Shattered glass and spilled beer coated the floors of the nightclub. More than 100 people had been taken into custody by federal immigration agents, and Colorado Springs’s mayor, Yemi Mobolade, had a decision to make.
Law enforcement officials said their operation in the Sunday morning darkness cleared out a club that was rife with drugs, guns and prostitution. Liberal voters who helped elect Mr. Mobolade, a Nigerian-born pastor and political independent, to lead their historically conservative city were disturbed by the mass arrest of so many immigrants.
Mr. Mobolade made his choice.
“This immigrant mayor says, if you’re here illegally and you’re committing a crime, there should be consequences,” he said in an interview. “You should be deported.”
The raid, led by the Drug Enforcement Administration, came the week after a large-scale operation in Florida that led to the arrests of more than 1,100 people. But this one was conducted in Democratic Colorado, in an increasingly purple city, Colorado’s second largest. The aftermath of the raid reflects the deep divisions over President Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
Mr. Mobolade and other mayors in Colorado, New York and Massachusetts have faced frustration and criticism from voters over their response to record-breaking migrant arrivals under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Now they face a backlash from the left, as the Trump administration steps up its immigration crackdown and presses local officials to cooperate.
Some of Mr. Mobolade’s left-leaning voters felt betrayed by the raid. The arrests and a lack of information about what had become of the detainees unnerved many immigrants. What’s more, the city of Colorado Springs had participated by sending about 50 police officers to assist federal agents.
On Tuesday, about 30 people protested outside the local sheriff’s office, waving banners that condemned Immigration and Customs Enforcement and shouting, “Immigrants are welcome here!”
“These raids are not about public safety,” said Brandon Rincon, an organizer with the Colorado Springs Peoples Coalition. “These are terror attacks on our community.”
But Mr. Mobolade, who first came to the United States on a student visa, said he saw a clear difference between immigrants who came to the United States to work and the people who were scooped up and put on buses Sunday.
“I know there’s a bigger immigration story going on, but this is about criminal behavior,” he said.
Mr. Mobolade’s election as mayor in 2023 captured the changing character of Colorado Springs, a city of 490,000 at the base of Pikes Peak, where large military bases and the headquarters of the Christian conservative organization Focus on the Family helped forge a culture on the political right.
An influx of liberal and moderate voters who have been priced out of Denver and Boulder has nudged the city toward the center, while the rest of Colorado has moved sharply left. Mr. Mobolade, a political newcomer, beat an establishment Republican to become the first Black mayor of a city whose population is roughly two-thirds white, and its first non-Republican mayor in more than 40 years.
His winning message: unity.
Still, the 46-year-old mayor has found it hard to escape the country’s culture wars, as he tried to help Colorado Springs recover from a 2022 mass shooting at an L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub, and to focus on bread-and-butter issues such as reducing homelessness and keeping the U.S. Space Command headquarters in town.
Mr. Trump’s political comeback has had an impact. Mr. Mobolade said he had stopped describing the city as “inclusive” because of the battles over diversity, equity and inclusion. In the interview in his sixth-floor office, between meetings on public safety and summertime parks events, he wondered whether it was now polarizing even to call his city “welcoming.”
“We’re forced to deal with the national chaos and conversation around identity politics,” he said.
Some neighbors living near the raided nightclub praised law enforcement for helping to clean up what they called a rough corner of town. Several of them called the D.E.A.’s Denver field office to leave grateful voice mail messages, officials said. “Does my heart good to know somebody’s looking after my safety,” one man is heard to say.
Jonathan Pullen, the special agent in charge of the D.E.A.’s Rocky Mountain Field Division, described the nightclub, known as Warike, as a “den of iniquity.” It opened at 2 a.m. on weekends and drew a largely Latino clientele who learned of the club through Spanish-language posts on social media and word of mouth.
“Everything about it is illegal,” Mr. Pullen said in an interview.
At the time of the raid, the club was operating in a mostly vacant strip mall, near a Mexican restaurant and a Hispanic market. The club had bounced from location to location, law enforcement officers said. A man who appeared to be the club’s landlord declined on Thursday to comment, and the club’s management could not be reached.
The D.E.A. began investigating the club earlier this year, and determined through undercover operations and surveillance that dealers inside were selling drugs. The raid found meth and a pink-dyed recreational drug known as tusi that often contains a mix of ketamine and other drugs, officials said. In mid-April, agents saw two patrons pointing guns out of their car windows and shooting into the air as they drove around outside the club, Mr. Pullen said.
Early on Sunday, agents from the D.E.A. and 10 other federal agencies surrounded the building and issued a bilingual order for the roughly 200 people inside to come out with their hands up. Photos and video posted online by the D.E.A. show patrons in sheer shirts, high-heel boots, and in one case a hot-pink suit, surrendering to agents in helmets and tactical vests.
Federal officials said they had detained 114 people from countries including Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador and Venezuela. An ICE spokesman did not respond to a message asking how many of the detainees remained in custody on Thursday, or whether they would face deportation proceedings.
Mr. Pullen said the raid was primarily part of a drug investigation, not an immigration raid, and that the investigation was continuing. But he said federal agents had a duty to apprehend undocumented immigrants when they encountered them during an investigation.
“We didn’t ask these illegal immigrants to come to this club,” he said. “They want to be involved where criminality is involved? Then this is the result.”
Federal agents detained 17 active-duty members of the U.S. military inside the club. Some of them had been working there as armed security, officials said. The service members were handed over to the Army’s criminal investigations division.
On Thursday, the F.B.I. announced what appear to be the first criminal charges stemming from the raid, with the arrest of a soldier based at Fort Carson on charges of cocaine distribution.
The Colorado Springs police said two people caught up in the raid were arrested on outstanding warrants.
Some people in Colorado Springs questioned why more than 100 immigrants were detained during the raid while most other patrons had been allowed to go home.
“They just went to a party,” said Sarah Myers, the daughter of an undocumented Mexican father, who joined the protest criticizing the raid. “Now their family doesn’t know where they are.”
The Colorado Springs officers who assisted in the raid largely stayed on the edges to secure the area, according to Adrian Vasquez, the city’s police chief. He said city officers were not involved in detaining anyone on immigration charges.
Last year, Colorado Springs passed a resolution declaring that it is not a sanctuary city. Even so, the police are bound by state laws that limit how law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration agents.
About 20 percent of Colorado Springs residents are Latino, and the city celebrates local Hispanic figures with a Hispanic Heritage Month. Still, Nayda Benitez, whose mother is undocumented and who is protected by an Obama-era rule that shields immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, said her family sometimes felt uncomfortable speaking Spanish in the city. She worried that the raid would drive even more immigrants into the shadows.
“They don’t want to be targeted,” said Ms. Benitez, the organizing director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.
Outside the nightclub site, which has been boarded up, a food truck that sells barbecued chicken has lost much of its Spanish-speaking clientele since the raid. As he dished out thighs and drumsticks from the truck this week, Luis Perez, 21, said his Mexican American family had little sympathy for anyone who was arrested that night, regardless of their immigration status.
He said he and his family had no plans to leave.
“We feel that Colorado is the safest state,” he said.
Jack Healy is a Phoenix-based national correspondent who focuses on the fast-changing politics and climate of the Southwest. He has worked in Iraq and Afghanistan and is a graduate of the University of Missouri’s journalism school.
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