Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser last week dropped his lawsuit against a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy whose decision to share information with federal immigration officials led to the June arrest of a 19-year-old college student from Utah.
Mesa County Sheriff’s Deputy Alexander Zwinck is resigning effective Tuesday. Because of his decision, Weiser, a Democrat, can no longer sue him under a Colorado law prohibiting state and local law enforcement from asking people about their immigration status. State law also prohibits officers from aiding in federal immigration enforcement outside of their criminal enforcement duties.
The lawsuit was dismissed by a judge Thursday.
Caroline Dias Goncalves, a University of Utah student studying nursing, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents June 5 shortly after she was pulled over by Zwinck for allegedly driving too close to a semitrailer on Interstate 70 near the town of Loma.
She told Zwinck, who is part of a group of state and federal law enforcement working on drug interdiction, during the traffic stop that she was born in Brazil. Zwinck had asked where she was born.
Dias Goncalves was released by Zwinck with a warning but then stopped and arrested by federal immigration agents a few miles down the road. She was taken to the immigration detention center in Aurora.
Zwinck shared information about Dias Goncalves in a chat among members of the drug interdiction unit on the encrypted messaging app Signal. It was in that chat that the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office says information was being passed along to ICE agents.
Dias Goncalves was held at the immigration detention center in Aurora for about two weeks after her arrest. She told The Salt Lake Tribune that her days at the facility were “the hardest of my life.” She has since been released on bond.
A relative of Dias Goncalves told The Tribune that she originally came to the United States with her parents in 2012, when she was 7. The family had a six-month tourist visa, which they overstayed. They were afraid to return to Brazil, the relative said, after experiencing violence there, including being robbed and held as hostages by gangs several times.
Zwink was one of five Mesa County sheriff’s deputies punished in the wake of the arrest. He was placed on three weeks of unpaid leave and removed from his assignment to a drug task force.
“The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office should not have had any role in the chain of events leading to Ms. Dias Goncalves’ detention, and I regret that this occurred,” Mesa County Sheriff Todd Rowell, a Republican, said in a written statement in July. “I apologize to Ms. Dias Goncalves.”
The sheriff said a review of Dias Goncalves’ arrest found that his office needs to enhance training on Colorado’s laws around state and local law enforcement participating in immigration actions.
