Public safety journalist Ryan Spencer has been reporting on ICE's movements across the Western slope, and he's uncovered that their professional relationships with local law enforcement vary all over the map.
Spencer: The Pitkin County Sheriff, for example, told me that there really had only been, you know, one or two operations that he had been notified of so far this summer. And then meanwhile in Summit County, there were three operations in the span of a week and a half, or two weeks.
Spencer's recent article details how ICE has been alerting. Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario and Pitkin County Sheriff Michael Buglione of operations in their jurisdiction, but not Routt or Grand counties.
Additionally, the Summit County Sheriff, Jaime Fitzsimons told Spencer that while ICE had previously notified his office of operations within his jurisdiction, they had failed to notify him of an operation near Silverthorne in late September that resulted in six people being detained. Sheriff Buglione and Sheriff Vallario both detailed that notification of ICE operations is a professional courtesy as well as a safety measure. It has been common practice for years for law enforcement agencies to let their colleagues know when they'll be in their jurisdiction. That way, if concerned members of the public witnessing a raid, call their local police station, Vallario says they can let them know what's happening. This is also to reduce the likelihood of what Sheriff Buglione calls a blue-on-blue incident.
KDNK: Why do you think the Sheriffs of Grand and Routt County are not receiving this professional courtesy when Garfield County is?
Spencer: I mean, it's really hard to say, you know.. we tried to reach out to ICE to try and get some information about what their policies are as far as notifying local jurisdictions of their presence, and they did not give us a whole lot. They said in a statement that 'for operational security and for the safety of our law enforcement personnel, ICE does not confirm, deny, or otherwise discuss ongoing or future operations,' and that the agency 'publicly announces operational results when appropriate.' So they really weren't telling us why they were or weren't notifying sheriff's offices.
And, you know, in some cases it could be that the Sheriff's office has a relationship or has personally asked ICE to provide that information to them. You know, one of the sheriffs' offices I spoke to told me that they had specifically made that request of ICE. There's not necessarily any reason that ICE has given for why they have or have not provided this information to local offices.
ICE's seeming reluctance to provide information doesn't stop at law enforcement. Spencer says that the Summit Daily has been unsuccessful in acquiring anything they've asked for.
Spencer: We've really had a hard time getting much information at all out of them. You know, we've been trying to get the names of the people who they've been detaining. They have not provided those to us. And the Summit Daily News has filed records requests related to the operation that occurred here in Summit County a couple weeks ago, and ICE has denied that records request. So we're really pushing the, these federal agencies for information and they're not providing it to us or to the public.
Another complication regarding law enforcement is Senate Bill 276. When it was passed this spring, it extended an existing ban on data sharing between state and federal officials to local governments, meaning sheriff's offices and local police stations can't give out your information to ICE without a valid warrant. A warrant is also required for ICE to access private spaces and information from institutions like schools and hospitals. Spencer says that because the law is new and relatively untested, that it could be up for interpretation.
Spencer: There's been concerns by some sheriffs that it's too vague and that it's hard to dissect exactly what it does and doesn't prevent sheriffs' offices from doing.
KDNK: Mm-hmm. Okay. So you're saying that they're worried that they could do something they didn't know they could get in trouble for and then get in trouble for it essentially.
Spencer: Some sheriff's offices seem to have that concern. Kind of our take on it and my take on it is the language of the law itself doesn't seem to say, you know, for example, you can't get notification from ICE that they're doing an operation like they, it doesn't say that that would be collaboration, but the Grand County Sheriff's Office Sure seems to think it says that. So I would be very surprised to see them prosecuted under that law for ICE telling their dispatch that they were doing an operation, but they seem to be hiding behind the law a little bit, using it as a shield.
Spencer emphasizes that things are moving incredibly quickly on a federal level, leaving little room to set precedents for conduct and lawfulness, possibly at the risk of public safety.
Spencer: We've seen ICE activity pick up really substantially over a couple of months, and my kind of take on it is that, you know, there isn't a lot of precedent for how maybe some of this has happened in the past. They've grown the size of ICE. They're recruiting new people to join that agency. So I just think it's all changing so fast and happening so fast that there maybe isn't a policy on the books about how exactly this is supposed to roll out.
KDNK will continue to report on migration and ICE raids across the Western Slope. Submit a tip at any time to news@kdnk.org.
