A U.S. military base in Aurora, Colorado, will be used to process and temporarily house migrants facing deportation, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement steps up raids under President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown.
Facilities at Buckley Space Force Base will be made available to ICE officials starting this week, according to U.S. Northern Command. NorthCom, as the military division is known, is overseeing Trump’s deployment of troops to the Southwest border and deportation flights aboard military aircraft.
Military personnel won’t be involved in the ICE operations in Colorado, NorthCom said. The arrangement, first reported by CBS News, marks the latest use of military infrastructure in immigration enforcement.
Aurora, a suburb of Denver, became a flash point during the presidential election, with Trump and others alleging that Venezuelan gang members had overrun parts of the city and occupied entire apartment buildings. Local and state officials repeatedly denied the claims.
Denver, a sanctuary city, has vowed to shield migrants from ICE raids, with Mayor Mike Johnston saying he’s prepared to go to jail to protect undocumented migrants from federal immigration authorities. In recent years, the city had received tens of thousands migrants, many of whom were sent on buses by the state of Texas.
Over the past week, ICE has reported making more than 4,000 arrests nationwide.
On Jan. 26, ICE led a pre-dawn raid in Chicago, coordinating with federal agents from the Department of Justice in the first multi-agency immigration operation of Trump’s second term. While the agency hasn’t released specific arrest numbers from Chicago, it confirmed that more than 1,000 individuals were detained in operations across the country that day.
The Chicago raid was overseen by Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, and live-streamed by television personality Dr. Phil McGraw, better known as Dr. Phil, who joined federal agents during the operation.
Similar ICE raids have been conducted across the country, including an early-morning operation Tuesday in New York. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced on X that agents arrested a leader of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, who she said was wanted in Colorado.
The Trump administration cited the Tren de Aragua gang as an example of a group threatening US security in an executive order aimed at dismantling criminal cartels, foreign gangs and transnational criminal organizations.
While ICE officials have emphasized that many of those arrested have criminal records, the agency acknowledged that hundreds of others detained had no prior offenses beyond entering or remaining in the country without permission.
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