DENVER – Colorado Citizens for Ethics in Government (CCEG), a non-partisan, non-profit legal watchdog group, today filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) to determine whether gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez broke the law by using information obtained from an ICE special agent for a political attack ad aired earlier this month against his opponent, former District Attorney Bill Ritter.

The attack ad accuses Ritter of allowing Carlos Estrada Medina, who was later arrested in California for sexually abusing a child, to serve only probation for heroin possession and immigration violations. Because Medina was using a different name when arrested in Colorado and California, the Beauprez campaign must have accessed a law enforcement database to discover the later arrest.

According to press reports, both the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and Federal Bureau of Investigation are examining whether Rep. Beauprez or a campaign staffer broke federal and state law by colluding with an ICE special agent to obtain Medina’s criminal file from a federal criminal database. Use of the federal criminal database for non-law-enforcement purposes is a crime punishable by up to a year in prison.

CCEG requested records relating to any communications between ICE special agents and Rep. Beauprez or anyone acting on behalf of Rep. Beauprez or the Beauprez campaign.