A banner with an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement message was hung from a cliff on Smelter Mountain late Wednesday or early Thursday, overlooking Durango.
The banner was in clear view of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad depot and downtown Durango.
The banner, which reads “ICE=SS,” likened the federal agency to the Schutzstaffel, which the Encyclopaedia Britannica describes as Nazi Germany’s militaristic police force. Members of the SS referred to themselves as “political soldiers.”
By mid-morning Thursday, a corner of the banner had blown over on itself in the wind, leaving only the SS symbol visible.
The SS encapsulated hundreds of thousands of soldiers by the end of World War II, and headed control of the Reich’s security regime, including Hitler’s personal bodyguard, the Gestapo and concentration camp administrators, among other roles, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica.
It is unclear who made and hung the banner, but it appeared during heightened tensions between federal immigration agents and communities across the country.
The banner appeared months after protests against the arrest of an undocumented father and his two children by ICE agents – whom agents mistook for someone else but detained anyway without a warrant – and less than a week after a protest in Durango in response to the killing of a woman in a car by an ICE agent in Minnesota.
The banner was located within the Bodo State Wildlife Area. A spokesman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife said wildlife officers hiked up to the banner on Thursday afternoon and removed it.
City spokesman Tom Sluis said no calls regarding the banner had been made to the city or Durango Police Department as of Thursday afternoon.
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
