Very important government transparency question in Colorado: can public records be entirely withheld if they contain some confidential information, or do the records have to be produced with the confidential info redacted

Colorado law enforcement warn ICE recruitment posts on social media are so racist that they could endanger the public theintercept.com/2026/05/21/i...

Colorado cop who allegedly coerced women he arrested and detained into sex now works for ICE www.denver7.com/news/crime/e...

New Israel-Argentina direct flight aims to solidify relations built on law enforcement/defense exchanges ... and give Israelis a travel option that avoids the possibility of arrest in Europe www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026...

NEW: We've spent 10 months tracking the outcomes in tens of thousands of lawsuits brought by ICE detainees amid an unprecedented detention push. It's not a cose call: judges have ruled more than 10,000 times against ICE, a 9-1 ratio. See the database: www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

The War on Drugs keeps looking more and more like the War on Terror: mikelasusa.com/2025/09/19/t...

The latest Tren de Aragua press release from the US Justice Department points to a case in #Colorado where prosecutors do not mention TdA at all - not in their own press release nor in the indictment

The debate last night between Colorado's Democratic candidates for governor - state AG Phil Weiser and US Sen. Michael Bennet - showed they agree on a lot, policy-wise, but Weiser had the better performance as a debater www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XTR...

I've only been following #hondurasgate loosely, but the latest reports about online influence campaigns reminded me of the pervasive pro-JOH trolling during his presidency. It was so notable that I wrote about it at the time: insightcrime.org/news/insight...

Great story from @cprnews.bsky.social about students and educators leading efforts to reduce vaping among young people in Colorado. The campaigns are funded by millions of dollars from a legal settlement with the vape-maker Juul www.cpr.org/2026/05/05/c...

Denver's crime data is offline for updates, right at a time when it could be useful to add context to a recent spate of violence

Isn't the whole point of this boat-bombing campaign to deter drug trafficking? Why would the Trump admin ramp up these strikes "quietly"? www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/u...

Yet another report showing how Trump's immigration crackdown is taking resources away from prosecuting actual crimes news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and...

The expenses were “enough to fund Medicaid for 500,000 people for an entire year.”

A US soldier involved in planning the Maduro raid got charged with placing bets on the operation that paid out more than $400,000 www.ft.com/content/43bc...

ICE officer faces criminal charges in Colorado for allegedly assaulting a protester last year. As @durangoherald.bsky.social reports, it is unusual for local officials to charge federal law enforcement, and the case will likely end up in federal court: www.durangoherald.com/articles/dur...

Ecuadorian men who survived a US airstrike say they were just fishing with no drugs on the boat, @harrietbarber.bsky.social reports. After the strike they say US agents took them to El Salvador before they were repatriated to Ecuador. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

I saw this sign at DIA the other day and it caught my eye. @rmpbs.bsky.social reports animal strikes have been getting more frequent as the airport gets busier and surrounding development crowds out wildlife. www.rmpbs.org/news/wildlif...

Why I’m Launching a Solutions and Accountability Newsletter for Colorado

Rare butterfly collectors will pay thousands of dollars for specimens from Colombia. And even though trafficking probably isn't a major cause of butterfly population declines, anti-trafficking laws may be hindering conservation efforts. ojo-publico.com/6080/pedazo-...

Great story from @cprnews.bsky.social about how two different Colorado moms responded to their kids coming out as trans. One started an anti-trans campaign, the other is fighting to preserve pro-trans policies. www.cpr.org/2026/04/16/c...

My grandfather was a prosecutor in this same office in the '50s. He told me last weekend about a time he recommended a year in jail for a guy who stole a ham and got caught with 2 joints. The judge balked and lectured my grandfather about the impracticality of 'tough on crime'

Fascinating discussion of a counterintuitive research finding: nonviolent resistance was twice as successful in achieving political goals in the 20th century versus violent campaigns. www.hiddenbrain.org/podcast/how-...

The real risk of AI isn't that it will actively seek world domination; it's that we'll willingly let it continue undermining our sense of reality and taking on tasks that should be reserved for humans www.quantamagazine.org/why-do-we-te...

Somehow I had totally missed this last month, but the investigation of Tren de Aragua that I led for @insightcrime.org was listed as a finalist for a "countering disinformation" award from WAN-IFRA, the World Association of News Publishers. wan-ifra.org/2026/03/wan-...

Remarkable and chilling observation on deaths in ICE detention from @austinkocher.com: "ICE detention has become a horror movie on par with The Ring: we do not know precisely who will die, but someone will die in detention every six days." austinkocher.substack.com/p/ice-report...

After decades of fear-mongering about Iran, it is sadly ironic that the US ended up being the one that started the war and is currently threatening a potential nuclear genocide

Pretty good summary of how Colorado ended up with a $1.5 billion budget gap from Bethany Pray @copolicy.bsky.social: “We have a red-state budget and we have blue-state ideals, and that doesn’t work very well" www.denverpost.com/2026/04/05/c...

Tens of thousands of people are arrested every year based on false positives from error-prone $2 drug detection tests. A new law in Colorado could prevent wrongful arrests and convictions stemming from their use washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Yet another example of reports about alleged Tren de Aragua activity in the US turning out to be totally baseless www.kxan.com/news/local/h...

Trump's Justice Department is increasingly turning down organized crime and drug cases while refocusing on immigration prosecutions www.propublica.org/article/trum...

ICE is looking for co-working space in #ColoradoSprings and nearly 100 other cities www.the-independent.com/news/world/a...

Police in Aurora, Colorado said ICE wrongly blamed them and the “sanctuary city” for not acting fast enough when 2 people escaped from a private immigration jail last year. “This is not anything like what has been portrayed." sentinelcolorado.com/metro/revise...

Does Iran have a network of terrorist sleeper cells all over Latin America, ready to strike at any moment? And if they do, where are they? Read my latest piece at @RStatecraft to learn more: responsiblestatecraft.org/hezbollah-la...

My #SunshineWeek wish is for Colorado to improve its public access to court records. There's no reason LexisNexis needs all this personal information from me to create an account, and no reason to charge up to $10 just to search the system.

Trump admin once again recycling old cases to continue inflating the Tren de Aragua threat. This guy was already in prison when he was arrested, and the DOJ announced its plans to extradite him a year ago: www.justice.gov/opa/pr/unite...

Will there be any accountability for deadly US ‘narco-boat’ strikes? If so, it won’t come easily. Read my latest article to learn more 👉 mikelasusa.substack.com/p/will-there...

The lessons from this youth violence prevention program in Denver track with what I've seen in other contexts. Successful interventions are based on deep knowledge of the local situation, but there are definitely some common themes theconversation.com/how-denvers-...

New report from the Inter-American Press Association says the US saw the biggest drop in press freedom last year of any country in the Americas www.sipiapa.org/indice-chapu...

This is so cool. @mauricechammah.bsky.social found a trove of Texas prison music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s and digitized it with the @themarshallproject.org www.themarshallproject.org/2026/03/10/p...

This kind of empirical research adds an important dimension to our understanding of what works to fight organized crime, though I agree with @fracalderoni.bsky.social that "smart on crime" is often a tough sell politically

Excellent resource for understanding the current state of play in local governments' attempts to restrict ICE

What does a bombing in Argentina have to do with the Iran war? More than you might think. Read my first Substack post to find out: mikelasusa.substack.com/p/the-latin-...

US officials have offered evolving and sometimes contradictory descriptions of the so-called "Cartel of the Suns." Maduro's upcoming trial may force the administration to settle on a unified portrayal. insightcrime.org/investigatio...

The Aurora, Colorado apartment complex falsely claimed as a Tren de Aragua headquarters is being sold, with the owner paying the city $300,000. The management company is being tried on criminal charges of fraud and failing to maintain safe housing. www.denverpost.com/2026/02/19/e...

Joseph Humire, the Pentagon official known for overseeing the publication of fake news about Tren de Aragua, visited Venezuela yesterday with the top US general in charge of Latin America operations insightcrime.org/news/trump-o...

This marks 42 strikes, with 145 people killed. The administration still hasn't made its legal justification public, nor have they offered any evidence that this is an effective anti-crime policy. This whole campaign could be illegal, expensive and ultimately fruitless.

Apropos of nothing, my top 5 favorite criminal aliases from Latin America: 1. Teletubbie (Jonathan Reinaldo Oviedo Caballero) 2. El Cagón (Darwin Antonio Rivas García) 3. El Botox (César Alejandro Sepúlveda Arellano) 4. La Barbie (Edgar Valdez Villarreal) 5. Papa Pítufo (Diego Marin Buitrago)

Outgoing Colorado governor Jared Polis has been notably reticent to take on ICE, even as support grows among his constituents for limits and accountability. coloradosun.com/2026/02/12/c...

Important reporting from @WIRED, reinforcing how the Trump admin's own intelligence on Tren de Aragua contradicted its public rhetoric around the gang. As I have reported, there is no evidence of centralized leadership, coordinated activities, etc. www.wired.com/story/trump-...