Colorado is suing a Mesa County sheriff deputy for helping federal immigration enforcement apprehend an illegal immigrant.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser alleges in the lawsuit filed this week that Deputy Alexander Zwinck violated state law when he tipped off Immigration and Customs Enforcement that he had stopped Caroline Dias Goncalves, a 19-year-old University of Utah student on I-70.
Zwinck then allegedly uploaded the driver’s information to a Signal group chat with federal immigration officers, who alerted the deputy that Dias Goncalves was a Brazilian national in the U.S. on an expired visa.
COLORADO DEPUTY PLACED ON LEAVE AND SUED BY THE AG FOR AIDING ICE
Colorado AG Phil Weiser (@COAttnyGeneral) is SUING a deputy who shared information leading to a woman’s ICE arrest
Caroline Dias Goncalves was arrested by ICE shortly after she was pulled over by Deputy Alexander… pic.twitter.com/zEe397AKGk
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 22, 2025
Attorney General Phil Weiser’s official said a state investigation found that Zwinck then gave the federal officers his location and stalled Dias Goncalves, who wasn’t cited in the traffic stop.
“Deputy Zwinck then messaged on the chat that she had left, providing federal immigration officers with a description of her car, her vehicle’s license plate number, and the direction she was traveling,” according to Weiser’s office. “The immigration officers who were on the chat later pulled over the driver and took her into custody. Upon reading that the immigration officers had detained her, Deputy Zwinck commented on the chat, ‘nice work.’”
Colorado is a known sanctuary jurisdiction with laws on the books shielding illegal immigrants. In 2019, Colorado Democrats passed a law that bans local law enforcement from aiding ICE in apprehending illegals unless there is a federal warrant.
“State law specifies that Colorado law enforcement officers are dedicated to enforcing Colorado law and do not do the work of the federal government to enforce immigration law,” Weiser, a Democrat running for governor, said in a statement.
“In this case, the driver was detained by immigration authorities because of actions by Colorado law enforcement despite the absence of any criminal activity on her part. Her detention for over two weeks is directly due to this violation of Colorado’s laws,” he added. “Because of this action, we are making clear that Colorado law enforcement’s role is to advance public safety, not take on the responsibility of doing the work of federal immigration enforcement.”
Zwinck has been put on leave pending a department investigation, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported before the lawsuit was announced.
The lawsuit also claims Zwinck “assisted federal immigration officers in violation of Colorado law on other occasions.”
A proposed ballot measure would repeal Colorado’s sanctuary law and direct local law enforcement to “cooperate with federal requests to notify the Department of Homeland Security prior to release.”
