By Jasper Ward
WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) – A Colorado district attorney on Wednesday charged a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer with assaulting a woman during a protest outside a federal immigration facility last year.
Videos of the incident in southern Colorado were shared widely on social media. The woman told CBS News Colorado she was filming the officer before he “lifted me off the ground somehow, in a chokehold.”
Sean P. Murray, the district attorney for Colorado’s Sixth Judicial District, identified the officer as Nicholas Rice, who was involved in immigration enforcement activity in the state last October.
“Officer Nicholas Rice has been charged by summons and complaint with assault in the third degree and criminal mischief,” Murray said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that the charges were related to an October 28 incident at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s facility in Durango, Colorado.
It is unclear if Rice is still on duty.
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called the move “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt,” while noting that the department was still gathering facts about the incident.
“Federal officers acting in the course of their duties can only be investigated by other Federal agencies. The states do not have the authority to run an investigation,” the spokesperson said.
The October protest outside the facility was held after a Durango man and his two children were arrested by immigration agents while on the way to school. An ICE official later said the man was wrongly identified by agents.
Rice’s charges came less than a week after prosecutors in Minnesota charged an ICE agent with assault for allegedly pointing his gun at two people in a car along a highway in Minneapolis in February.
ICE and CBP are part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which has been on the front line of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The crackdown has spurred nationwide protests following the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens – Alex Pretti and Renee Good – by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis in January.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; editing by Donna Bryson, Rod Nickel and David Gaffen)
