ICE and CBP Need Meaningful and Significant Reform

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The Boulder County Commissioners have today (March 10) called for an end to lawless actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) across the country and asked Congress to withhold additional funding for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) without meaningful and significant guardrails on ICE and CBP.

The commissioners read Resolution 2026-016 at their weekly Business Meeting.

A Resolution Calling on the Federal Government to Reform ICE

The Trump Administration's assault on communities in the name of immigration enforcement is eroding our constitutional rights and endangering residents.

Immigration authorities are using increasingly dangerous tactics, such as engaging in unprovoked violence and using excessive force including, in some cases, killing civilians and deploying chemical weapons. In multiple cities, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) have violently arrested civilians, including U.S. citizens, and deployed chemical weapons without warning in residential areas, harming school children and local law enforcement.

From September 2025 through January 2026, immigration agents have shot at least nine individuals, including three who died as a result: Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and an ICU nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis; Renee Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three in Minneapolis; and Silverio Villegas González, a father of two, in Chicago.

Immigration agents have terrorized and abducted students on their way to and from school. Immigration agents have unleashed chemical agents on students and staff on school grounds leading to children being afraid to attend school, and therefore not able to exercise their constitutional right to a public education regardless of immigration status.

In addition to terrorizing people within communities across the country, conditions in immigration detention facilities are rapidly deteriorating with dangerous overcrowding, medical neglect, substandard food, inadequate access to clean water, and inappropriate use of solitary confinement. About 90% of people being detained are in for-profit facilities, which have a long record of cutting corners on essential services to reap profits.

Since President Trump took office on January 20, 2025, an unprecedented 37 people have died in the custody of ICE.

The immigration system in the United States is a civil system, not a criminal system, and immigration detention is not intended to be a punitive system. Any conditions of confinement that are punitive in nature are inappropriate for a possible civil violation of the law.

In 2025, the Budget Reconciliation Bill (also referred to as H.R. 1 and the One Big Beautiful Bill) gave ICE and CBP $170 billion for anti-immigrant enforcement, detention, and deportation at the expense of urgent needs in our community, including housing and healthcare.

Now, therefore be it resolved by the Board of County Commissioners:

There must be an end to lawless ICE and CBP actions across the country. Congress must continue to withhold additional funding for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) without meaningful and significant guardrails on ICE and CBP.

The Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County support the inclusion of the following conditions in any funding bill for DHS:

• End lawless immigration enforcement by requiring DHS to get a warrant; stop the use of masked agents for immigration enforcement actions; stop targeting people based on their race, language or accent, place of employment, or location at the time of the apprehension; and prohibit enforcement at sensitive locations like daycare centers, schools, houses of worship, and hospitals;
• End detention abuses by ending the use of private, for-profit detention prisons; by prohibiting funding for facilities that do not meet fundamental health and safety standards, and violate due process rights of detained people; and by restoring access to bond hearings;
• Preserve the ability of local and state officials to investigate and prosecute potential crimes and use of excessive force incidents. Require that evidence is preserved and shared with local officials.

We call on Congress to make deep and meaningful cuts to the $170 billion in funding for DHS in H.R. 1 and redirect those funds to urgent needs like housing and healthcare.

We also call on Congress to undertake a plan to restructure DHS to bring more accountability to this over-extended agency, to ensure that the department’s essential national security and public safety functions, including cyber security and emergency management, can be separated from immigration enforcement, and to completely rebuild immigration enforcement agencies from the ground up to stop the culture of lawlessness and ensure professionalism and accountability.

Dated March 10, 2026.

Commissioner Claire Levy

Commissioner Marta Loachamin

Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann

• Visit the County Commissioners' webpage
• View the Commissioners' Meeting Documents and Records
• Email the Board of County Commissioners

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