AURORA, Colo. — Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told a Senate oversight committee last week that local police officials “scuttled ICE arrests” during a 2025 raid at the Edge of Lowry apartments, but he offered no evidence to support the allegation and Aurora officials swiftly denied it.
According to The Sentinel, Lyons claimed that “unnamed police officials scuttled ICE arrests” at the apartment complex the previous year. Following those allegations before the Senate panel, “he gave no evidence… and Aurora officials denied the accusation.”
The Sentinel notes that despite these strong accusations, the claims “counter those previously made by Trump administration officials.” One year earlier, Border Czar Tom Homan and U.S. Border Control Chief Michael Banks “told right-wing Fox News personalities that it was the media that leaked information about the pending Aurora raids, not police.”
Last year, numerous leaders of “local activist groups countered the allegation,” telling The Sentinel “that they had been organizing for potential immigration raids by federal agents for four months, anticipating raids since Trump brought the anti-immigration campaign rally to Aurora in October 2024.” At that rally, Trump also “said he would launch ‘Operation Aurora’ if he were to be re-elected.”
At the Senate oversight committee last week, Lyons told members that “police ‘made notifications’ to the public that ICE arrests were imminent,” then “gave no evidence for the allegation, and Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment,” as reported by The Sentinel.
The Sentinel explains that the Senate committee “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.”
At the panel, Lyons told members they “were going to serve a criminal warrant on an apartment complex of known TDA [gang] members that was full… 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.”
Following Lyons’ claims, The Sentinel examined a report by 9News host Kyle Clark, which stated that “ICE officials posted similar comments on social media,” yet “after 9News reached out to ICE about the claims in front of Congress and social media posts, the posts were deleted.”
Though deleted, The Sentinel reported that the posts had been preserved by 9News, and that they said “local law enforcement made a public notification of our presence — a decision that could have cost American lives.”
The Sentinel notes that “city officials denied Aurora police or anyone associated with the city had any links to any planned ICE operations in Aurora.” Officials stated that “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 Sentinel outlines that initially the apartment complex in Aurora “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,” then 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.”
These claims were made despite the fact that “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,” with Lyons echoing “the unproven characterization” to the Senate panel, according to The Sentinel.
The Sentinel also reported that, according to Air Force officials, “days before ICE raids came to the metro area,… Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, and other Colorado military venues, could become detention sites for arrested immigrants.”
Additionally, the entire apartment complex was “currently being shut down by the city [with] few residents” remaining hours after the raid, with The Sentinel reporting that “a man working at the complex said only 23 units were now occupied of the Edge’s 60 units.”
The remaining residents “said they saw few residents at the complex [interact] 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 during the operation said that he “did not see them take anyone away,” according to The Sentinel.
The Sentinel emphasized that “it’s not the first time ICE officials have made unproven allegations about Aurora police causing operational problems for immigration agencies and officials.” Previously, in March 2025, “two inmates at the Aurora GEO ICE facility escaped through an open side door during a power outage in the area,” with ICE and other Trump administration officials claiming to have linked the Aurora police to their escape.
Following that claim, Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain “pushed back on ICE’s unsubstantiated claim… that Aurora police were somehow responsible for the inmates getting away into the night,” with records showing “that it was hours after a power outage allowed the two detainees to escape that ICE officials notified Aurora police dispatchers of the escape,” as reported by The Sentinel.
Both men who escaped “were being held on immigration retainers and re-captured days later,” yet “Homeland Security officials characterized the incident as a case of a local ‘sanctuary city’ law enforcement working against efforts to detain and deport immigrants,” as outlined by The Sentinel when the event took place the previous year.
When Chamberlain pushed back against the allegation, The Sentinel observed that he “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.”
According to The Sentinel, last March, Chamberlain stated that “the Aurora Police Department is ready and willing to help our federal partners, including those working at the ICE GEO facility.”
The Sentinel additionally notes that “city officials maintain that Aurora complies with state laws limiting cooperation with ICE officials.”
Follow the Vanguard on Social Media – X, Instagram and Facebook. Subscribe the Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit davisvanguard.org/donate or give directly through ActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues.
