The Mesa County sheriff’s deputy disciplined for collaborating with ICE got a job at ICE

Former Mesa County Sheriff’s Deputy Alexander Zwinck appears to be working at Immigration and Customs Enforcement after facing discipline for collaborating with ICE last year in the arrest of Utah college student Caroline Dias Goncalves, according to federal data hacked and published by activists.

Zwinck is listed in the published data as a special agent at Homeland Security Investigations, an office that is part of ICE, in Grand Junction. The data, which includes the information of more than 41,000 employees at the Department of Homeland Security, was obtained by a group called Department of Peace and published in October by a nonprofit called Distributed Denial of Secrets as a searchable database.

The Washington Post verified the authenticity of the data with current and former DHS officials as part of an investigation the newsroom published this week.

It’s not clear when ICE hired Zwinck or if he is still employed there. Zwinck did not respond to a text message or email Tuesday.

ICE’s June 2025 detention of Dias Goncalves, then a 19-year-old University of Utah nursing student, sparked public outrage and led to a federal lawsuit in which a judge ruled ICE officers acted illegally in arresting Goncalves and others without warrants across the state. Most people arrested by ICE last year had no prior criminal convictions, according to data obtained from ICE and published by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law’s Deportation Data Project. 

When a Colorado Sun reporter called the phone number listed in the data for Zwinck this week and asked if this was him, he responded affirmatively before hanging up. The Sun attempted to independently verify the data by searching for records related to the person identified in the data as Zwinck’s supervisor in Grand Junction, that person’s supervisor in Denver, and that person’s supervisor in Montana. The Sun was able to confirm those people have addresses in those places. 

In response to questions, a spokesperson at the Denver ICE public affairs office said in an email, “Due to employment privacy policies ICE does not confirm the employment status or personnel actions of any individual.” The emailer did not identify themselves.

Stopped on the way to Denver

As a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy, Zwinck pulled over Dias Goncalves on Interstate 70 near the town of Loma on June 5, 2025, for allegedly driving too close to a semi-truck as she was traveling to Denver. 

During the traffic stop, Zwinck made Dias Goncalves get out of her car and walk to his car to input some of her information, body camera footage shows. 

As Dias Goncalves was sitting in the front seat of Zwinck’s patrol car, he said, “Where are you from? You’ve got a little bit of an accent.” 

“I’m from Utah,” Dias Goncalves responded.

“How long have you lived in Utah for?” Zwinck said.

“Uh, like 12 years,” Dias Goncalves responded

“Born and raised, or no?” Zwinck said.

“No, I was born in Brazil,” Dias Goncalves said. 

“Oh, that’s cool,” Zwinck replied.

Zwinck released Dias Goncalves with a warning. 

“All right, you’re good to go, you have safe travels, ok?” Zwinck said as Dias Goncalves exited his car.

In a subsequent lawsuit brought against Zwinck, Colorado Attorney General and governor-elect Phil Weiser alleged that Zwinck kept Dias Goncalves in his car as a way to stall while alerting officers from ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations office to her location in a chat on the app Signal.

Zwinck was part of a group of state and federal law enforcement working on drug interdiction.

Federal immigration agents arrested Dias Goncalves a few miles down the road and transported her to the immigration detention center in Aurora, where she spent the next 15 days before paying a $2,000 bond, according to her lawyers. She told The Salt Lake Tribune that her days at the facility were “the hardest of my life.”

Zwinck resigned after a lawsuit

Colorado law prohibits state and local law enforcement from asking people about their immigration status. State law also prohibits officers from aiding in federal immigration enforcement outside of their criminal enforcement duties.

A relative of Dias Goncalves told The Tribune that Dias Goncalves came to the United States with her parents in 2012, when she was 7 years old. The family had a six-month tourist visa, which they overstayed, and then applied for asylum several years later, the relative said.

Weiser sued Zwinck in July of last year, alleging this was not the first time Zwinck had shared information with federal immigration agents in the Signal chat in violation of Colorado law. According to the lawsuit, another officer in the chat commented on the day after Dias Goncalves’ arrest that “Zwinck is gonna get ERO interdictor of the year,” referring to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations.

The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office removed Zwinck from his role in the interagency drug task force in July 2025 and put him on three weeks of unpaid leave as punishment for his involvement in the arrest. The office punished four other deputies after Dias Goncalves’ arrest. Zwinck resigned in September 2025. Weiser dropped his lawsuit shortly after.

Using the hacked and leaked DHS data, The Washington Post performed background checks on 300 newly hired ICE agents, a small sample of the 12,000 officers DHS had hired as of January.

The Post found at least 19 ICE officers had faced past allegations of misconduct or criminal charges or had other employment red flags. At least five officers were involved in use-of-force incidents, and five officers were named in lawsuits that resulted in settlements. In at least six cases, the officers had been fired or decertified, or resigned under threat of dismissal, according to the Post analysis.