ICE arrests climb in Colorado this summer, but people detained are less likely to have criminal backgrounds

DENVER — Federal immigration arrests in Colorado surged this summer as the Trump administration charged ahead with its plans to mass-deport undocumented immigrants.

But as arrests have spiked, law enforcement agencies increasingly have detained people without any prior criminal convictions or charges, internal data show.

Between June 11 and July 28, ICE arrested 828 people in Colorado, according to a Denver Post analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley. That amounted to more than 17 arrests per day, a more than 50% increase from the first five months of the Trump administration, through June 10, a period covered in a previous Post story. The rate from this summer was also more than five times higher than the daily arrest average from the same time period in 2024.

Of those detained over the summer, only a third had prior criminal convictions noted in the records. Another 18% had pending charges, indicating that nearly half had been neither convicted nor charged with a crime and that their only violation was immigration-related.

That, too, is a shift: In the earlier months of President Donald Trump’s second term, two-thirds of the 1,639 people arrested in Colorado had either been convicted of a crime (38%) or charged with one (29%).

“That tracks with what we would have expected (and) what we’ve been hearing from community sources,” said Henry Sandman, the co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. “The data and the reality disproves ICE’s talking points that they’re going after criminals. We’re seeing tactics increase. They’re trying to increase arrest numbers as high as possible, whatever the reason may be for detaining folks.”

Steve Kotecki, a spokesman for Denver’s ICE field office, did not respond to a request for comment late last week.

The data, obtained directly from ICE by the UC Berkeley researchers through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, offers the clearest look at immigration enforcement activities available, as ICE doesn’t post recent information online. For this analysis, The Post examined arrests that occurred in Colorado; arrests that were listed in the dataset as occurring in Wyoming but which took place in a Colorado city; and arrests lacking a listed state but which occurred in a Colorado town or county.

The Post removed several apparent duplicate arrests and a similarly small number of arrests in the region that did not have a specific location listed. The analysis also included a handful of people who appeared to have been arrested twice in the span of several months.

When listing a detainee’s criminal background, the data provides no details about the criminal charges or prior crimes. Illegally entering the country is typically treated as a civil matter upon first offense, but a subsequent entry is a felony criminal offense.

More info about July operation

The newly released data includes the same nine-day period in July during which ICE has said it arrested 243 immigrants without proper legal status “who are currently charged with or have been convicted of criminal offenses after illegally entering the United States.” The arrests, the agency said, all occurred in metro Denver.

But the data published by the UC-Berkeley researchers does not fully match ICE’s public representations.

During the same time frame, the agency arrested 232 people, according to the data. Most of those arrested during that time had never been convicted or charged with a crime, at least according to what’s in the records. Sixty-six people had a previous criminal conviction, and 34 more had pending charges.

Kotecki did not respond to questions about the July operation.

The Post previously reported that ICE falsely claimed that it had arrested a convicted murderer in Denver as part of the July operation. The man had actually been arrested at a state prison facility shortly after his scheduled release, state prison officials said last month.

While ICE claimed the man had found “sanctuary” in the capital city — a shot taken at Denver’s immigration ordinances — The Post found that state prison officials had coordinated his transfer directly to ICE. He was then deported to Mexico, and information matching his description is reflected in the UC Berkeley data.

It’s unclear if all of ICE’s arrests are fully reflected in the data, making it difficult to verify ICE’s claims. The researchers’ data is imperfect, experts have told The Post. The records likely represent the merging of separate datasets before they were provided by the government, increasing the likelihood of mistakes or missing data.

Some arrests in Colorado were listed as occurring in other states or had no state listed at all. Other arrests were duplicated entirely, and researchers have cautioned that ICE’s data at times has had inaccurate or missing information.

The anonymized nature of the data, which lacks arrestees’ names but lists some biographical information, also can make it difficult to verify. When ICE announced the results of the July operation, it named eight of the people it had arrested. Court records and the UC Berkeley data appear to match up with as many as seven of them.

The eighth, Blanca Ochoa Tello, was arrested on July 14 by ICE’s investigative branch in a drug-trafficking investigation, court filings show. But it’s unclear if she appears in the ICE data, as she was arrested in La Plata County and no woman arrested in that county was listed in the data.

To verify ICE’s July operation claims, The Post examined arrest data in Colorado and Wyoming, which jointly form the Denver area of operations for the agency. The Post also searched for arrests in every other state to identify any arrests that may have occurred in a Colorado area but were errantly listed under other states.

Feds demand higher pace of arrests

The overall surge in arrests this summer has come as the Trump administration seeks to dramatically increase detentions and, eventually, the pace of deportations. In early July, Congress approved tens of billions of dollars in new funding for ICE as part of the tax bill.

Nationally, immigration authorities had their most arrest-heavy months this summer, according to data published by researchers at Syracuse University. Immigration officials arrested more than 36,700 people in June, its highest single-month total since June 2019, during Trump’s first term. More than 31,200 were arrested across the country in July.

The Trump administration has also set out to increase its detention capacity to accommodate the mass-deportation plans.

As of late July, ICE planned to triple its detention capacity in Colorado, according to documents obtained last month by the Washington Post. That plan includes opening as many as three new facilities and the expansion of Colorado’s sole existing facility in Aurora.

As of last month, that detention center housed 1,176 people, according to data published by ICE.

Over the course of this year, ICE arrested people in Colorado who were originally from more than 60 countries, according to the data. That included 10 Iranians arrested in late June or early July. Six of those people were arrested on June 22, the day after the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. Three more were arrested over the next 48 hours.

ICE publicly announced two of those arrests — and nine others nationally — on June 24.

The vast majority of the undocumented immigrants who were arrested and deported were returned to their home countries, though roughly 50 were sent somewhere else, the data show. Nine Venezuelans were sent to El Salvador in the first two weeks of the Trump administration, when alleged gang members were dispatched to a notorious prison there.

ProPublica identified roughly a dozen Coloradans who were sent to that prison. It reported that several were arrested in late January, which matches information listed in the ICE data published by UC Berkeley.

Advocates’ fears of continued arrests have escalated as ICE’s funding has surged. On Aug. 30, several immigration advocates picketed outside an ICE field office in Centennial after a number of immigrants received abrupt notices to check in at the facility.

Four people were detained, said Jordan Garcia, the program director for the American Friends Service Committee’s immigrant-rights program in Colorado.

Among them, he said, was an older Cuban man with dementia. Garcia and other advocates spoke with the man and his son before they entered the facility. The son later came out, Garcia said, and said that his father had been detained.

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