President Donald Trump’s mass deportation promises and subsequent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in major cities like Denver and Aurora have triggered a wave of misinformation on social media.

For the past few weeks, immigration advocacy organizations in Colorado have taken to social media to warn users about rapidly circulating misinformation about immigration enforcement encounters.

The misinformation can sometimes take the form of an incorrect or misleading “ICE sighting” post from a well-meaning resident, though advocacy groups across the country say a small sect of social media users have maliciously targeted communities with false raid claims to create panic.

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“Definitely there are malicious intentions in how the information is being distributed,” Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition’s Western Slope Organizer Beatriz Garcia said. “I think the strategy is (what has) created the chaos. Because when it’s chaos, nobody knows how to react. … The fear is a tool for oppression.”

Posts reading “ICE is here” can easily leave out crucial information about the time, place and circumstances of the appearance of immigration officers, imposing the fear that ICE is everywhere.

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In search of a more effective way to share verified information about ICE activity, several Colorado residents across the state have volunteered their time to respond to rumors and share accurate information through a statewide hotline effort.

The Colorado Rapid Response Network was formed in 2017 during the first Trump administration as a way to track, verify and confirm ICE raids in immigrant communities. 

The network is a collaboration among seven immigration rights and social justice groups that includes the Colorado Immigration Rights Coalition.

The organization’s 24-hour hotline is managed by nearly 3,000 volunteers across the state, some of which are on the Western Slope. Jordan Garcia, program director for the American Friends Service Committee, said northwestern mountain resort towns like Glenwood Springs typically have between 10 and 20 volunteers responding to calls or visiting reported sites for confirmation of ICE activity.

Larger municipalities have a higher concentration of volunteers. The city of Aurora — which has been the subject of heightened immigration enforcement by the Trump administration — has around 500 hotline volunteers.

Once the hotline sends out “confirmers” to report back on whether a rumored raid is happening, the hotline shares its findings with thousands of followers on its website and Facebook page.

Jordan Garcia said the hotline is the only statewide hotline of its kind in the country, which can make it difficult to respond to every rumor that gets posted online — especially when the same screenshot is being sent around with different captions and time stamps.

“We hear, ‘ICE is in the parking lot of certain stores,’ or, ‘ICE was stopping people between here and there,'” Beatriz Garcia said. “And usually, when there are volunteers that can confirm, it’s easy to really stop (misinformation).”

The hotline has only gotten busier since Trump’s 2025 inauguration. One year ago, Jordan Garcia said it was normal for the hotline to receive less than five calls in a day, many of which were for referrals or questions related to immigration appointments. In February 2025, a typical day consists of 20-25 calls to the hotline per hour.

“We’ve seen back-to-back calls all day,” Jordan Garcia said.

The Feb. 5 ICE raids in Denver and Aurora saw a record number of calls for the network, with roughly 368 reports made by residents in the area — many of which were overlapping cases. 

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado also saw a higher number of immigration-related social media posts during this time — many of which were inaccurate. False rumors not only cause unnecessary panic, the organization said, but also make it difficult for lawyers and advocacy groups to prioritize cases when some reports are false.

They can’t “be everywhere at once,” said Sophia Mayott-Guerrero, interim director of advocacy and strategic alliances for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.

“What we were even seeing here on (Feb. 5) was that there was a lot of ICE activity. There was an intensity and a sense of randomness,” Mayott-Guerrero said. “There was also, then, a lot of posts and calls and information going around … and lots of places being reported where ICE actually wasn’t.”

Although immigration efforts have focused mostly on the Front Range, Beatriz Garcia said there have been confirmed detentions on the Western Slope — such as the recent detentions in Routt County, where at least three detainees were confirmed to have criminal records, according to prior reporting by the Steamboat Pilot & Today.

“Between the fear, between the actions that the government is taking specifically targeting Aurora, and the more active agents in the rural area, (there is) definitely a sense of fear in our communities,” Beatriz Garcia said.

This sense of fear can be particularly strong in more remote areas of Colorado where information networks are few and far between. Fortunately, Jordan Garcia said Western Slope hotline volunteers have been able to meet the demand in their communities.

“The Western Slope is fairly well-covered because there’s such incredible organizers in the area,” Jordan Garcia said. Areas with local immigrant rights advocacy groups tend to do better with reporting encounters and organizing volunteers, he added.

Mountain Dreamers, a Colorado immigration advocacy nonprofit, has had its share of work debunking ICE raid rumors. In addition to contacting local authorities to verify information, organization members sometimes visit the sites of rumored raids and publish their findings on social media — regardless of whether they prove to be a real emergency or just rumors.

“We were able to post pretty quickly, ‘No, this is just rumors here. Nothing happened in our region,'” Mountain Dreamers Executive Director Peter Bakken said. “It helps calm things down.”

Despite reports of people across the country making false ICE reports as a fear tactic, Jordan Garcia said he hasn’t seen that happening in Colorado.

“Most of those reports and the warnings are accompanied with like, ‘Take care of yourselves. Be safe out there. I saw this at this corner,’ and that person is too scared usually to stay and figure out that it’s actually the cable guy or that it’s actually not ICE,” he said. “We don’t fault them for that. We have not seen a lot of false reporting that’s malicious.”

If a Colorado resident or visitor thinks they may have witnessed an immigration enforcement arrest or an ICE presence, the Colorado Rapid Response Network asks that they call its hotline — 844-864-8341 — or one of its partnering immigration organizations to report the encounter and to confirm the information with those organizations before posting anything to social media.

The network is also in the process of training its members and the community at large to differentiate immigration and law enforcement insignias. Because Colorado police are limited in how they can interact with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, police insignias are generally a reliable indicator that ICE is not involved. 

“Our community is getting more savvy and more knowledgeable, and so the calls that we’re getting that are actually ICE are by comparison going up,” Jordan Garcia said. “We’re getting less and less rumors, and more and more actual ICE.”

The Colorado Rapid Response Network’s website, ColoradoRapidResponseNetwork.com, provides live updates at all hours of the day. Community members interested in becoming confirmers for the hotline can sign up to volunteer through the site.

“We try not to shame people for the rumors because it’s just fear,” he continued. “But we are also trying to ask people to be more cautious about what they post and be thoughtful about spreading fear where it may not be needed.”

Here are a few things you can do to avoid spreading misinformation: 

• Add the Colorado Rapid Response Network hotline to your phone to report suspected ICE activity: 1-844-864-8341
• Check the @CORapidResponseNetwork Facebook page to see if ICE activity has been confirmed
• Only reshare their verified posts
• Visit bit.ly/KYRColorado for tips and tools

“I encourage people to distribute power instead of panic,” Beatriz Garcia said. “We have to maintain our community secure and, and the only way to do it is by sharing information that is being verified or confirmed. And if you don’t know, ask.”