AURORA | Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told a Senate committee last week that unnamed police officials scuttled ICE arrests at the notorious Edge of Lowry apartments in Aurora last year.
He gave no evidence of the allegations, and Aurora officials denied the accusation.
9News reporter Marshall Zelinger first reported the story last week after the Feb. 12 Senate committee hearing.
The accusations counter those previously made by Trump administration officials.
Last year, Border Czar Tom Homan and U.S. Border Control Chief Michael Banks told right-wing FoxNews personalities that it was the media that leaked information about the pending Aurora raids, not police.
Local activist groups countered the allegation. Numerous group leaders told the Sentinel last year that they had been organizing for potential immigration raids by federal agents for four months, anticipating the raids since Trump brought an anti-immigration campaign rally to Aurora in October 2024, according to members of the Colorado Rapid Response Network.
During that rally at the Aurora Gaylord Hotel, Trump said he would launch “Operation Aurora” if he were to be re-elected.
Lyons told members of the Feb. 12 Senate oversight committee last week that police “made notifications” to the public that the ICE arrests were imminent.
He gave no evidence for the allegation, and Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday.
“I’ll give you the example of Aurora Colorado, we were going to serve a criminal warrant on an apartment complex of known TDA game members that was full,” Lyons told members of the Senate committee. The panel met amid accusations from Senate Democrats and some Republicans that ICE agents have acted violently and lawlessly, most recently in Minnesota, where two citizens were killed by ICE agents while protesting. “We tried to work with state and local government. They made notifications. So when tactical teams arrived, protesters were already there, and the apartment complex was empty.”
Marshall and Next on 9News host Kyle Clark reported that after Lyon’s comments to the Senate committee, ICE officials posted similar comments on social media.
“After 9NEWS reached out to ICE about the claims in front of Congress and the social media posts, the posts were deleted,” Zelinger reported.
The posts, preserved by 9News, said “local law enforcement made a public notification of our presence — a decision that could have cost American lives.”
City officials denied Aurora police or anyone associated with the city had any links to any planned ICE operations in Aurora.
“The city, including the Aurora Police Department, was not and has not been involved in the development and activation of any federal immigration enforcement plans in Aurora,” city officials said in a statement first provided to 9News. “As we have said numerous times previously, Colorado state law prohibits local governments from engaging in typical immigration-specific enforcement and detention. We focus on enforcing state and local law.”
The apartment complex garnered national publicity after former City Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky made claims, without evidence, that the complex was “overrun” with Tren de Aragua gang members from Venezuela.
Trump widely repeated and exaggerated the claims, at times saying that all of Aurora was overrun by TdA gang members, and even all of Colorado.
Aurora police and city officials have repeatedly said that the apartments were made unlivable by malfeasant management, stipulating that there was evidence of limited gang activity at the complex, among a variety of crime problems.
Lyons repeated the unproven characterization last week, telling the Senate panel last week that the apartments were “full” of “TDA gang members.”
The February 2025 operation came among metrowide ICE operations at other widely publicized apartment locations as well.
Air Force officials said in January 2025, days before ICE raids came to the metro area, that Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, and other Colorado military venues, could become detention sites for arrested immigrants, 9News reported.
“The news of ICE’s set up at Buckley came as NBC News is reporting that ICE will round up migrants in Aurora as early as Thursday morning,” 9News reported on Jan. 28, 2025. “On Wednesday, NBC News reported that the Aurora operation was temporarily called off.”
Also, the complex was in the process of being shut down by the city because of abhorrent living conditions.
“The apartment complex is currently being shut down by the city and few residents are left,” The Sentinel reported hours after the raid. “A man working at the complex said only 23 units were now occupied of the Edge’s 60 units.”
Residents left inside said they saw few residents at the complex interacted with federal agents after immigrant activists warned people in targeted areas and buildings not to answer the door unless agents produced warrants.
A man working at the apartment last February during the operation, saying he was contracted by the City of Aurora, and asking not to be identified, said he “did not see them take anyone away.”
It’s not the first time ICE officials have made unproven allegations about Aurora Police causing operational problems for immigration agencies and officials.
On March 20, 2025, two inmates at the Aurora GEO ICE facility escaped through an open side door during a power outage in the area. ICE and other Trump administration officials linked Aurora police to their escape.
Aurora police Chief Todd Chamberlain pushed back on ICE’s unsubstantiated claim that local ICE raids that prison officials notified local police “immediately” after two inmates escaped from the ICE GEO facility, and that Aurora police were somehow responsible for the inmates getting away into the night.
Records show that it was hours after a power outage allowed the two detainees to escape that ICE officials notified Aurora police dispatchers of the escape.
Both men who escaped were being held on immigration retainers and re-captured days later.
Homeland Security officials characterized the incident as a case of a local “sanctuary city” law enforcement working against efforts to detain and deport immigrants, the Sentinel reported last year.
In pushing back against the allegation, Chamberlain raised eyebrows among state and local lawmakers and immigration advocates who want the state and local police to refrain and even refuse to work with ICE on immigration operations.
“The Aurora Police Department is ready and willing to help our federal partners, including those working at the ICE GEO facility,” Aurora police Chief Todd Chamberlain said in a statement last March.
City officials maintain that Aurora complies with state laws limiting cooperation with ICE officials.