For the first time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has issued subpoenas to fellow members of law enforcement. In the past most law enforcement agents around the country would work with them to remove criminal aliens from the Unites States but the spread of sanctuary laws has forced ICE to demand information some states and municipalities will no longer share. Specifically in this case, ICE is demanding the city of Denver provide information on four illegal aliens who had been arrested for crimes.

“Since we have no cooperation at the Denver justice center, we are modifying our tactics to produce information,” said Henry Lucero, deputy executive associate director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations…

The administrative subpoenas are usually sent by ICE to employers or landlords — but have never been sent to law enforcement agencies before, Lucero said…

Immigration officials sent requests to a Denver jail to alert them when the suspects were released, but the city does not comply with such requests, much like New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco and other localities that refuse to help federal immigration authorities. Three of the four men were released, one remains in custody…

…immigrant advocates and lawmakers say ICE is deporting people who have been in the U.S. for decades, who have families and lives and make contributions to American cities and who should not be their focus.

Is ICE being too aggressive in this case? Eventually we learn about the four individuals ICE is seeking to deport:

In the Denver cases, one man from Mexico was arrested for sexual assault, another for vehicular homicide and a third for child abuse and strangulation assault. The Honduran man was released after he was arrested on domestic violence charges. All had been removed from the country previously.

Sexual assault, homicide, child abuse, and domestic violence. Why is Denver refusing to help ICE remove these people from the country? It’s one thing for immigration activists to make a case for not deporting people who have been living peacefully in the country for decades. It’s another to argue we should protect people from deportation who are assaulting women and children.

The story doesn’t specify under what circumstances they were previously removed from the country. Usually there’s a minimum of five years before you can attempt to return. If any of these individuals entered illegally a second time that would be a felony. But beyond the legal issue there’s the potential danger to the community. Protecting these individuals could result in more victims as has happened several times in the past year.

Last March I wrote about a homeless drug addict named Carlos Eduardo Arevalo Carranza who was deported, reentered the country and was arrested ten subsequent times. Nine of those times ICE asked authorities to hold Carranza so he could be deported again but law enforcement declined in keeping with sanctuary policies. Carranza was finally arrested after he allegedly broke into the home of 59-year-old Bambi Larson and stabbed her to death.

Last September I wrote about Guadalupe Lopez-Herrera who threatened to kill his girlfriend with a knife. She sought a restraining order and when he refused to show up in court, deputies went to arrest him. When they approached he began firing at the deputies, hitting one of them in the chest and leg. Lopez-Herrera then went on the run and eventually led police on a high-speech chase, driving up to 120 miles per hour and firing his weapon at police through his window. When he was eventually captured, the Sheriff lashed out over the policies that put so many people in danger: “This person is not a legal citizen within the United States. We had him in our custody in January of this year. And because of the folks in Sacramento limiting our ability to cooperate with ICE, we could not turn him over.”

Colorado’s democratic governor Jared Polis signed a law last May which forbids local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE. Polis denies that Colorado is a sanctuary state but the Denver Post says the bill he signed meets the usual definition:

While there is not a singular definition for a sanctuary city, anti-sanctuary legislation in Congress usually defines it as a city that prohibits police from complying with ICE detainers. By that definition, the state has made virtually every city in Colorado a sanctuary city, vulnerable to losing billions in federal grants if presidential action or legislation were to crack down on sanctuaries.

Here’s a local news report from last march about the murder of Bambi Larson.