A Colorado district attorney on Tuesday announced criminal charges against a Customs and Border Protection officer who was recorded yanking a protester by her hair and pushing her to the ground last fall.
CBP Officer Nicholas Rice was charged with assault in the third degree and criminal mischief, District Attorney Sean Murray for Colorado’s 6th Judicial District, said in a news release. The charges are a misdemeanor and a petty offense, respectively.
Murray said he decided to file charges after “a thorough investigation conducted by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.”
The incident took place in late October outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Durango, a small left-leaning town in southwestern Colorado, where hundreds of people gathered to protest the arrest of a Colombian father and his two children.
Rice was recorded on video snatching a phone out of 57-year-old Franci Stagi’s hands and then grabbing her hair and shoving her down an embankment. Stagi told The Colorado Sun at the time that she had been recording the officer and asked him, “You’re a good Christian, aren’t you?” which she said set him off.
The Durango Herald reported that federal officers used physical force against protesters and deployed pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.
It’s unclear if Rice was reprimanded at the time.
CBP spokesperson Jaime Ruiz said in a statement that the agency is “still gathering all the facts about this incident” while criticizing Colorado officials, calling the charges “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt.”
“Federal officers acting in the course of their duties can only be investigated by other Federal agencies. The states do not have the authority to run an investigation,” Ruiz said.
Contrary to claims from members of the Trump administration, federal officers do not have “absolute immunity” from state prosecution, though the U.S. Constitution places broad limits on such actions.
Rice’s initial court appearance is scheduled for May 27.
The state charges against Rice come just days after Minnesota prosecutors announced criminal charges against an ICE officer involved in an alleged road rage incident.
Officer Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. is accused of pointing his duty weapon at two people while driving illegally on the shoulder of a highway during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota in February, according to Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.
Morgan Jr. faces two counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon. Moriarty said in her announcement that there was a nationwide warrant for Morgan’s arrest.
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