RMV reviewed 3,955 Colorado detainer records covering January 2025 through March 2026, released by ICE through FOIA litigation and published by the Deportation Data Project.

ICE recorded an outcome on 2,238 of them.

On the other 1,717, the agency’s own files show nothing. Not whether the jail held the person, not whether ICE came, not whether anyone walked out.

That is 43 percent of the state’s detainers, and the gaps are not spread evenly. Weld’s records are 98 percent complete, Morgan’s 97.5. The Denver Justice Center, which took most of Denver’s detainers, is 29 percent.

Among jails with at least 10 recorded outcomes, Summit County declined 88 percent, 38 of 43. La Plata is at 80 percent, 12 of 15.

Boulder is at 63 percent, Broomfield 60, Morgan 59, Larimer 54.

ICE recorded no outcome on 43 percent of Colorado detainers, and the gaps fall unevenly. Decline rates are figured only on records that carry an outcome. (RMV analysis of ICE detainer records published by the Deportation Data Project)

Summit, La Plata, Broomfield, Morgan and Larimer are not mentioned anywhere in the House Judiciary report. Neither is Weld County, whose jail turned down 81 detainers over the period, a larger count than any other facility in the state.

Morgan County Undersheriff Jon Horton told RMV his office does not delay a release on a detainer alone, notifies ICE when an inmate goes out, and keeps no separate tracking. 

Morgan County Undersheriff Jon Horton’s written response to RMV. Morgan declined 59 percent of the ICE detainers with a recorded outcome, higher than Boulder. The House Judiciary report does not mention the county. (Morgan County Sheriff’s Office)

A question of notice

The House Judiciary report says DSD “is allowed to notify ICE prior to criminal aliens’ release from custody,” but that “the notification often does not allow ICE sufficient time to arrest the alien safely.”

In the Gonzalez case, ICE told committee staff that Denver gave it between one and two hours. ICE says agents tried to take him outside the jail and that he assaulted an officer.

Colorado law bars officers from detaining anyone on a civil immigration detainer. Neither 24-76.6-102 nor 24-76.6-103 says anything about how much notice a jail owes ICE.

Denver’s ordinance does, and it makes notice optional. Section 28-253(d) says the sheriff department “may respond to a notification request and provide such notifications to the extent the department is reasonably capable of doing so.” The council adopted that language in August 2017 and has not amended it since.

The same section requires the department to log every notification request ICE sends, including when it arrived and whether and when it answered, and to report quarterly to the city council and the mayor.

Boulder put a clock on itself. Its jail policy, updated in July 2025 and obtained by RMV, has a supervisor pull a dashboard of inmates with ICE holds and release dates every shift, then telephone ICE about anyone inside 48 hours.

Boulder’s policy describes ICE’s detainer form as asking a jail either to hold someone 48 hours past release or to give 48 hours’ notice instead.

It does not reach every case. For an inmate with no other holds, Boulder tells ICE that if the person makes bond, the release will follow as soon as the paperwork is processed.

Under Colorado law, holding someone on a detainer past the point they are eligible for release is a new warrantless arrest.

The bill behind the report

The committee ends by pointing to H.R. 7640, the Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act, sponsored by McClintock.

It would supersede state and local laws restricting cooperation with federal immigration officers and let any state or local employee share immigration status information regardless of state law.

Jurisdictions that restrict cooperation, or decline valid detainers as policy, would lose eligibility for Byrne JAG and COPS grants and other Justice and Homeland Security law enforcement money for a year, or until Homeland Security certifies they comply, whichever is later. The money would go to jurisdictions that do.

Officers and agencies sued over covered cooperation could move the case to federal court, where they would be treated as acting under federal authority, and the United States substituted as defendant. The treatment applies to liability only. Mistreatment claims are excepted.

Colorado has produced one such suit, and the report describes it. In July 2025, Attorney General Phil Weiser sued a deputy in Mesa County over information the deputy passed to federal officers in a Signal group chat.

Victims of murder, rape or another felony could sue a state or local government for compensatory damages in federal court if the offender had a prior conviction and had been released despite a detainer, reaching offenses committed up to 10 years before the bill took effect.

The committee reported the bill in March. It has not reached the House floor.

Until it becomes law, Colorado’s statutes stand in all 64 counties.

The report examined two.