The US military is allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to process and detain arrested undocumented immigrants at Buckley space force base in Colorado, according to multiple reports and a statement by the US Northern Command on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the US Northern Command said in a statement shared by CBS News on Tuesday that, at the request of the Department of Homeland Security, facilities at Buckley space force base in Aurora, Colorado, had been made available to Ice officials for immigration operations starting on Monday 27 January.

The facilities are being provided to “enable US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to stage and process criminal aliens within the US for an operation taking place in Colorado”, according to the statement.

No military personnel will be involved in the operation, the statement reads, adding that the facility will be staffed by “ICE senior leaders, special agents, and analysts as well as members of DHS components and other federal law enforcement agencies”.

The spokesperson noted that Ice’s facility requirements include a temporary operations center, staging area and a temporary holding location for the receiving, holding and processing of undocumented immigrants.

Representative Jason Crow, a Democrat of Colorado, released a statement on Wednesday morning, saying that he was “deeply concerned” about the reports that Buckley space force base, which is in his district, is being used for mass deportation efforts.

“Pulling our military into politicized and contentious domestic immigration enforcement dishonors the service of our troops and distracts them from the important work of defending our nation,” Crow said.

“Perhaps most disturbingly, it could force out servicemembers to assist in the detention and deportation of peaceful members of the community.”

The Buckley space force base is located in Aurora, Colorado, a city of about 340,000 people near Denver. Last year, the city made headlines during the presidential campaign, when Donald Trump and others alleged that Venezuelan gang members had taken over apartment building complexes in the city after a video circulated online showing armed men walking through an apartment building housing Venezuelan immigrants.

At the time, Aurora’s Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, described the claims that the city had been overrun by criminal or gang activity as “dramatically exaggerated”, saying that it “couldn’t be further from the truth”.

On Tuesday, the Denver metro area in Colorado is expected to be one of the next targets for Ice arrests, according to CBS News, and NBC also reported on Tuesday that Ice agents might carry out an operation in Aurora as soon as Thursday morning.

The decision to utilize a Colorado military base for immigration operations comes as last week the Pentagon announced that it would deploy up to 1,500 active-duty troops to the US-Mexico border as part of Trump’s aggressive new immigration enforcement strategy.

On Friday, about 150 soldiers from two units at Fort Carson in Colorado were reportedly deployed to the southern border.

A court ruling Monday has big implications for Colorado. A federal judge will decide whether the Trump administration can temporarily pause federal grants and loans that don’t align with his agenda.

Federal funding makes up 20%-40% of Colorado’s state budget in any given year, helping pay for everything from food banks and foster care to public health and crop protection.

 In 2023 — the most recent data available – the state received $18 billion from the federal government. $1.2 billion went to K-12 schools, $628 million to transportation projects and $380 million to early childhood programs. Colorado municipalities, counties and nonprofits also receive hundreds of millions of dollars.

“These are real people. These are read families,” said Democratic state Sen. Jeff Bridges, Chair of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee.

He notes this year’s budget has a shortfall of about $1 billion.

“Making those cuts is already hard enough. If we are now losing billions of dollars in federal support, in federal investment into our state? That is a whole other scale,” Bridges said.

A memo from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget ordered federal agencies to analyze all financial assistance programs to make sure they comply with President Trump’s new executive orders, specifically those regarding “foreign aid, DEI (diversity equity and inclusion), woke gender ideology and the Green New Deal.” The budget office gave agencies until Feb. 10 to report programs that didn’t comply and temporarily pause federal funding to them in the meantime.

“We’ve got a crisis of priorities right here in this state and it seems like the president is saying the same thing about their budget,” said Republican state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer. “He’s going through and basically doing what I’m going to call strategic budgeting.”

Kirkmeyer — who sits on the Joint Budget Committee with Bridges — says it would have been nice to get a heads-up from the administration, but she says there’s no reason to panic.

“I would tell everybody ‘Take a deep breath. Let us start sorting this out,’” she said.

But some Medicaid providers in Colorado did panic when they were locked out of a portal they use for authorization for several hours.

“We need to know what the real plan here is and what’s actually going to happen,” said Bridges. “You have to be thoughtful. These are people’s lives. These are people’s livelihoods.”

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget says the pause should be implemented “to the extent permissible under applicable law,” but Democrats in Congress say the president has no legal authority to stop or pause funding appropriated by Congress.

The budget office memo says the federal government issued $3 trillion in grants and loans last year. It’s unclear how much of that funding would be impacted by a temporary pause, should it take affect next week.

Colorado’s attorney general joined other states in filing a lawsuit to reverse the temporary freeze as well.