Denver-based nonprofit law firm Towards Justice on Wednesday sent a cease-and-desist letter to Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario alleging that his office has been “violating Colorado law limiting local law enforcement collaboration with civil immigration enforcement” and demanding a stop to these actions.
Vallario told Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio that he had not read the letter yet and would not comment on the allegations until he was able to review them with Garfield County’s attorney. Vallario has denied similar claims in the past, maintaining that his office follows state laws, including when assisting with federal immigration enforcement.
Towards Justice Executive Director David Seligman, an attorney who is running for state attorney general this year, confirmed that the formal, nonbinding letter could be the first step in a lawsuit against the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office.
“We really hope that these cases don’t have to result in litigation,” Seligman said. “It appears that what we’re seeing here could be flagrant lawlessness, and we hope that by bringing those issues to light, that the Garfield County sheriff comes into compliance with the law.”
In its letter, Towards Justice includes evidence drawn from official statements made by the sheriff’s office, witness accounts, published reporting, incident documentation and communications obtained through the Colorado Open Records Act. The law firm contends that the evidence shows Vallario has supported the sheriff’s office in violating several state laws passed in recent years.
Specifically, House Bill 19-1124 prohibits law enforcement officers arresting and detaining individuals on the basis of civil immigration detainer requests without a warrant signed by a federal judge, and Senate Bill 25-276 prevents state and local officials from disclosing or making accessible nonpublic personal identifying information for the purpose of assisting in federal immigration enforcement without a court-issued warrant or order.
These state laws are not just intended to ensure that limited local resources are not being used for federal purposes, but according to the cease-and-desist letter, they are also intended to protect public safety.
“When residents, including citizens and noncitizens alike, fear that contact with local law enforcement could lead to collateral civil immigration consequences, they are less likely to report crimes, cooperate as witnesses or provide critical information during investigations,” Towards Justice said in its Feb. 25 letter. “Over time, this chilling effect weakens community safety for everyone.”
Towards Justice’s letter comes after local Latino-led advocacy group Voces Unidas submitted multiple complaints to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office over the past year asking that it investigate the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office for alleged unlawful collaboration with federal immigration. A spokesperson with the Attorney General’s Office told Aspen Public Radio and Aspen Journalism on Wednesday that “all complaints are reviewed by the staff,” but it “cannot confirm or otherwise comment on investigations.”
Assisting with arrest
The arrest of Luis Armando Rivas Martínez is one of the main cases in which both Towards Justice and Voces Unidas allege that Garfield County sheriff deputies assisted U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with a civil immigration arrest through their Special Problems Enforcement and Response (SPEAR) task force. According to the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office website, the interagency task force was created in 2022 as a way for local law enforcement to share information and collaborate with federal agencies to tackle crimes such as drugs and human trafficking, as well as car thefts and burglaries.
Rivas came to the United States from Mexico in 2004 and spent 18 years living, working and raising a family in Carbondale and Glenwood Springs.
When he first arrived, he worked as a handyman in Aspen and the nearby Starwood neighborhood — a private, gated community located about three miles outside of town. Eventually, Rivas started his own handyman and property-management business and brought in other people to help him.
Despite not having legal residency, Rivas said he was able to build a relatively stable life in the valley, including paying his taxes and getting a driver’s license, both of which have been made possible for undocumented immigrants under Colorado law.
“I started out working with a family in Starwood, they hired me for three years, and I had a chance to develop all my skills in that house,” Rivas said in an interview with Aspen Public Radio and Aspen Journalism. “Then I started getting more clients, … and that’s the way my company started growing, … and in those 13 years, every time I could give a job to somebody else, I did it.”
Although Rivas tried several times to apply for legal residency status in the United States, including through marriage to an American citizen, his attempts were unsuccessful. His chances of obtaining legal status became much less likely in 2016 when he was accused of taking photos in a women’s bathroom at a local gym.
Rivas denies taking the photos and pleaded not guilty, but he was convicted and sentenced to four years of probation and psychotherapy treatment.
“From 2016 to 2020, I complied with the probation and the psychotherapy,” Rivas said. “I was also told that I would be going into the sex-offender registry.”
According to Rivas and a legal representative familiar with his case, Rivas was required to check in and provide updated personal information such as his current address for the sex-offender registry once a year at the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office. His final check-in was scheduled for late April 2025.
“I presented myself to the sheriff’s office to complete my registration, and I did it successfully,” Rivas said.
Just over a month later, on June 3, after exiting Walmart in Glenwood Springs with a cart full of groceries, Rivas was arrested and detained by an undercover agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the main investigative arm of ICE, with assistance from five Garfield County sheriff’s deputies, according to body-camera footage of the incident reviewed by Aspen Public Radio and Aspen Journalism through a public-records request.
From there, two Garfield County deputies took Rivas in their patrol car to a gas station in DeBeque where Rivas was transferred to ICE custody. He was later taken to the agency’s office in Grand Junction and then to the ICE detention center in Aurora. Rivas was detained for four months, during which his family sought legal counsel, but they were unable to appeal his deportation order and Rivas was eventually deported to Mexico.
“These guys with Garfield County, they were trying to clean up the city from ‘guys like me,’” Rivas said. “I was found guilty from a previous accusation, but I paid the accusation. I paid the probation. I paid the psychotherapy. I paid everything about my case.”
Under the Colorado law passed in 2019, local law enforcement cannot detain an individual solely based on their immigration status and can only assist federal immigration authorities with an arrest if there is a warrant issued by a federal judge.
In a case report made by Nate LaGiglia, the sheriff deputy and SPEAR task force officer who drove Rivas to DeBeque, LaGiglia stated that he and his fellow task force officers agreed to assist HSI as part of SPEAR because Rivas was “wanted for federal charges.”
However, Rivas said no active criminal charges or judicial warrants were presented during his arrest. Towards Justice and Voces Unidas conducted public-record searches and did not find any such warrant for Rivas.
The body-camera footage of Rivas’ arrest also does not show evidence of a judicial warrant being presented. Instead, the HSI agent told Rivas that he was “being taken on customs and immigration charges.”
Asked in a Sept. 30 interview about the June 3 arrest, Vallario said he was aware that one of his deputies had helped transport Rivas because the HSI agent leading the operation did not have a protective cage used to secure arrestees in his vehicle and that he did not think this violated state law.
“We’re going to do whatever we have to to make sure other law enforcement agents and officers are safe, and that the public is safe,” Vallario said. “We don’t play 20 questions; we don’t ask the agent there, ‘Who is he? What’s he wanted for? Was it a criminal arrest? Was it an administrative arrest?’ All they said was ‘For my safety, can you transport this guy to our people who have the proper equipment to then take him to Grand Junction,’ and that’s what we did.”
Deep Gulasakaram, a professor of immigration and constitutional law at University of Colorado Boulder Law School, said state law is clear that local sheriff deputies cannot help arrest or detain an individual without a judicial warrant, but the question of what constitutes “arrest” and “detainment” is ultimately up to Colorado courts to decide.
“I think that there are questions of how to interpret this language underneath this Colorado law,” Gulasakaram said. “That said, the holding of an individual where that person’s liberty to move around, to be free from constraint, is usually what we think of as an arrest or a detention, … and so when Colorado law enforcement officers are putting someone in a car, in handcuffs, to transport them, it’s hard to see how that is not an arrest or the detention of the individual.”
Jail transfers and information sharing
In addition to directly assisting ICE with at least one civil immigration arrest, Towards Justice and Voces Unidas have alleged that the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office has also violated state law by sharing “personal identifying information” about individuals that is not publicly available to assist with federal immigration enforcement at the county jail in Glenwood Springs as well as through its participation in the SPEAR task force.
Under state law, personal identifying information includes things such as a person’s name, date of birth, address and immigration status.
In an article published Feb. 10, 2025, the Aspen Daily News reported that Vallario said his department only cooperates with federal immigration authorities to the extent allowed by state law. In the same article, however, Vallario also reportedly told the newspaper that if ICE or any other law enforcement agency requested information on a person of interest, such as a resident’s address or place of work, his office would provide that information with or without a criminal warrant.
Both Towards Justice and Voces Unidas allege that previous public statements made by Vallario and public records that they’ve obtained demonstrate that the sheriff’s office has coordinated with ICE on the release of immigrants arrested for local charges from its jail; held individuals past their scheduled release by manipulating bond time; and facilitated inmates being transferred directly to ICE without a judicial warrant in nonpublic areas of the jail — all of which, the organizations says, are in violation of state laws.
“Multiple accounts describe how [the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office] manipulates and stages release procedures to facilitate civil immigration enforcement upon ICE’s request,” Towards Justice said in its Feb. 25 letter. “These actions include releasing individuals in nonpublic areas of the jail where ICE is granted special access, escorting individuals out back entrances to ICE, and intentionally delaying the release paperwork to give ICE time to arrive.”
In one such account, cited in Towards Justice’s public announcement of its cease-and-desist letter, a local mother who was not identified in the news release to protect her identity, said she was recently deported by ICE with assistance of the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office.
“They let me think that I was going to be released after paying bond. Instead, when I emerged from the restroom ready to leave, I saw the sheriff’s deputy standing next to an ICE agent,” the woman said. “The ICE agent ushered me out the back door of the sheriff’s office while my son and friend waited out front. These officials knew that, as a domestic-violence survivor, I had a pending U Visa application and that I was a single mother with a medically vulnerable toddler.”
In an article published by Colorado Public Radio on April 16, 2025, Vallario reportedly acknowledged in a statement that Colorado law prohibits his office from holding inmates at the jail for longer than their sentences for federal immigration enforcement purposes, but he also said he would hold an inmate for up to six hours — the maximum allowed time before state law requires them to be released after they’ve posted a bond or completed a sentence — if ICE asks.
According to Gulasakaram, the CU law professor, if an individual is released within the six-hour legal limit, then the question becomes whether they were “held longer than or beyond the time” that law enforcement would’ve otherwise kept them in jail.
“Colorado law is essentially telling us, ‘Sheriffs, local law enforcement, you cannot hold somebody for immigration purposes just because the federal government has asked you to hold them,’” Gulasakaram said.
In its Feb. 25 letter, Towards Justice also expressed concerns that the SPEAR task force further allows the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office to maintain an ongoing and substantial data-sharing and operational partnership with federal agencies, including HSI.
Gulasakaram said legal concerns around these types of interagency task forces that bring together local and federal law enforcement are not unique to Garfield County or even Colorado. Like SPEAR, many of these task forces were formed to take on violent crimes and human and drug trafficking, but they can run afoul of the law when they’re used for civil immigration enforcement in sanctuary states.
“Oftentimes, the rhetoric and the sort of general defenses that you hear of these joint task forces, things like SPEAR, often doesn’t reflect the on-the-ground reality,” Gulasakaram said. “What ends up happening are these run-of-the-mill cases, these civil immigration arrests — and that is where sheriffs and these joint task forces really begin to either be in tension with or actively conflict with the state restrictions and disentanglement of local law enforcement from immigration enforcement.”
Demonstrating intent
Towards Justice believes that internal email communications obtained through the Colorado Open Records Act and other evidence shared in its cease-and-desist letter support its claim that these alleged violations of state law by the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office are probably intentional.
In an email sent to other law enforcement officials March 4, 2025, Vallario openly criticized the newly proposed SB 25-276 and outlined his various concerns with the legislation, including that prohibiting ICE “from entering the secure portion of a jail which translates into transferring a detainee to be done in a public area” would create a “serious public safety issue.”
The bill was co-sponsored by state Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, a Democrat, and was later passed by the state legislature and signed into law in May.
“I have never refused to enforce a law, but I will not comply with this, if this draft is the end result,” Vallario wrote at the end of his March 2025 email. “You can call me ‘Defendant’ in a lawsuit to correct this pro-criminal stupidity.”
Towards Justice and Voces Unidas have also expressed concerns about recently obtained internal emails in which Vallario made disparaging comments toward public officials such as Velasco and organizations such as Voces Unidas that have advocated for stronger legal protections for immigrant communities.
In a June 19 email sent to other law enforcement and government officials, Vallario attached a photograph of Velasco from a recent No Kings protest in Glenwood Springs holding a sign that reads, “ICE is a domestic terror group.” In the email, Vallario wrote, “Our District 57 State Representative, Elizabeth Velasco. Aren’t you proud of her? POS … .” The abbreviation “POS” is widely used as an insult standing for “piece of s–t.”
In response to a request for comment, Velasco said that although she was not surprised by Vallario’s statement given his stance on immigration enforcement and his past rhetoric, she said his statements have concerning consequences that impact her and the community.
“It’s scary, you know, to think that we are reaching out to law enforcement whenever there’s an emergency, we are trusting them, you know, on our worst day, and to feel like I’m not able to have that was upsetting,” Velasco said. “I think the message that it sends is that this sheriff is not here to protect everyone, and he’s not here to support our community and that’s scary to me, you know, in a time when we have seen violence against elected officials and community members.”
Velasco said these kinds of comments from law enforcement leaders can also fuel dangerous rhetoric and even lead to actions that threaten her safety and the safety of others. Such actions include voicemails to her office threatening violence and comments that have been made about her in private social media groups that shared her home address.
Voces Unidas Executive Director Alex Sánchez said his organization has also received violent and discriminatory threats, but it has decided to stop reporting them to the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office and certain other local law enforcement agencies because comments such as Vallario’s have made them feel they won’t be taken seriously. Sánchez also said he has heard from residents that they don’t feel safe reporting crimes such as abuse or fraud for many of the same reasons.
“We need the community to trust our local men and women in uniform. We need Latinas and Latinos to know that if they call 911 when they need help, they’re not going to encounter racism and their concern or their issue is not going to be minimized with mockery and sarcasm,” Sánchez said. “These actions by these senior law enforcement officers are hurting, are hurting public safety, and will have long-term consequences.”
From an attorney’s perspective, Seligman said the perceived intent of Vallario or his office doesn’t necessarily have a legal impact if the agency is violating state laws as alleged, but Seligman still sees the evidence provided in the letter as strengthening Toward Justice’s claims.
“The extent of Garfield County’s understanding or appreciation of its collaboration isn’t especially relevant to the legal issues at play here, but I think that it does help to highlight how there can and should be no legitimate excuse for the kind of collaboration we’re seeing,” Seligman said. “There’s all kinds of evidence … that the Garfield County sheriff is eager to collaborate, open to collaborate and, from my perspective, has demonstrated a real antagonism to state law.”
Seligman said it remains to be seen how the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office will respond to Towards Justice’s cease-and-desist letter, but he hopes they will comply with his law firm’s demands. The three main demands outlined in the letter include that the sheriff’s office immediately cease unlawful collaboration with ICE; publicly affirm its commitment to noncooperation absent lawful authority; and implement enforceable policies, training and oversight to prevent future violations of Colorado law.
Vallario on Wednesday told Aspen Public Radio and Aspen Journalism that he expects to review the letter and its demands with the county’s attorney in “the next couple of days.”
This story was produced through a social justice reporting collaboration between Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio.