ICE to open office in Greeley, Colo.

By Tom Johnston on 7/21/2008

MeatingPlace

The U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement bureau will open an office in Greeley, Colo., home to the headquarters of JBS-Swift & Co., sometime this fall, an ICE spokesman confirmed to Meatingplace.com.

Carl Rusnok said the new site will be one of many offices the agency runs in the state of Colorado. He said ICE's raids at Swift plants, including the company's Greeley beef plant, in December 2006 did not prompt the agency to open an office there.

"We go where the leads are and where the activity is," he said. "And that doesn't necessarily depend on where our offices are located. Wherever we have offices or don't have offices, we're able to cover various areas."

Rusnok said an ICE agent has been stationed in Greeley for "at least a couple years," but "there have been some people externally trying to get an ICE office in Greeley."

ICE will close its office in Brush, Colo., which is roughly 60 miles east of Greeley and located just east of the Cargill Meat Solutions beef plant in Fort Morgan, and those agents will move to Greeley.

The Denver Post reported that Buck and Weld County Sheriff John Cooke began lobbying for an ICE office in Greeley in 2005. Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) spearheaded funding for the Department of Homeland Security to conduct a study to determine whether an office in Greeley was justified. The study concluded it was.

For and against

Some local groups were happy to learn that an ICE office is scheduled to open this fall in a building near Aims Community College.

"This will really improve Greeley," Joy Breuer, who runs the Greeley for God ministry, told DP. "When the bad guys who don't want to obey the laws see the ICE office open, they'll leave and go someplace else."

Others said the December 2006 raids already took care of that. "I think it's just a huge waste of taxpayers dollars," Latino activist Susanne Villareal told DP. She said most illegal immigrants already have left the area.

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