Colorado sheriff’s deputy disciplined for helping immigration agents resigns, ending lawsuit

DENVER (AP) — A Colorado sheriff’s deputy who was disciplined for helping federal immigration agents make an arrest of a college student from Brazil has resigned.

Alexander Zwinck no longer works for the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office, department spokesperson Heather Benjamin said Tuesday. Zwinck’s departure prompted the state’s attorney general to drop a lawsuit against him over accusations that the deputy illegally shared information with immigration agents.

After Zwinck said in court filings that he planned to resign, a judge agreed to dismiss Attorney General Phil Weiser’s lawsuit against Zwinck on Thursday at the request of both Weiser and Zwinck.

Weiser sued to get a judge to order Zwinck to follow a new state law after he was accused of helping immigration agents arrest the student in June. It bars local government employees including law enforcement from sharing identifying information about people with federal immigration officials. It’s one of a series of laws limiting the state’s involvement in immigration enforcement passed over the years that has drawn criticism and a lawsuit from the federal government.

A lawyer for Zwinck, Michael Lowe, did not return a telephone call or email seeking comment on the allegations against Zwinck.

In a response to the lawsuit filed in court, Zwinck denied intentionally violating the state law, which was signed by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis about two weeks before he stopped the 19-year-old nursing student.

The lawsuit alleged Zwinck shared the woman’s driver’s license, vehicle registration and insurance information in a Signal chat used by members of a drug task force that included immigration authorities.

After federal immigration officers told him in the chat that the student did not have a criminal history but had an expired visa, Zwinck allegedly provided them with their location and told her to wait with him in his patrol car for about five minutes, asking about her accent and where she was born. He let her go with a warning and gave federal agents a description of her vehicle and told her the direction she was headed so they could arrest her, the lawsuit said.

During an internal investigation by the sheriff’s office, Zwinck said he didn’t know about the new law and was not interested in immigration enforcement.

The internal investigation found that Zwinck had helped immigration agents and that another task force member had also been sharing information with them, leading both deputies to be temporarily suspended without pay. Two supervisors also were disciplined and a third supervisor received counseling as a result of the investigation.

The lawsuit and disciplinary actions came as lawmakers in Colorado and other Democratic-led states have crafted legislation intended to push back against President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown. Trump has enlisted hundreds of state and local law enforcement agencies to help identify immigrants in the U.S. illegally and detain them for potential deportation.