DENVER – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a Guatemalan man Wednesday morning in southwest Denver who the agency says is an immigration fugitive.
According to ICE spokesman Carl Rusnock, agents stopped a van on S. Federal Blvd. around 6 p.m. on the belief that one of the men inside matched the description of a wanted immigrant who was in the country illegally.
Rusnock says that the people inside the van were questioned, and that a Guatemalan man who was an ICE fugitive was identified among the group. He was not, however, the same man agents believed they were targeting at the time, Rusnock said.
The man questioned and arrested had received a final removal order from a federal immigration judge in 2016, Rusnock said, though he was not identified.
The man who had been targeted was not found, and the four other people who were inside of the van were released at the scene.
The Colorado Rapid Response Network, an organization which helps undocumented immigrants know their immigration rights, said someone called their crisis hotline to report the arrest, though the group claimed the arrest was a “raid” at a nearby apartment complex.
The man arrested in Wednesday’s actions has not been identified.