A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer is facing charges of assault and criminal mischief in Colorado state court after an investigation into an October 2025 incident in Durango in which he seized and threw a demonstrator’s phone and pushed her to the ground.
Officer Nicholas Rice was charged Tuesday with assault in the third degree and criminal mischief, 6th Judicial District Attorney Sean Murray said in a press release. Rice is summoned to appear in La Plata County court next month.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation conducted the probe into the incident, which occurred outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Durango in the early-morning hours of Oct.
28 and was captured on multiple videos. The overnight protest by several dozen demonstrators followed ICE’s arrest the previous morning of a man, Fernando Jaramillo-Solano, and his two children, while he drove them to school.
Federal immigration authorities later said they had misidentified Jaramillo-Solano — a Durango resident and immigrant from Colombia with a pending asylum case — but arrested him anyway without a warrant.
He and his children subsequently requested to return to Colombia.
Video of the Oct. 28 incident showed a masked federal officer grabbing a phone being used by demonstrator Franci Stagi to record him, and throwing it across the street. The officer then grabs Stagi and struggles with her in the street before shoving her to the ground. The officer and several others then retreated onto the property of the ICE facility.
Other confrontations between demonstrators and federal officers occurred on Oct. 27 and 28 and led officers to deploy pepper spray and rubber bullets. The CBI investigation into the incident involving Stagi was requested by Durango Police Department Chief Brice Current, the agency said at the time.
CBP officials did not immediately return a request for comment on the charges against Rice.
The charges follow a Minnesota prosecutor’s decision to charge an ICE officer for assault over an incident in which he allegedly threatened people with a gun, one of at least 17 alleged incidents of excessive force being investigated there in connection with the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis area.
In the wake of the events in Minnesota, including the January killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, Colorado lawmakers have advanced a bill this legislative session that would allow people to sue immigration officers for alleged constitutional violations.
The arrest of Jaramillo-Solano and his two children was denounced by top Colorado Democrats, including Gov. Jared Polis, who blasted President Donald Trump’s administration for “snatching up children and breaking up families.”
In his second term, Trump has pledged to carry out “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country,” aiming to remove all of the estimated 12 million immigrants in the country without permanent legal status, regardless of how long they have been in the country, the legal status of their family members or whether they have criminal records.
This story is republished with permission from Colorado Newsline. To read more, visit coloradonewsline.com.
