Trump Appoints a CO Proponent of Mass Deportation As Senior Advisor to Immigrant Support Agency

John Fabbricatore, the former Aurora ICE field officer, failed candidate for Congress in Colorado, and former Heritage Foundation visiting fellow has a new job: senior advisor to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

Not a lot has been going on in the ORR since President Trump’s first day in office, when the president signed an executive order banning refugee resettlement and freezing foreign aid. As a result, it is estimated that over 120,000 refugees are currently stranded in increasingly dangerous situations all around the world. In February, the administration terminated roughly 10,000 federal contracts, including those with agencies that were tasked with resettlement and the welcome of refugees. Which means refugees both in and outside the U.S., suddenly stopped getting services.

According to its website, the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s mission is “to promote the health, well-being, and stability of refugees, unaccompanied alien children, and other eligible individuals and families, through culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and strengths-based services.” The wording apparently has not been changed since the Biden administration.

If indeed the mission has not been changed, then the idea of Fabbricatore, a longtime, outspoken supporter of deporting all undocumented immigrants (criminals or not), denying birthright citizenship, encouraging law enforcement to assist ICE in violation of Colorado law, and increasing immigrant detention cell capacity from 37,000 to 100,000 is unsettling to some.

“I’m troubled by Mr. Fabbricatore’s appointment …” said Shara Smith, Executive Director of the Colorado Interfaith Alliance. “Given his position towards immigrants and refugees [which is] is in direct conflict with Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and other faith traditions.”

A week ago, at the beginning of his appointment to the new position, Fabbricatore, who’s advocated for all immigration funding to be funneled to enforcement and not to services for immigrants, seemed excited to allegedly help children.

Unaccompanied “alien” children, it turns out, are a pet peeve of Fabbricatore. On August 14, he went on KHOW’s Ryan Schuilling Show to announce his new position as advisor and claim former President Biden put tens of thousands of these children in danger by releasing them to U.S. sponsors with no familial connection and allowing them to be enslaved and even raped.

Fabbricatore, who “co-founded” a group to support sheriffs who want to help ICE deport immigrants, depicted himself as the hero who was going to rescue these children by rounding them up, detaining, and deporting them. “Thirteen thousand have already been rescued,” he said proudly on the podcast.

Smith, of the Interfaith Alliance, doesn’t see that as much of a rescue. She points out that these unaccompanied children have “already suffered so much. Further traumatizing them by sending them to face the circumstances they fled … is dangerous and unsafe.”

It’s hard to imagine a more vulnerable population than unaccompanied minor immigrants, but it’s no surprise that they are in Fabbricatore’s crosshairs.

He’s no stranger to kicking someone when they’re down. A mixed martial arts competitor in 2002, he openly bragged about his record during his run for Colorado’s 6th Congressional District (CD6) in 2024.

“So I had three wins, three losses, [and] one no contest because I kicked a guy when he had falle¹n on both knees,” Fabbricatore said on KNUS’ Jeff and Bill Show in April, 2024. The kick was to the face.

Of course, Fabbricatore is gonna have to wait to Pied Piper the unaccompanied minors to the holding cells as just a day after he shared his vision with Ryan Schuilling, a California judge denied the Trump administration’s efforts to terminate the longstanding Flores settlement, which has guaranteed protections for detained unaccompanied children for the last 30 years. According to the Church World Service, “Flores sets national minimum standards for treatment, placement, and release of detained immigrant children and remains a key barrier to the administration’s plans to dramatically expand the detention of immigrant families.”

Neither Fabbricatore nor the Office for Refugee Resettlement responded to requests for comment.

Fabbricatore may run into resistance not only from advocates for immigrants but from President Donald Trump himself. During his congressional campaign against U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat, in CD6 in 2024, he stated that he did not believe the 2020 election was stolen.

“I believe in evidence, and I don’t believe that there’s been enough evidence to show that,” he told KNUS, when asked if fraud “swayed the election to Biden.”