A Colorado prosecutor announced criminal charges on Tuesday against a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer accused of assaulting a woman during a protest outside a federal immigration facility in southern Colorado last fall.
Sean P. Murray, the district attorney for Colorado's Sixth Judicial District, named the officer as Nicholas Rice and said Rice was charged by summons and complaint with assault in the third degree and criminal mischief. The charges pertain to an October 28 incident that took place at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Durango, Colorado, Murray said in a statement.
Video of the encounter, which circulated widely on social media, shows the confrontation between the officer and a woman who was among demonstrators gathered outside the facility. The woman told CBS News Colorado she had been filming the officer prior to the physical contact, saying he "lifted me off the ground somehow, in a chokehold."
Authorities and agency representatives have provided limited public comment. A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and it remains unclear whether Rice is still on duty.
The protest outside the Durango facility on the day of the incident followed the arrest by immigration agents of a Durango man and his two children while they were on their way to school. An ICE official later stated that the man had been wrongly identified by agents, according to statements linked to the case.
Murray’s announcement in Colorado comes amid related legal actions in other states. Less than a week earlier, prosecutors in Minnesota charged an ICE agent with assault for allegedly pointing his firearm at two people in a vehicle along a Minneapolis-area highway during an incident earlier this year in February.
Both ICE and CBP operate under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The agencies have been central to the enforcement measures advanced under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. That enforcement push has prompted protests in cities targeted by enforcement actions, and those demonstrations expanded nationwide following the fatal shootings in Minneapolis in January of two U.S. citizens - Alex Pretti and Renee Good - by federal immigration officers.
The charges announced in Colorado add to a series of legal and public scrutiny episodes that have followed high-profile immigration enforcement actions. At this stage, prosecutors have filed the summons and complaint described by Murray, and public details remain limited to the statement from the district attorney and publicly shared video of the Durango encounter.
Reporting note: Public statements cited in this report include a statement from the Sixth Judicial District’s district attorney and an interview given to CBS News Colorado by the woman involved in the Durango incident. Additional agency comment was not available at the time of the district attorney’s announcement.