CENTENNIAL — Matt Albence, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, offered a full-throated defense of his agency Monday and an equally passionate denouncement of protesters who rallied 10 days before outside an immigration detention facility in Aurora.
“It’s fairly despicable, frankly,” Albence said of the July 12 protest, which brought 2,000 people to the detention facility. “I’m here because the men and women who work out there, both the individuals who work for ICE as well as the contractors out there, are merely enforcing the laws that Congress has passed.”
Albence made the trip from the nation’s capital to Denver to improve the morale of ICE workers at the Aurora site, which is operated by the private company GEO Group. Morale there is low, he said, due to what he claims is misinformation about the facility and its employees.
“You have individuals who are out there, doing their job, enforcing the laws that Congress has passed, and you’ve got 2,000 people who are out there protesting them, for merely doing the job they’ve been asked to do,” Albence said during an interview at ICE’s Centennial office.
“It’s unfortunate that individuals who don’t agree with the laws are protesting our personnel. If they don’t like the laws, go to their congressman, go to their senator, go to Capitol Hill. Express your views there, but don’t take it out on individuals who are merely here doing a great job enforcing the laws.”
As demonstrations outside the Aurora facility have grown in size, they’ve also been infused with what organizers call “rogue protesters,” including those who raised a “thin blue line” flag with an anti-police message written on it and a Mexican flag over the facility on July 12. That incident was condemned by the protest’s organizers, as well as Democratic Gov. Jared Polis. Republicans seized on it as proof of radicalism within recent nationwide anti-ICE protests.
The Aurora facility has undergone several quarantines due to measles and chickenpox outbreaks. Last month, an inspector general’s report found violations of ICE policies there, such as unnecessary handcuffing, food-borne illness risks and curtailed recreation opportunities.
Albence, who visited the facility Monday, thoroughly defended the care provided there, saying, “For people to be protesting us taking care of individuals who are coming to this country illegally, it just doesn’t make any sense.” He said immigration detention sites should be privately operated.
“These are individuals who are experts and professionals in their fields. We’re law enforcement officers. We’re not detention officers, we don’t know how to run correctional facilities, we’re not jailers,” he said. Most of the nation’s roughly 200 detention sites are run by the government.
As Albence was wrapping up the interview in Centennial, four Democratic members of Congress were in Aurora, preparing to tour the ICE detention facility. After doing so, they told reporters that it takes weeks for detainees there to receive basic medicine. Reps. Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse, Jason Crow and Ed Perlmutter called for the closure of privately run immigration detention sites.
“Whenever you have a profit motive in a detention system, you’re going to have the bottom line dictating things like health, welfare, safety and wellness in a place,” Crow said at a news conference outside the facility.
DeGette called for its closure after describing conditions inside, particularly among women detainees. She cited an example of a woman who requested aspirin for menstrual cramps and didn’t receive any until a week had passed.
The detention center in Aurora is clean, DeGette said, but that doesn’t discount other issues, such as a lack of access to medical care, the inability to speak to lawyers in a timely fashion and the cramped conditions of 48 women in one dormitory-style room.
Nataly Martinez was outside the Aurora detention facility after visiting her mother, Brenda Ruiz, when she saw the news conference and decided to listen in. She said her mother had a legal work visa but was detained after police responded to her home about a disturbance with her mother’s boyfriend. Martinez plans to post the $3,500 bond needed to free her mother.
Through tears, Martinez described what it was like not to have her mother around for five months, especially for her young, autistic brother. The conditions in the facility are poor, she said. Her mother’s eyes burned for days because she lacked access to cleaning solution for her contacts.
“I just think it’s crazy that people don’t know the real story,” Martinez said.
During Monday’s interview with The Denver Post and CBS Denver, Albence declined to clarify what President Donald Trump was referring to when he has said there will be targeted enforcement efforts to remove millions of undocumented immigrants “as fast as they come in.” Albence, who declined to call the actions “raids,” said he can’t discuss specific enforcement efforts but suggested his agency’s mission hasn’t changed significantly under Trump.
“If there’s no consequence to an immigration judge’s order, why do we have immigration judges?” he asked rhetorically after saying Trump is merely enforcing existing laws. “Why do we have a system? There’s no system if, on the back end of that system, there is no enforcement.”
He also declined to comment specifically on a Colorado law that took effect in late May and limits the ability of local police to enforce ICE detainers, which are requests by ICE to hold accused criminals beyond their release date. Speaking more broadly, he said such “sanctuary city” laws make ICE’s job more difficult and make Colorado communities less safe.
Albence called it a red herring to say fewer domestic violence victims are contacting police because their abusers have threatened to have them deported. The National Network to End Domestic Violence, among other groups, has alleged that is occurring, and pointed to examples.
“I don’t necessarily believe any of those statistics,” Albence said of such claims. “I haven’t seen them. What I can tell you is, if there’s a decrease in the number of charges for domestic violence, it’s because we’re removing those offenders out of the country.” He said ICE does not arrest domestic violence victims, though there is at least anecdotal evidence to suggest otherwise.
Albence ended the interview Monday by discussing – broadly and not by name – Democratic presidential candidates who have said they favor decriminalizing border crossings. During a June 27 debate, nine of 10 Democratic candidates on a stage said they favored decriminalization. Only Sen. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, disagreed with that proposal.
“If you continue to incentivize illegal behavior, it’s insane to think you’re going to get less of it,” Albence said. “So, if you want to stop problems at the border, the way to do it is not to sit there and tell everybody, ‘You know what? You can’t even be prosecuted for it now.’ If you think we have a surge at the border now, wait and see what happens if you decriminalize it.”
