The sheriff's office in Jefferson County, Colorado, pushed back Thursday against what it called a "misleading statement" from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Denver.
ICE Denver posted on X that the office was seeking "community’s assistance" to locate a Honduran man who "was released from Jefferson County without being turned over to ICE."
The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office posted a lengthy "fact-check" of its own on X, calling ICE Denver's statement "misleading."
"When we called the ICE Denver office about their misleading post, they made their position unmistakable: if we do not provide ICE extra time to coordinate inmate pickups from our facility, in violation of Colorado law, deceptive posts like yesterday’s will become the norm," the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office wrote.
The spat between the two agencies is emblematic of the simmering tensions between federal immigration officials and local law enforcement. Colorado law prohibits local law enforcement officers from sharing non-public information like an individual's immigration status with federal authorities.
It is also not the first time that ICE Denver has shared misleading information about local immigration actions. The Denver Post reported that ICE claimed local law enforcement declined to assist in searching for someone who escaped from the ICE detention facility in Aurora.
Aurora Police Chief told The Post that ICE didn't call 9-1-1 to report the escape until nearly five hours after it happened.