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WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Representative Brittany Pettersen (CO-07) demanded answers and accountability from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Todd Lyons on the recent immigration enforcement operations in Chaffee County, Colorado. 

Communities across the country – including in Chaffee – have reported ICE activity involving masked agents, driving unmarked vehicles. Community members, local officials, and advocates have raised serious concerns about the lack of transparency and government oversight of these operations and the impacts on families who are now afraid to go to school, work, or even seek medical care.

In the letter, Pettersen requests information from DHS and ICE about recent enforcement actions, including where they occurred, who was targeted or detained, how operations were conducted, and whether agents followed established guidelines to protect families and sensitive community spaces.

“Across the country, ICE is terrorizing immigrant communities, conducting raids in secret, and pulling people off the streets into unmarked cars,” said Pettersen. “Unfortunately, now Chaffee County has confirmed multiple detentions, leaving our community paralyzed with fear and unanswered questions. If ICE is going to carry out their operations in our communities, then we deserve full transparency and accountability for what happened in Chaffee County – and we need it now. I’ll continue to exercise my Congressional oversight authority to get the answers we are owed.”

Full text of the letter can be found HERE and below:

Dear Secretary Noem and Acting Director Lyons:

I write to express my deep concern about the immigration raids that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted in Chaffee County, Colorado. These raids have created widespread terror in immigrant communities.

While local law enforcement did not assist ICE in the immigration enforcement activity in Chaffee County, we know that immigration enforcement actions wreak havoc on communities and make it more difficult for state and local law enforcement to build and maintain trust with the communities they serve. According to a 2024 study by the CATO Institute, policies that increase information sharing between immigration enforcement and state and local law enforcement increased the targeting of Hispanic people for crime by 16 percent. In other words, these policies resulted in an additional 1.3 million crimes against Hispanic people over a two-year period. There is longstanding evidence that undocumented immigrants are less likely to contact the police if they have been the victim of a crime out of fear the interaction will result in immigration enforcement actions. It is for this very reason that many police chiefs and 

There are an estimated 6.1 million U.S. citizen children who live in households with an undocumented family member. These children suffer tremendously when their parents or their friends’ parents are taken away. The fear of potential enforcement actions causes anxiety among children, hurting their ability to succeed in the classroom. In addition, the detention and deportation of a parent, has a profound effect on a child’s health. Children whose parents are detained and/or deported are likely to suffer from mental health issues including post-traumatic distress disorder, exhibit behavioral problems such as anxiety and withdrawal, and experience higher rates of poverty and diminished access to food.

Further, previous raids have resulted in serious harm to communities. Following raids in August 2019 in Mississippi, reports emerged of young children returning to empty homes. Sheriff’s deputies had to go door-to-door looking for kids who had no one to care for them. At the time, the local Sheriff said his agency would cooperate with the federal government if required to carry out mass deportations, but that these actions “would severely hurt this area of Mississippi” by diminishing trust between the Sheriff’s department and the community. Small businesses also reported a sharp decrease in sales.

In the interest of exercising proper Congressional oversight of DHS and ICE, I request that you immediately provide the following information:

• A list of locations where enforcement actions took place. If any enforcement actions occurred at a school, hospital, religious site, community center, courthouse or other sensitive location, provide the agency’s rationale for conducting raids at any of these locations.
• Details on individuals ICE encountered during the enforcement action, including the number of people who were taken into custody, broken down by gender, age, nationality,  immigration status, and rationale for targeting them in a raid.
• Provide information on how many of those arrested had previously received a stay of removal, order of supervision or other form of prosecutorial discretion pursuant to prosecutorial discretion guidelines in place prior to January 2025.
• ICE’s methods to assume custody of individuals. For instance, did ICE agents directly ask for the individuals they sought, or did they present themselves as local law enforcement agents searching for another individual?
• Among individuals taken into custody, how many were collateral pickups (i.e. individuals encountered during the raid who were not intended targets).
• The manner in which ICE may or may not have collaborated with state and local law enforcement agencies.
• The manner in which ICE is following the Parental Interests Directive to ensure that mothers and fathers are able to make accommodations for their children.