Authorities arrested over 100 suspected undocumented immigrants in a federal raid on a Colorado nightclub that saw guns and drugs including methamphetamine and pink cocaine seized early Sunday, officials said.
The big picture: President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi hailed the raid on the Colorado Springs club, some 70 miles south of Denver, as the administration faces criticism over the arrest of a judge in an immigration case and U.S. citizen children being sent to Honduras with their deported mothers.
Driving the news: The Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Rocky Mountain Division said some “200 people were inside — at least 114 in the U.S. illegally.”
- DEA Rocky Mountain Division Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Pullen told reporters there had been “undercover surveillance” on this “underground nightclub” for months and members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, MS-13 and the Hells Angels had been seen there.
- “I don’t have the information about whether those members were there tonight, but we’re still working through a lot of that, because we have so many people in custody,” he said.
Zoom in: Pullen said investigators had observed “significant drug trafficking, prostitution, crimes of violence,” adding: “We had active-duty service members who were running security at the club and involved in some of these crimes.”
- A spokesperson for Fort Carson, an Army post in Colorado, confirmed in a media statement “there were some Fort Carson service members present at the location during the operation.”
- The spokesperson added each person involved in the case was presumed innocent until proven guilty and the Army “will look at everyone’s situation on a case-by-case basis.”
What they’re saying: “A big Raid last night on some of the worst people illegally in our Country — Drug Dealers, Murderers, and other Violent Criminals, of all shapes and sizes, and Judges don’t want to send them back to where they came from,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
- “If we don’t win this battle at the Supreme Court, our Country, as we know it, is FINISHED! It will be a Crime ridden MESS. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Reality check: Only 1.17% of fiscal year 2025 new cases sought deportation orders based on any alleged criminal activity of the immigrant, apart from possible illegal entry, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) analysis of court records to the end of March.
- Immigrants commit fewer crimes than their U.S.-born counterparts, studies show. But Trump and others have elevated individual cases that support their claims, like the death of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
- Less than 0.5% of the 1.8 million cases in immigration courts during the past fiscal year (involving about 8,400 people) included deportation orders for alleged crimes other than entering the U.S. illegally, an Axios review of government data found.
Go deeper: “Deranged” Milwaukee judge’s arrest a warning to others, Bondi says