A lawsuit filed by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has drawn the ire of Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell.

Both Weiser and Mikesell are candidates to replace term-limited Jared Polis as governor of Colorado.

Weiser filed a civil suit against a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy who tipped ICE off — via a routinely used multiagency communications channel — to a college student who has overstayed her visa.

Mikesell said this is a disturbing precedent and politically motivated.

“It’s never been done that I know of,” he said. “When you have an attorney general, who sits at the head of law enforcement across Colorado, that sues an individual deputy, it doesn’t make sense to me.”

In announcing the lawsuit, Weiser said it aims to require the deputy to “follow state laws that bar state agency and local government employees from cooperating with federal officials on immigration civil enforcement actions.”

Mikesell said the lawsuit was “disrespecting the rule of law, including federal law, and is a slap in the face of our brave law enforcement community and the constitutional authority granted them by our state constitution.”

Mikesell was critical of Weiser’s motivation, saying the suit was “nothing more than a publicity stunt to further his political ambitions in his race for governor.”

On June 5, a University of Utah student was pulled over by Alexander Zwinck, a K9 officer assigned to the county’s drug interdiction team, for following a semitrailer too closely, according to previous reporting from Colorado Politics.

Zwinck asked Caroline Dias Goncalves where she was born and was released with a warning.

Here’s what happened next, according to Weiser’s lawsuit.

The officer “immediately uploaded the driver’s personal identifying information to a Signal chat that Deputy Zwinck knew included federal immigration officers.”

The Signal chat is also used by federal Drug Enforcement Administration officers.

Federal immigration officers then ran the driver’s information through their databases and told Zwinck that, although Dias Goncalves, a Brazilian national, had no criminal history, her visa has expired, the lawsuit said.

“Instead of ending the traffic stop, as there was no further criminal law enforcement purpose to effectuate, Deputy Zwinck then took affirmative steps to assist the federal immigration officers in ultimately detaining the driver for the purpose of enforcing federal civil immigration,” the lawsuit claimed.

A short while later, after exiting I-70 at Loma, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped and arrested her.

Dias Goncalves, who was born in Brazil and came to the U.S. under a tourist visa when she was 7, has been living in Utah for 12 years. She overstayed her visa about a decade ago and has a pending asylum case.

Weiser said state law specifically says that Colorado’s law enforcement officers are “dedicated to enforcing Colorado law and do not do the work of the federal government to enforce immigration law.

“In this case, the driver was detained by immigration authorities because of actions by Colorado law enforcement despite the absence of any criminal activity on her part.”

The lawsuit seeks two declarations from the courts: that Zwinck’s actions ran afoul of the state law barring cooperation with federal immigration officers and that he should be enjoined from violating any of its provisions.

Mikesell worries that many law enforcement officers will abandon Colorado for fear of being sued because another agency used information they collected in the course of their duties. He said he warned lawmakers of that possibility when they were originally moving to enact the law.

“It is a sad day for all Coloradans and a new low when the attorney general of Colorado files a lawsuit against a deputy sheriff for following federal law assisting with an investigation,” Mikesell said.

Colorado Politics reporters Dennis Huspeni and Marissa Ventrelli and freelance writer Rachael Wright contributed to this report.