On Monday, the Colorado Rapid Response Network (CORRN), alongside the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), presented their 2025-2026 Community Report, “Mapping La Migra and Building Resistance in Colorado,” a compilation of new data on ICE activity and detention trends.

“The Colorado Rapid Response Network … documents the trends, the experiences, and community impacts related to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal immigration enforcement activity in Colorado that we have observed and documented,” said Judith Marquez, the Keep Families Together campaign manager at CIRC and a dispatcher with the Colorado Rapid Response Network (CORRN), during a Zoom press conference. “The purpose of this report is really to inform our community members, organizers on the ground, service providers, elected officials, policymakers, and the media to really understand what is happening on the ground with our communities. The purpose of this report is also to support community education on frontline rapid response organizing. This report will actually really help us in seeing how we can better respond to the needs of our community to the changing tactics of ICE, and guide policy decisions.”

CORRN is a statewide hotline, made up of 4,557 volunteers across the state, that collects reports of ICE activity and provides support for someone who has been detained or deported. The report compiled data from volunteer confirmers from Jan. 1, 2025 to July 31, 2026.

According to Monica R., a rapid response Coordinator with CIRC, the report provides balance to mainstream reporting on ICE. “We are creating a counter-narrative because we have eyes and ears on the ground seeing what is happening statewide,” she said. “And that is really valuable when a lot of the things that we see in the news are really, again, very anti-immigrant.”

A large part of the counter-narrative is the increase in violent and warrantless arrests by ICE. “What we documented overall is that immigration enforcement actions are increasingly violent and lawless at the same time that we’re seeing them shift tactics in response to public outcry and neighborhood networks for defending people’s rights,” said Jennifer Piper, a program director for the Colorado Office of the AFSC. “We see them trending … increasingly unconstitutional in their actions and shifting from sort of large scales, slow-moving raids to individual detentions on the street, which cause accidents and confusion.”

The report includes anecdotes from individuals (whose names are redacted) detained by ICE. “I went to work early, I got to my job site around 5:30 AM in Parker,” read a statement attributed to a detainee with no arrest warrant, no criminal record, and 15 years in the U.S. “I was sitting in the car drinking coffee when, without notice, someone opened the driver door from my vehicle. They opened the door and pulled me off and handcuffed me. They dropped me to the floor and hit me. They then grabbed me by my jacket and pulled me off the floor. They then pushed me against my car and punched me in the face. One of the men took out a gun and pointed it at my rib cage and threatened me to get in their vehicle. Since the day of my arrest, my hand has been numb all the way up to my elbow. I have lost complete sensation on my thumb. I poke myself and I cannot feel a thing. I asked to see a nurse and I filled out a form. When the officers punched me they left me with bruises. I was confused when they pulled me off my vehicle. I was then scared for my life when the men pointed the gun at me. I thought he was going to shoot me and that I would die.”

Piper said reports like that increased in 2026. “From 21% of people reporting the use of force in 2025 to 31% in 26,” she said, “these rapid kidnap-style enforcement actions are using violence and the use of force at a much higher rate. We also see more people being injured, despite the fact that we’ve only looked at seven months of data in 2026.”

Brithany Guiterrez, CIRC’s DocuTeam coordinator, noted that ICE is increasingly targeting families’ primary wage-earners, putting stress on children. “We have noticed an overwhelming trend that ICE is going after heads of households, primary caregivers or primary income earners,” she said. “We believe that this is a tactic used by ICE to destabilize the entire family network and community. We see this having a ripple effect into families, children. Like I mentioned, families are struggling to pay basic necessities. Children are traumatized due to having their parent be in detention. And this leads to families facing food insecurity, homelessness, and many times they have to make the very difficult decision to move back to their home countries so that they can be reunited with their loved one after they’ve been deported.”

Gutierrez also highlighted administrative issues with ICE arrests. “The majority of the calls, arrests, that we document report not having or being shown a warrant at any point,” she said. “When they are shown a warrant, it’s often an administrative warrant, not signed by a judge, often not having the correct information for that person, therefore making it a warrantless arrest.”

Opponents of Amendment 81, a pro-ICE ballot measure, kick off their NO on 81 campaign at the state Capitol. Sept 10, 2026. Photo: Beth Schneider.

Presenters also urged a “no” vote on Amendment 81. “Under Amendment 81, state and local law enforcement are required to notify ICE when they charge a Coloradan with certain crimes and before the court has decided if that person is guilty or not,” said Marquez. “This would undo constitutional protections that our community has fought for over the last 15 to 20 years around limiting state and ICE involvement. That wouldn’t do all of that work. Again, we really believe that ICE should not have more power in Colorado, not expand it. We really, really believe that Coloradans deserve due process, even if they don’t have documents here, and also due process in regards that they have the right to be innocent until proven guilty. So, again, if this law, if this ballot initiative were to pass, it would really compound the impact that we’ve seen through this report — all the cases. Not only that, but it would deviate additional resources of local law enforcement to support ICE.”

Monica noted that the report is based on their own data, which is a fraction of the total ICE activity in Colorado. “What we’ve documented, we estimate represents about 6% of ICE actions in the state,” she said.

According to the report, federal data sources reported 6,745 immigration stops/detentions/arrests over the period of CORRN’s report. CORNN’s hotline has observed and confirmed immigration enforcement in close to one thousand actions across the state (15% of ICE’s stated total), but in most cases been unable to collect testimony from the person directly impacted. The hotline
documented direct testimony from 395 instances of immigration enforcement action or 6%.