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For decades, a city in the Colorado mountains has had a well-established Latino and immigrant community. Many work in nearby resort towns like Aspen and send their kids to local schools. Last year, the Trump administration ramped up immigration enforcement, and now the city is pushing back. Aspen Public Radio's Eleanor Bennett reports.
ELEANOR BENNETT, BYLINE: It's a busy Friday night in downtown Glenwood Springs. Restaurants are full. A band is setting up outside a popular brewery. And people are speaking a mix of Spanish and English as they stand in line for ice cream. This small city of about 10,000 residents sits along the Colorado River at a crossroads on Interstate 70. About a third of the community is Latino. For decades, the Aspen area resort industry has relied on immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries for labor.
About 20 years ago, ICE opened an office in a commercial center on the edge of town. Many people didn't know about it, but since the Trump administration started ramping up immigration arrests in its second term, that's changed.
AMY HAUSMAN: I was really surprised about two years ago to learn that there was an ICE facility basically right in my backyard.
BENNETT: Amy Hausman is one of a growing number of locals who have been protesting the facility over the last year.
HAUSMAN: I personally know people in our community who are terrified that they or their loved one could be picked up and held in that facility with no notice given to their family. Simply disappeared.
BENNETT: Glenwood permitted ICE's office as a processing facility, not a detention center. The permit says it can hold people there temporarily, but for no longer than 12 hours. This spring, though, the city concluded that ICE had been breaking this rule for years based on data from the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Los Angeles.
In April, the city revoked the facility's permit in a hearing that the agency did not attend. In a statement several weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security denied the violations.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Moving into the public comments...
BENNETT: This month, people once again packed City Hall, holding up photos of friends and neighbors who had been deported by ICE. They urged the city council to do something to enforce its zoning and safety rules.
REY WORRELL: No action, silence, doing nothing and feeling defeated is exactly how violators continue to violate our code and damage our city.
BENNETT: Rey Worrell, an area resident, acknowledged that taking on an ICE facility in the courts could be challenging and expensive. But he told city councilors it's worth it.
WORRELL: We need to be viewed as the city that went against all odds for our city and our community.
BENNETT: Karl Hanlon is the city's attorney. He also provides legal counsel to Aspen Public Radio. Hanlon said it would be difficult to sue ICE in federal court. Easier, he said, would be suing their landlord, JG Housing Solutions, for violating local zoning rules. But either could take years.
KARL HANLON: If my client tells me to fight the battle, we fight the battle.
BENNETT: After almost two hours of public discussion, the city council took a final vote on whether to sue the landlord that leases the facility to ICE. The clerk read the final tally.
UNIDENTIFIED CLERK: Yes, Mayor Dehm. Yes, Councilor Weimer. No, Councilor Schmahl. Yes, Councilor Smith. Yes, Councilor Schachter. It passes 6-1.
(CHEERING)
BENNETT: The city says it will file the lawsuit in the next week or so. JG Housing Solutions and federal officials declined to comment on the city's decision. For NPR News, I'm Eleanor Bennett in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
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