February 19, 2026 12:34 PM UTC

Jeff Crank Has Some Ridiculous Ideas about Immigration Enforcement

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• by: Colorado Pols

The partial government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security appears unlikely to reach a conclusion anytime soon. Congress is not in session this week, and the White House seems uninterested in any sort of compromise that could earn Democratic support by reforming some of the procedures and policies used by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Following the end of a disastrous two month immigration enforcement “surge” in Minnesota, some rank-and-file Republicans — such as Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo. Springs) — are offering up some truly absurd ideas about doing MORE to help federal law enforcement agents get around current laws and regulations.

It was just about a month ago that Crank embarrassed himself and his district with comments about the ICE killing of Renee Good (it was basically her fault that she was murdered by an ICE agent); President Trump’s Greenland obsession (it’s fine!); and investigations into Democrats such as Rep. Jason Crow (D-Aurora) for participating in a video reminding military members that they shouldn’t follow illegal orders (“there has to be a price to pay”).

This week Crank was a guest on the right-wing nuthouse known as “The Jeff and Bill Show,” where he demonstrated — again — a complete inability to read the room on an issue where Republicans are rapidly losing control. After telling the hosts that he believes ICE agents should all be wearing body cameras for transparency’s sake, Crank stepped on his own talking points in the very next sentence:

 

CRANK: On the face mask thing, I wish we didn’t have to have face masks on police officers, but when you have people running around trying to interfere with law enforcement by doxing them and trying to expose their families to risk, I also wanna protect our law enforcement officers too…

…So, look, I get it. I don’t like law enforcement being being masked but I’m also not willing to say that I want to ask Federal law enforcement or any law enforcement to show up and risk being doxxed. So we got to find a better solution.

As is his habit, Crank continued to contradict himself the more he talked.

CRANK: I’m very uncomfortable with having…you know, this isn’t Columbia, right, where we have folks running around with masks fighting each other. We don’t want that in the United States. We also don’t law enforcement being targeted.

Look, we don’t want masked law enforcement agents…on the other hand, maybe we do!

At one point during this discussion, co-host Bill Thorpe asks Crank if he would support legislation to add stronger punishments to “doxxing” federal law enforcement officials. Naturally, Crank obliged.

CRANK: Well, look, I’ll be all in favor. I’ll go next week back to some of my Democrat colleagues and see if they’re willing to cosponsor a bill with me that says if you doxx a federal law enforcement agent, it’s a felony.

Crank is more concerned about whether someone might learn the name of a law enforcement agent than he is about whether ICE agents are murdering American citizens. He has taken in all of the talking points from the Trump administration and accepted them as gospel.

It gets worse. Here’s what Crank had to say about Democrats pushing to stop ICE agents from barging into private residences without warrants:

CRANK: They also were looking at, you know, only having warrants. Well, that means you’re never gonna arrest somebody. You don’t have a warrant when you pull somebody over and they’re drunk. We couldn’t…we couldn’t pull somebody over and find out that they violated the law or something and get them on an immigration detainer. That’s crazy. That’s just saying we’re not going to enforce our immigration laws.

Warrantless raids? Whatever!

Crank might not have gotten the memo that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has decided to target his fifth congressional district for the first time in that district’s existence. We assume he is aware that Democratic challenger Jessica Killin finished 2025 with more money in the bank (which is also not a scenario we can recall ever happening before).

Perhaps Crank isn’t worried that he could be the first Republican to ever lose his seat in CO-05. But just in case, we sure as hell wouldn’t be regularly spewing out statements that are completely at odds with how Americans have come to view Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts.