DENVER — Colorado’s Democratic attorney general on Tuesday sued a sheriff’s deputy for allegedly helping federal immigration agents find and arrest a college student who had an expired visa.
Attorney General Phil Weiser also disclosed that his office is investigating whether other law enforcement officers on a regional drug task force the deputy worked on have been sharing information to help federal agents make immigration arrests in violation of state law limiting cooperation in immigration enforcement. The federal government has sued Colorado over such laws.
On June 5, Mesa County Deputy Alexander Zwinck allegedly shared the driver’s license, vehicle registration and insurance information of the 19-year-old nursing student in a Signal chat used by task force members, according to the lawsuit. The task force includes officers who work for federal Homeland Security Investigations, which can enforce immigration laws, the lawsuit said.
After federal immigration officers told him in the chat that the student did not have a criminal history but had an expired visa, Zwinck allegedly provided them with their location and told her to wait with him in his patrol car for about five minutes, asking about her accent and where she was born. He let her go with a warning and gave federal agents a description of her vehicle and told her which direction she was headed so they could arrest her, the lawsuit said.
When Zwinck was told of the arrest, the lawsuit said he congratulated the federal agents, saying “rgr, nice work.” The following day, one federal immigration agent praised Zwinck’s work in the chat, saying he should be named ”interdictor of the year” for the removal division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Zwinck is also accused of violating the law again on June 10 by providing immigration officers with the photo of the license of another driver who had overstayed his visa, information about the person’s vehicle and directions to help them arrest the driver. After being told that immigration officers “would want him”, Zwinck replied that “We better get some bitchin (sic) Christmas baskets from you guys”, the lawsuit said.
The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the lawsuit. Spokesperson Molly Casey said the office is about a week away from finishing its internal investigation into the student’s traffic stop and plans to issue a statement after it is finished.
A working telephone number could not be found for Zwinck, who was placed on paid leave during the sheriff’s office’s investigation. Casey declined to provide the name of an attorney who might be able to speak on his behalf.
The sheriff’s office previously announced that all its employees have been removed from the Signal group chat.
Weiser said he was acting under a new state law that bars employees of local governments from sharing identifying information about people with federal immigration officials, a recent expansion of state laws limiting cooperation in immigration cases. Previously, the ban on sharing personal identifying information only applied to state agencies, but state lawmakers voted to expand that to local government agencies earlier this year.
“One of our goals in enforcing this law is to make clear that this law is not optional. This is a requirement and it’s one that we take seriously,” he said.
The law allows violators to be fined but Weiser’s lawsuit only seeks a judge’s order declaring that Zwinck’s actions violated the law and barring him from such actions in the future.