On Sept. 25, students and their families arriving at Turman Elementary in Colorado Springs for another school day were instead met by masked and armed immigration agents.
“They were posturing across the street from our school with guns,” Harrison School District 2 Superintendent Dr. Wendy Birhanzel told KRDO. An ICE spokesperson stated it was “a targeted enforcement action” and agents “did not enter school property.”
The school went on secure status and attendance dropped that day. Birhanzel said ICE didn’t let the district know in advance. The Colorado Springs police, El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and the US Marshals all told KRDO they weren’t involved. Parents who saw an armed agent on a truck “yelling about ICE” turned around and “took their kid home,” Birhanzel said.
The agents work for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose budget is now “larger than the annual budget of all other federal law enforcement agencies combined,” the Brennan Center’s Lauren-Brooke Eisen told NPR.
All four of Colorado’s Republican representatives running for reelection this fall voted for both laws that provided ICE the money: Gabe Evans, Jeff Crank, Jeff Hurd, and Lauren Boebert. Three have publicly stated what they think ICE should do, how the agency and its personnel should conduct themselves, and what enforcement limitations exist. None of their public positions are in the laws they voted for.
How ICE got its money
ICE, which arrests, detains, and deports people already living in the US, traditionally received $8 billion to $10 billion a year. In July 2025, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, injecting $75 billion into ICE.
Then, in January this year, federal agents shot and killed two US citizens in Minneapolis—Renée Good and Alex Pretti. In response, Democrats refused to give ICE more money without new rules on the agency, like mandatory body cameras, the banning of masks for agents, and requiring a judge’s permission to enter homes.
Republicans circumvented the Senate’s usual 60-vote threshold through the budget reconciliation process, which only requires a simple majority. In June, they gave ICE an additional $38.5 billion, with none of the proposed rules making it into the final legislation. That’s roughly $113.5 billion in funding for ICE through Sept. 30, 2029.
The front door: Rep. Gabe Evans
A leaked ICE memo in January claimed officers can force their way into homes with a warrant signed by an ICE official, instead of a judge. “I believe that you need a judicial warrant to go into people’s private residences,” Evans told CBS Colorado in February.
Neither law requires one. In March and June, Evans voted for House debate rules that forbade changes to the funding bills, blocking proposals that would require a judge’s warrant. That June vote passed 213-211.
In May, a month before the second funding increase, a federal court judge found “not one of the 36” ICE arrest records he reviewed followed his order limiting warrantless arrests in Colorado. Evans voted for the June funding bill anyway.
Evans, who has urged ICE to focus on “gangsters, not grandmas,” represents a district that’s approximately 40% Latino.
Who gets arrested: Rep. Jeff Crank
“ICE should be going after people who are violent felons,” Crank told CPR on Sept. 25.
The massive funding increase he voted to approve doesn’t agree with that sentiment. About 65% of people arrested by ICE in Colorado had no criminal conviction, and only 5% of those with convictions had been convicted of violent crimes, a Colorado Sun analysis found.
After a raid on a nightclub in his Colorado Springs district in April 2025, Crank told Fox News that “illegal aliens have no place in our country.” Only nine of 72 people ICE arrested statewide that day had prior convictions.
Who’s behind the mask: Rep. Jeff Hurd
“As a general matter, we should be able to identify our law enforcement officers, and masks are not appropriate,” Hurd told The Journal in January.
Four months later, he voted to give ICE an additional $38.5 billion, with no rules on masks or identification.
In Hurd’s Western Slope district, during a traffic stop that was ultimately resolved with a warning, a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy sent a picture of a Utah college student’s license to a Signal group chat with federal law enforcement. She was detained by ICE shortly after and held for 15 days.
Of the 240 people ICE arrested in Mesa County last year, 126 had not been convicted of a crime.
“There’s going to be mistakes”: Rep. Lauren Boebert
Boebert, who is not facing as competitive of an election as her Republican colleagues in the state, has not publicly called for any specific limits on ICE agents and their enforcement tactics.
“Unfortunately, there’s going to be mistakes,” she told CPR on Sept. 25. “Of course, we should go after the worst of the worst, but anyone who has broken our nation’s laws to be here illegally doesn’t deserve to be here and should go back and wait in line.”
In her district, the private prison and immigrant detention corporation GEO Group is turning a former Hudson prison into a detention center for up to 1,200 people, under an ICE contract worth up to $528.7 million. ADD A LINE on breaking news of Hudson facility
On Sept. 29, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser sued the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, asking a court to cancel the GEO contract and stop the facility from opening. He says the agencies skipped a required review of the facility’s environmental impact.
When asked about the facility contract by CBS Colorado in July, Boebert’s office said:
— Office of Congresswoman Lauren Boebert
Back home
ICE arrests have nearly quadrupled in Colorado, from 1,091 in 2024 to roughly 4,160 in 2025, as reported by The Colorado Sun. The Hudson GEO Group center will nearly double how many people ICE can hold in the state.
The money is approved through 2029, a departure from the typical yearly funding appropriation Congress approves for the agency.
All four Colorado Republicans who voted for it face Democrats who have called for changes at ICE: Manny Rutinel against Evans in the 8th District, Jessica Killin challenging Crank in the 5th, Dwayne Romero taking on Hurd in the 3rd, and Eileen Laubacher challenging Boebert in the 4th. Who’s in Congress while it’s spent—including who conducts oversight of the agency and its facilities—is on the ballot Nov. 3.
