On Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement set out to arrest 100 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua in the Denver metro.
That apparently didn’t happen.
Far fewer people were arrested. Fox News reported only one of them was a Tren de Aragua member — an assertion Denverite has not been able to confirm.
President Donald Trump’s immigration czar Tom Homan went on Fox News to explain to host Harris Faulkner what went wrong.
Homan blamed a leaker who tipped off the community. The immigration czar said he would be dealing with that individual on Thursday.
The raids weren’t exactly quiet.
On Wednesday morning, federal police showed up in neighborhoods with military-grade armored vehicles. They also set up a staging area in a PetSmart parking lot along South Colorado Boulevard.
The federal police brought along a camera crew and posted on X about the raid while it was happening.
- Spectacle or substance? Impact of Denver immigration raids is up for debate
The Drug Enforcement Administration Rocky Mountain Division was posting about the actions by 7:04 a.m., long before the actions finished. Other federal agencies followed up with posts of their own shortly after 9 a.m.
Word spread, in part because of how visible the raids were, and demonstrators showed up on the scene.
‘They may find themselves in a pair of handcuffs very soon’
Faulkner asked the immigration czar why it was not illegal for protesters to use megaphones to inform people about their constitutional rights.
Homan said he’s speaking with the Department of Justice about the issue. The question, he said, was whether the protesters were impeding police action.
“This is a dangerous job for the men and women of ICE and Border Patrol and all the DOJ agencies,” Homan said. “To have that type of interference puts our officers at great risk. It puts the aliens at great risk. Anything can happen when we take our eyes off the goal here.”
That type of interference he’s talking about is speech.
The demonstrators did not physically interfere with the federal police actions. They merely spoke into a megaphone about the Constitution.
“They may find themselves in a pair of handcuffs very soon,” he said.
Is speaking about the Constitution during a police action a crime?
Not currently.
“That's called First Amendment free speech,” civil rights attorney David Lane said.
If the Department of Justice and ICE arrest people for exercising that right, they will find themselves in front of a federal judge, he said.
But the Trump administration has shown a willingness to violate constitutional law, Lane said, adding that Congress has shown no spine in standing up to those violations.
“The Constitution is only as strong as the people charged with enforcing it,” he said. “So we are hoping that federal district court judges will have the backbone to slap this down at its inception.”
While protesters who physically interfered with law enforcement could find themselves arrested, speech does not constitute interference.
“Advising people of their constitutional rights does not interfere with anything that ICE is trying to do in their Gestapo-like methods throughout Denver,” Lane said.
And teaching people about their rights is critical, he said. Many people living here have no clue what they are allowed to do in an interaction with the police.
“What these people — be they citizens or not, be they legally here or not — don't understand is that they have an absolute constitutional right to tell these agents to go f*** themselves and slam their doors in their faces,” Lane said. “That is what the law gives them the power to do.
“You don't have to show your identification to armed thugs just because they demand it, unless they have reasonable suspicion that you have committed a crime,” he added. “And the color of your skin does not give them reasonable suspicion, or the fact that your English is accented or non-existent does not give them reasonable suspicion.”
It’s not just know-your-rights protesters Homan wants banned from ICE actions.
“We can't be having all these different news outlets out there with us on various raids,” the immigration czar said.
Freedom of the press, of course, is also protected by the First Amendment. For an action to constitute interference, it must be physical.
Homan also warned against politicians who interfere with his actions.
“This is not a joke,” Homan said. “This is serious business, and they need to stop, or we’ll prosecute them through the Department of Justice … This stuff ends today.”
More likely, Lane said, it will end up in court.
