In 14 years of working as an immigration attorney, Laura Lunn says she has never seen Immigration and Customs Enforcement show force like the agency did in the Denver metro on Wednesday morning.
Federal law enforcement from Border Patrol, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE descended on five locations in Denver and Aurora.
Agents brought guns, body armor and armored Bearcat vehicles. They stationed a command center in a PetSmart parking lot off of Colorado Boulevard, where scruffy federal agents sipped from water bottles and a private detention contractor’s buses were parked, possibly ready to take people to detention.
But the agency has not confirmed the number of arrests, the number of officers involved, the number of sites with enforcement actions, or other details about the actions.
“Today was all about a massive waste of resources, a lot of fear-mongering in our community,” said Lunn, who's the director of litigation and advocacy for the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network. “Ultimately, at the end of the day, it sounds like they arrested very few people.”
Those she’s aware of who were detained were already in immigration court proceedings.
Officers stationed in the PetSmart parking lot declined to comment about their presence and referred Denverite to ICE. The Department of Homeland Security and ICE have not responded to our requests for comment.
An ICE account said on X that it was all part of an investigation into the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua.
“Unfortunately, we have to come to the communities because we don’t get the cooperation we need from the jails,” he said.
But agents appeared to cast a wide net. Denverite witnessed federal authorities knocking on doors throughout one apartment complex and, according to The Denver Post, agents asked residents of another building to present ID and even identify undocumented neighbors.
Spectacle or practical?
“It's like the big bad wolf showed up and was huffing and puffing this morning,” Lunn said. “When we think about how this is different from any other day, it isn't materially — other than that the drama and fearmongering and chaos is unprecedented.”
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Immigration attorney Hans Meyer said the action “serves a propaganda purpose of trying to instill fear in a community and to test the waters of being able to get away with unconstitutional behavior,” he said.
The retired head of ICE’s Denver Field Office, John Fabbricatore, told Denverite the armored vehicles and guns served a practical function.
“If there's a situation where they feel that the people that they are about to arrest have firearms, especially, you know, heavier rifles or automatic weapons, they will bring those vehicles,” he said.
The militaristic gear protects agents from bullets in case something goes wrong. It also deters potentially armed people from considering opening fire on law enforcement, he added.
“We've done operations like this in the past, Operation Cross Check during the Obama administration, where we arrested a lot of criminal illegal aliens during certain time periods, and that's what we're seeing today,” he said.
Lunn, who has represented families who were separated by ICE, sees operations like this differently.
“It is clearly just to show the kind of might that these law enforcement agencies have with their military-grade vehicles to go and instill incredible fear into small children and crying babies,” Lunn said.
The coming weeks:
Trump has promised both mass deportations and an ongoing show of federal force.
"I think in the weeks and months to come, we're going to see operations that are similar to this, very bellicose overt exercises,” Meyer said. “You know, boys with toys coming in with heavy machinery and guns and body armor in an effort to sort of functionally terrorize a community without actually being very effective about it."
As ICE conducts its work, Meyer will be looking for constitutional violations: officers detaining people without probable cause, excessive force and illegal search and seizure.
“I think we're going to see a whole-scale violation of people's Fourth Amendment rights and Fifth Amendment rights in the process of ICE and federal law enforcement officers basically being lap dogs to the Trump deportation machine,” he said.
He’s pushing community groups and individuals to learn about their rights. And he’s urging Colorado and local lawmakers to follow state law and not collaborate on immigration enforcement.
