State Patrol trooper Mike Jamison keeps an action figure of 'The Thing' on his passenger seat — a nod to the Fantastic Four, which is what Jamison and three colleagues charged with enforcing immigration law on western Colorado's highways call themselves.

His car also has a DVD burner that documents every traffic stop he makes to provide evidence for potential immigration prosecutions — and catch any racial profiling.

'If I'm doing something wrong, and not doing what I'm supposed to be doing, I'm going to get caught,' Jamison said on a recent ride-along on Interstate 70, a pipeline for immigrant smuggling from the West to Denver and cities farther east.

Colorado's state patrol is among dozens of police agencies nationwide taking advantage of a federal training program to identify and detain suspected illegal immigrants. Since the program began in 2006, these agencies have made more than 68,000 arrests for immigration-related violations, says Carl Rusnok of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE has trained about 800 officers in 18 states to prepare charging documents and issue immigration detainers. Eighty training requests are pending from police departments, state patrols, sheriff's offices and corrections departments. ....