ICE Outsmarts Sanctuary Cities in Colorado

Federal authorities seem to have found a way around progressive attempts to shield dangerous illegal immigrants from deportation. Over the past five years, an increasing number of cities – and at least one state – declared sanctuary status, meaning they will not allow local law enforcement to work with federal immigration agencies to apprehend illegals who commit additional crimes after crossing the border...

According to The Guardian, “new documents reveal that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has tapped a network of private technology companies to skirt such sanctuary policies, facilitating access to ‘real time’ information about incarcerations and jail bookings, which enables them to pick up immigrants targeted for deportation.”...

These documents, which were obtained by a coalition of immigrant advocacy groups, showed that ICE has started using Lexis Nexis and Equifax. These are companies that collect and sell personal and criminal justice data. The agency has also been locating illegal aliens by filing subpoenas and legal requests to Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook....

“The report focuses on Colorado, where a sanctuary policy has limited cooperation between local agencies and Ice since 2019,” according to The Guardian. “But many of the databases Ice has acquired access to are national in scope, the documents show.” Under Colorado’s sanctuary policies, law enforcement agencies are not allowed to share probation information with ICE or to comply with their detainer requests, but can provide the federal agency with jail booking and release information....