Attorney General Phil Weiser says Mesa County Deputy Alexander Zwinck violated state law when as part of a regional task force, he allegedly assisted federal officers on several occasions by providing ID information on illegals.
Weiser says a new state law bars employees of local governments from sharing identifying information with federal immigration officials, a recent expansion of state laws limiting cooperation in immigration cases. He has filed a lawsuit.
On June 5, Zwinck allegedly shared the driver’s license, vehicle registration and insurance information of the 19-year-old nursing student in a Signal chat used by task force members, according to the lawsuit. The task force includes officers who work for federal Homeland Security Investigations, which can enforce immigration laws, the lawsuit said.
After federal immigration officers told him in the chat that the student did not have a criminal history but had an expired visa, Zwinck allegedly provided them with their location and told her to wait with him in his patrol car for about five minutes, asking about her accent and where she was born. He let her go with a warning and gave federal agents a description of her vehicle and told her which direction she was headed so they could arrest her, the lawsuit said.
Art Arthur is a fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.
“The idea that a person who was operating on one of those federal task forces is going to be prosecuted for simply doing his job is reprehensible. I question whether this is the hill that this attorney general or the Democrats in general want to die on because the vast majority of the American people -- 75% of them in the latest Harvard-Harris poll -- support the Trump administration's efforts to deport criminal illegal aliens in the United States."
There’s also the Supremacy Clause. Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution establishes that federal law takes precedence over state laws and constitutions when there is a conflict between them.
"The Immigration Nationality Act" actually bars states and localities from preventing their local officials from communicating information to us. So, I think that that's going to be a huge defense for this particular officer. Simply put, states and localities can't criminalize something that federal law specifically authorizes."
