Colorado law firm accuses Western Slope sheriff of illegal coordination with ICE
A Denver law firm accused the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday of illegally coordinating the arrest and transfer of an immigrant without proper legal status last year.
The nonprofit law firm, Towards Justice, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sheriff Lou Vallario after months of allegations raised by Glenwood Springs-based advocacy group Voces Unidas. That group said Vallario had sidestepped state law to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in transferring immigrants into ICE custody.
The letter asks the Western Slope county’s sheriff to stop that practice, as well as any prohibited information-sharing with federal immigration authorities.
“Sheriff Valerio and other law enforcement across the state seeking to collaborate with ICE must know that they are not above the law,” Towards Justice executive director David Seligman said in a statement.
Sheriff’s office spokeswoman Shannon Stowe said in an email that she hadn’t yet seen Towards Justice’s letter. She pointed to a Feb. 7, 2025, statement from Vallario, in which he wrote that he works “with ALL law enforcement agencies, from local to international, to the degree I legally can.”
“As it is a legal matter, it will need to be reviewed by the County Attorney’s Office before any action is taken,” Stowe wrote.
Voces Unidas and Towards Justice accused a Garfield County deputy and an ICE agent of arresting an immigrant outside of a Walmart last June. The deputy then drove the man from Glenwood Springs to the town of De Beque, the organizations said, where he was turned over to ICE custody.
Alex Sánchez of Voces Unidas and Toree Lindblad of Towards Justice said the man had no federal or state criminal charges, and he was later deported from a detention center in Aurora.
The incident report, which is included in the letter, states that the ICE agent was part of a joint task force with the sheriff’s office. The deputy helped transport the man into the custody of “ERO,” or Enforcement and Removal Operations, which is the branch of ICE that handles civil immigration and deportations.
Five other deputies were present at the initial arrest, Towards Justice alleged.
Colorado law broadly prohibits local law enforcement from participating in civil immigration enforcement activities, and it also blocks any sharing of personal information with ICE outside of criminal probes.
Stowe did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Walmart arrest.
The letter from Towards Justice also accuses the sheriff’s office of allowing ICE agents into the local jail to pick up immigrants before they’re released. Sánchez said his group had documented nine cases of in-custody transfers, and Towards Justice released a statement from a woman who said she’d exited a jail bathroom after paying her bail, only to find a sheriff’s deputy waiting with an ICE agent.
But that practice may not violate state law. Colorado law prohibits jails from holding people at ICE’s request, or from holding them longer than necessary to allow ICE to come and pick them up.
However, it’s not illegal for ICE to arrest someone in a jail or for a jail to alert the agency that an immigrant is set to be released.
Last year, Colorado lawmakers briefly debated blocking ICE agents from entering nonpublic areas of jails. Emails obtained by Voces Unidas in a public records request show Vallario criticizing that provision as dangerous and saying he would “not comply” with that part of the bill, if it were passed.
But the provision was later stripped from the bill.
Vallario told The Denver Post last year that he did not delay immigrants’ releases and that he was bound by state law. In his statement last year, Vallario wrote that people who are eligible for release must be set free from jail custody within six hours.
“However, local ICE agents review our public jail website that shows the status of everyone in jail,” he wrote. “If ICE has an interest in detaining one, or more of them because of the seriousness of their crimes, they notify the jail and ask that we let them know when that person of interest is going to be released, and we do.”
The emails obtained by Voces Unidas also show Vallario criticizing state Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, a Glenwood Springs Democrat who sponsored last year’s bill proposing to further limit ICE cooperation by state and local officials.
In a June email to other law enforcement officials, Vallario sent a picture of Velasco carrying an anti-ICE sign, and he called her a “POS.”