Glenwood Springs Council Faces $50K ICE Office Lease Injunction

Glenwood Springs —The gravel crunches under tires on Highway 131. The air smells like pine and cold river water. Inside the Garfield County Public Library in Glenwood Springs, it is quiet. A grandmother introduces her granddaughter to the stacks. The staff is professional. The books are endless.

It is a good place. It is one of the best places in town.

Sarah Pettit wrote about it in the Post Independent. She calls it a "wonderful community resource." She says the programs for children and young adults are excellent. You can check out materials from Glenwood or request them from other libraries. The staff is personable. She urges locals to use the resources. She wants them to recommend the library to others.

That is the easy part of the story. The hard part is sitting right outside those doors.

The ICE office debate is turning into a bill.

Steve Turza, a retired special agent with HSI/ICE, thinks the city council’s recent decision is a "costly folly." He is looking at the legal fight over the office’s lease. The council filed an injunction against the landlord. Turza says that was a mistake.

The office has been there since 2003. It operated seamlessly for nearly a quarter of a century. Hundreds of criminal aliens were deported and convicted from that specific location. Turza lists the counties affected: Garfield, Eagle, Summit, Pitkin, and Lake. He says there were no negligent incidents. No problems. The location met zoning regulations when it was built.

He doesn’t think the council changed the zoning rules just for show. He thinks there is a "hidden agenda." He believes open-border activists are using the permitting issue as a facade. They are shanghaiing the City Council into doing their bidding.

Turza notes that HSI and ERO are under the same umbrella. Both conduct immigration enforcement. The advocates are trying to "kill two birds with one stone." Closing the office is the ultimate goal.

Now, the residents of Glenwood Springs have to pay for it.

Turza estimates the bill will be $50,000 or more. That is money that could have been spent on the city and its residents. He calls it outrageous. A simple permitting issue. That is the short version.

The third letter shifts the focus from local politics to human geography.

A family physician wrote about Haitian immigrants. She has traveled to many countries on medical relief trips. Two of those trips were to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. They share the island of Hispaniola. The trips opened her eyes. She became sympathetic to the plight of Haitians in the United States.

She spent a week in the Dominican Republic. She traveled daily to refugee camps. Most of her colleagues were American. The letter cuts off there. We don’t get the rest of her argument. We don’t know how many patients she saw. We don’t know if she is advocating for policy changes or just raising awareness.

But the context is clear. The Western Slope is not isolated. It is connected to the world. The library serves the locals. The ICE office serves the federal government. The Haitian community is part of the broader human story that plays out in these valleys.

The library is a place of quiet. The ICE office is a place of enforcement. The refugee camps are places of survival.

Turza wants the $50,000 spent wisely. Pettit wants the library used fully. The physician wants the plight understood.

The city council has to decide if the permitting issue was just that — an issue — or the start of something bigger. The residents have to decide if they are willing to foot the bill.

Read that again. The bill is already coming due.