Denver’s top immigration enforcement official said he was reassigned to Virginia effective earlier this week, amid a broader shakeup among the ranks of the federal agency tasked with arresting and deporting millions of immigrants without legal status.
Robert Guadian, the now-former head of the Denver field office for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, confirmed Thursday, while testifying remotely in federal court as part of a lawsuit alleging that ICE has conducted waves of warrantless and illegal arrests in the state, that he has been relieved of his duties in Colorado. He said he had been reassigned to the ICE’s field office in Virginia, which also oversees Washington, and that his reassignment became effective last Sunday.
Guadian, who took over Denver’s federal immigration enforcement operations shortly before President Donald Trump took office, did not provide a reason for his reassignment. He is among a dozen ICE field directors to be reshuffled by the Trump administration and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security this week.
All of those officials will be replaced by other ICE personnel or by Customs and Border Protection officials, sources told The Associated Press. The installment of Border Patrol officials likely indicates a greater integration of that agency into ICE at a time when the patrol has been accused of using heavy-handed tactics in its immigration enforcement elsewhere in the U.S.
Guadian’s confirmed departure came as he defended ICE’s embattled tactics in Colorado. A group of law firms, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, sued the agency in October, arguing that ICE increasingly has arrested and detained undocumented immigrants without probable cause to do so. Federal immigration authorities have surged arrests in recent months and have moved to keep immigrants detained, which, attorneys have argued, is part of a broader effort to increase deportations.
Read the full story from our partners at The Denver Post.
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