Colorado Congressman Jason Crow visited Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora on Monday following reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was granted base access as part of a mass deportation plan.
Crow said afterward that he was assured the base would not be used to house immigrants and detainees, but that it could be used as a staging location for law enforcement and a coordination center for ongoing operations.
U.S. Northern Command officials said in January that the Department of Homeland Security requested use of the base, and sources told CPR News that facilities at Buckley would be used to house detained “criminal aliens.”
Crow, who is a former Army Ranger, opposed U.S. military involvement in immigration enforcement, saying in a statement on X last week that. “pulling our military into politicized and contentious domestic immigration enforcement dishonors the service of our troops and distracts them from the important work of defending our nation.”
The assurance Crow said he got from Homeland Security special agents during his visit Monday contradicts earlier statements from the U.S. Northern Command, which said the facility would include, “a temporary operations center, staging area and a temporary holding location for the receiving, holding and processing of undocumented immigrants.”
In a press briefing at the White House last week, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “We want to deport illegal criminals, illegal immigrants from this country. Of course, the criminal drug dealers, the rapists, the murderers, the individuals who have committed heinous acts on the interior of our country and who have terrorized law-abiding American citizens, absolutely, those should be the priority of ICE. But that doesn’t mean that the other illegal criminals who entered our nation’s borders are off the table.”
Crow said he will continue oversight at the Buckley facilities, including by making future visits, to ensure that “our military are being used properly, [and that] there aren't any unlawful activities that occur.”
“It's not lost on me that Buckley is centrally located, that it has a large operating airfield, that it has large infrastructure,” Crow said. “So I am going to take my oversight obligation very seriously, and we're going to be checking in pretty regularly to see what's happening and what isn't happening here.”
He also said he believes transparency and public disclosure are important.
“We're seeing three weeks into the Trump administration, a lack of transparency, things being done in the dead of night,” Crow said. “I'm going to seek as much information as possible. I'm going to be open about it. That's why I'm here now – because I think the more information we can get out to the public and to the people that I represent, the better.”
When asked whether he had heard from service members about the use of the base by ICE, Crow said that “anecdotally,” those he has spoken with are concerned.
“Folks are very worried about the politicization of the military, what that means for the separation between politics and the military, but also what that means for the morale of our troops,” he said, though he didn’t specify how many people he’d spoke with nor if those service members are in Colorado.
In a written statement ahead of his visit Monday, Crow said he’s also concerned about people who live in his district who may be the targets of stepped-up immigration enforcement.
“If someone, regardless of immigration status, is committing violent crimes, they have no place in our communities,” he wrote. “However, the president’s mass deportations are threatening to go after our neighbors, family members, business owners, and friends in order to create a narrative that most immigrants are violent criminals. This is simply not true.”
