Colorado House Assistant Minority Leader Ty Winter said in a recent phone interview he didn’t really notice the $75 billion in extra funding for ICE or the $170 billion overall for mass deportations in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, because he doesn’t pay much attention to what’s happening in Washington, D.C.
“I don’t know a lot what’s going on at the federal level,” said Winter, a Republican from rural Las Animas County in southern Colorado. “I’m more focused on the state level, so I didn’t even know there was a bunch of more money thrown that way [to ICE].”
But Winter did say he noticed National Guard troops sent to D.C. from across the country brought down crime there in recent weeks, even though grand juries there have been rejecting trumped-up charges resulting from the surge in arrests.
“What they’ve done in D.C. has really changed crime statistics,” Winter said when asked if Denver needs the same treatment as D.C., L.A., Chicago, New Orleans and other cities where Trump is threatening to send troops. “They’re talking about doing it in other cities, so I think it’s one of those things that if it wasn’t so politicized, you’d see more cities asking for help.”
Washington’s attorney general is suing the Trump administration over what he deems a military occupation of a city where the Justice Department reports violent crime is at a 30-year low. California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently said National Guard and U.S. Marine deployments in the wake of immigration protests in Los Angeles, which he is suing to stop, have cost $120 million and counting. A federal judge in California last week ruled the deployments were illegal. Trump threatened Chicago is “about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
Winter, a staunch anti-immigration advocate, did not answer directly when asked if National Guard troops should be sent to quell crime or support federal deportation efforts in Denver.
“The reason that we have the crime issue is because the state legislature has been decriminalizing crime and taking it easy on criminals for some time now,” Winter said. “That’s why we’re seeing all of our statistics rising in crime. They say the crime’s going down, but sure crime’s going to go down if you take crime off the books. That only makes sense.”
Colorado’s crime rates, especially for violent crimes, have been steadily decreasing to pre-pandemic levels over the last several years. Murder rates are well below 1990’s highs, and Colorado has not decriminalized any violent crimes.
“When it comes to the federal government being involved in local law enforcement, there is a tipping point,” Winter said. “As long as the local law enforcement is able to handle things and … be able to keep their streets safe, that’s the way it’s supposed to be set up.”
Pressed on whether National Guard troops are even properly trained to police domestic city streets, Winter, who has not served in the military, pointed to one of the so-called “Forever Wars” in the Middle East that Trump campaigned on ending, but with very mixed results so far.
“Well, since the Afghanistan war, that’s all we train our troops to do. Let’s be honest, I hate to say it, but we have been a policing force since probably the early 2000s. So most of our troops are trained in that, on what they have to deal with in other countries,” Winter said. “But you are right, it is expensive [to deploy troops domestically]. Everything we do is expensive. It’s hard to mobilize and it does cost money.”
Winter, a fourth-generation rancher in Las Animas County and funeral home operator in Trinidad, got his start in Colorado politics as a leader of the Colorado chapter of American Freedom Keepers, a right-wing group that was, at the very least, militia-adjacent. Membership required an application and vetting before applicants earned “Active Duty” status.
Winter appears in numerous photos wearing an AFK t-shirt. Another man who marched with him wore the shirt of AFK’s “sibling” group, American Warrior Revolution.
Both groups participated in the deadly Charlottesville Unite the Right protests in 2017.
Winter denies affiliation with any right-wing groups in Colorado.
“In an effort to provide an alternative voice to mainstream media, I was part of a podcast that worked hard not only to inform the public about current events but also to promote liberty, freedom, and American values,” Winter said. “I want to be clear: I was not, and never have been, a member of any political extremist group. Those accusations are patently false.”
Winter was one of several hosts of the Major League Liberty podcast, including the head of the Colorado chapter of the Proud Boys.
Pressed on his connection to the Proud Boys group made infamous on Jan. 6, 2021, and his appearance with the group at a rally at the state capitol in the years leading up to riot at the U.S. Capitol, Winter said he was photographed with many different groups at Denver rallies.
“So, we were holding a free-speech rally. There was groups on all ends of the political spectrum there,” Winter said. “We took pictures with every group that was there. It didn’t matter who they were, first and foremost; a lot of these groups, people didn’t know who they were in the beginning. We would go to these things at the Capitol and there would be groups there from Antifa to groups on the far right.”
Winter denies any of his early political activism was racially motivated.
“I live in a very diverse community because of the coal mines. I am, I think, over half Italian,” Winter said. “I mean, my wife’s Hispanic, my kids are biracial. I think that it’s more of a political, and I’m going to be honest with you, a big-city thing, because here in rural Colorado, we all get along. We don’t have these issues. I mean, everybody commingles down here.”
Winter also paid enough attention to what was going on in Washington and Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill to feel its Medicaid, SNAP and health insurance premium tax-credit cuts will be supported in rural areas that don’t want to rely on government handouts. Nearly half of the billion-dollar hole blown in Colorado’s budget by the OBBB, which required last month’s special session, was created by undocumented immigrants, Winter claimed.
Citing “internal staff documents,” Winter said that over the last couple of years, health care, education at both levels, welcoming parties, and numerous pieces of legislation, Colorado has spent $544 million on people who have come to the state illegally. He did not address the economic benefits of immigrant labor and he discounts their necessity in certain jobs.
“That’s one of the most egregious things to categorize people and to say, well, they’re the only ones that’ll come here and do those horrible jobs that Americans don’t want to do,” Winter said. “People are happy when the migrants come in and do work, and even all the people in my area of the state, we have no problem with people coming to this country. We just need to know that they’re in this country. We should know where they are, who they are, what they’re doing.”
Winter says immigration has been politicized and could be solved by bipartisanship in Congress.
“But both parties fundraise like crazy off of it. It’s a great wedge issue for them to use to fight,” Winter said. “Let’s be honest, the media loves it because it’s fodder for the people to argue about. And I think that if both parties were serious, they could have fixed this immigration thing a long time ago. But, unfortunately, politically it benefits them both too much.”
Colorado Times Recorder Deputy Editor Erik Maulbetsch contributed to this story.
