Attorney General Phil Weiser has launched a probe into four law enforcement agencies – including the Colorado State Patrol – to determine whether they unlawfully shared information with federal immigration authorities.
Weiser on Tuesday also said he would file a lawsuit against a Mesa County Sheriff’s deputy who pulled a Utah woman over in early June for driving too close to a truck outside of Grand Junction on Interstate 70, and then shared her personal information with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Body camera footage shows the woman, Caroline Dias Goncalves, a 19-year-old nursing student who came to the U.S. from Brazil as a child with her family and has now applied for asylum, getting pulled over by Mesa County Deputy Alexander Zwinck. He then appeared to stall her while alerting immigration authorities that she may be in the country without documentation. He also shared her license plate number and her car’s description over a Signal chat.
Goncalves was later picked up by ICE and detained for more than two weeks before getting released on bond. Her asylum claim is still pending.
Weiser on Tuesday said the law enforcement information sharing with federal immigration authorities – all conducted over Signal in a chat called “GJ Highway Hitters” – could be a direct violation of state laws passed last year. Those laws specifically prohibit Colorado state, county and local employees from disclosing personal identifying information for the “purpose of investigating for, participating in, cooperating with or assisting in federal immigration enforcement.”
“This sort of situation is the reason why these laws were passed,” Weiser said. “The deputy knowingly acted to assist federal immigration enforcement after the deputy knew the driver was not involved in any criminal activity and had no outstanding warrants.”
It is the first time Weiser has sought to take action against any state official for cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, though the federal agency has been using the state’s criminal justice system throughout 2025 to find and deport immigrants in ways immigrant advocate groups say violate state law. This includes making courthouse immigration arrests in Glenwood Springs, which prompted a state judge to ask that they leave.
Federal immigration authorities, who have long complained that state and local agencies in Colorado should help them find and detain unlawfully present immigrants, have also chosen not to comply with court requests by getting criminal defendants in immigration detention to state criminal court appearances on time.
Weiser said on Tuesday he is monitoring other issues, including what happened in Glenwood Springs.
“We remain concerned that ICE will violate people’s due process with the law,” he said, noting the Mesa County case “presented itself as a clear violation of Colorado law. It was one we had right before us.”
Weiser said on Tuesday, the Western Slope Signal chat, and references made about Zwinck being repeatedly helpful to immigration authorities, indicate that there may be more widespread cooperation and information sharing going on among various law enforcement agencies and federal officials – even surreptitiously.
The day after the Goncalves stop, immigration officials praised Zwinck on the Signal chat, saying he “is gonna get ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations) interdictor of the year.” In another exchange, when told about Goncalves’ immigration status, Zwinck responded, “Oh my gosh. We better get some bitchin Christmas baskets from you guys.”
The chat was composed of officers and federal authorities who work on the Western Colorado Drug Task Force High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, and included officers from the Vail Police Department, the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office, the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office and the Colorado State Patrol.
All those agencies work together to try and stop crimes, particularly drug trafficking, on Western Colorado roads. That’s different from federal immigration enforcement, which is primarily focused on civil violations, not crimes. That’s why state lawmakers have banned sworn law enforcement from participating, reasoning that taxpayers expect them to prevent and solve crimes, not participate in civil enforcement.
It’s not known whether representatives of any of those agencies have helped ICE on civil immigration enforcement. That’s what Weiser’s investigation is designed to find out.
The task force previously included Drug Enforcement Agency officers, but for at least the last five years, the task force also included Department of Homeland Security officers, according to the complaint filed in Mesa County court on Tuesday. ICE is part of Homeland Security.
This year, President Donald Trump has blurred the line for federal law enforcement in his prioritization of immigration enforcement. He asked all federal law enforcement officers to also participate in immigration enforcement, which means agents who used to exclusively conduct felony drug investigations or bank robberies are also now concerned with immigration status, too.
On Tuesday, Weiser said that all four state agencies in the Signal chat are under investigation for potentially inappropriately communicating personal information to ICE.
Gabriel Moltrer, a spokesman at the Colorado State Patrol, said they no longer share any information on the Signal chat. He said the incident prompted the agency to “reevaluate its use of the Signal group chat due to an apparent lack of shared purpose among all agencies on the platform.”
“Our use was for operations targeting the combat of drug trafficking and organized crime,” he said. “Other organizations have different priorities and goals.”
Eagle County and the Vail Police Department did not have immediate comments on the investigation.
Weiser said Zwinck could decide to settle this case and enter into his own consent decree or they could take the civil action to court.
A spokeswoman for the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office pleaded for patience on Tuesday as they get through an internal affairs investigation into Zwinck’s behavior on June 5. Zwinck remains on administrative leave while that investigation continues.
“The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office is within a week of completing the administrative investigation into the June 5, 2025, incident involving Ms. Diaz Goncalves,” the statement said. “We are committed to transparency.”
Democratic State Sen. Julie Gonzales of Denver said she is heartened that legislation she’s worked to pass is being enforced.
“The patterns and practices investigation matters deeply here,” she said. “I'm very interested to understand if this is only isolated to Mesa County or are other jurisdictions perhaps playing fast and loose with their actions.”
She said the state has limited options for reining in federal authorities.
“As much as I may find ICE's actions to be reprehensible and repugnant, we don't have the ability to control what ICE does or does not do,” she said. “What we can do, however, is to ensure that we are actually enforcing what we as state or local employees are doing or not doing.”
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