A Colorado law enforcement officer has been sued for cooperating with federal immigration agents.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser sued Mesa County Sheriff’s Deputy Alexander Zwinck last week after Zwinck reportedly sent federal agents information about a student present in the U.S. illegally, The Associated Press first reported.
Zwinck and another deputy, Erik Olson, have also been placed on unpaid leave; Zwinck for three weeks and Olson for two weeks.
On June 5, Zwinck is reported to have pulled Caroline Dias-Goncalves over for a traffic stop. The officer gave Dias-Goncalves, a college student from Brazil with an expired visa, a warning but shortly after, federal immigration officers stopped Dias-Goncalves and arrested her.
A Mesa County Sheriff’s Office internal investigation found that Zwinck and Olson were a part of a Signal group chat that included Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Both deputies are reported to have used the Signal chat to relay information to federal officers.
Dias-Goncalves’s “detainment was facilitated as result of her information being shared by Mesa County Sheriff’s Deputy Alexander Zwinck to a group chat containing representatives from local, state, and federal law enforcement partners, including Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” according to Mesa County Sheriff Todd Rowell.
The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office, according to Rowell, “has well-established practices limiting our involvement in immigration enforcement.”
“Based on our findings, the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office should not have had any role in the chain of events leading to Miss Dias-Goncalves’s detention, and I regret that this occurred,” Rowell said. “I apologize to Miss Dias-Goncalves.”
Two other officers, both supervisors, were reprimanded following the investigation, with one being suspended for two days and the other receiving a letter of reprimand. A third supervisor has “been provided documented counseling,” according to Rowell.
Colorado law prohibits law enforcement from sharing identifying information about individuals with federal immigration officials. Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, signed the law only about two weeks before the arrest of the illegal alien with the expired visa.
Zwinck, who was a part of a drug task force that included federal agents, said during a July disciplinary hearing, that he did not know about the new Colorado law and was only interested in finding “drugs, guns, and bad guys” when he shared information with federal officers.
A spokesperson for Weiser, Lawrence Pacheco, said the “attorney general has a duty to enforce state laws and protect Coloradans, and he’ll continue to do so,” The Associated Press reported.
Rowell said in a statement that he was “deeply disappointed” in the attorney general’s decision to file a lawsuit against Zwinck “prior to the completion of our investigation and prior to the determination of internal discipline.”
The lawsuit against Zwinck comes as the Trump administration continues to prioritize the arrest and removal of illegal aliens, and some sanctuary cities and states have made it a practice to refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement operations.
