Colorado lawmakers voted down a bill that would have allowed local law enforcement to work with immigration authorities by repealing state law that limits coordination.
The Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs voted 3-2 along party lines, with Democrats in the majority, to kill Senate Bill 25-47 on Tuesday evening.
The bill would have allowed local officials to report people they suspect of being in the country illegally to ICE. It would also have repealed laws that prohibit local law enforcement from keeping someone based on an ICE detainer request or arresting someone suspected of being in the country illegally at a courthouse. If they had already arrested someone for an alleged crime and they suspect the person is in the country without proper documentation, law enforcement would have been able to report the person to ICE.
The tactics are “proven to erode trust between communities and law enforcement, jeopardizing public safety,” said Sophie Shea, a policy analyst at the Colorado Fiscal Institute. She said that fear of arrest and eventual deportation can influence immigrants to stay home from work and school and not participate in the community, which can have far-reaching economic consequences.
“We should not be using our limited state resources on enforcing federal immigration law,” she said.
The bill was sponsored by Sen. Mark Baisley, a Douglas County Republican, who told lawmakers that the state could not have predicted the rapid influx of immigrants when lawmakers enacted those anti-coordination laws.
“When those previous laws were created, the notion was trying to avoid the involvement of law enforcement in immigration matters, and I think that’s an understandable goal,” he said. “I don’t think that they foresaw how many millions of people would have come over the border illegally and overwhelm many of our communities.”
“It does not add a tool. It simply removes the shackles that have been put on law enforcement for a number of years and I think it’s time we allow them to protect us in this very reasonable way,” he said.
Since 2022, over 42,000 immigrants have moved to the Denver metro area, part of a national trend of people from countries such as Venezuela and Colombia coming to the United States to escape economic and political turmoil.
Denver and the neighboring city of Aurora gained national attention last year as conservative politicians, including President Donald Trump, claimed that a Venezuelan gang had “taken over” parts of the city, though police and local officials have said gang and criminal activity was isolated to a series of blighted apartment buildings and mostly targeted the Venezuelan immigrant community.
Still, Trump singled out Aurora for large-scale immigration enforcement, and the Senate bill comes amid a handful of ICE operations in Aurora that led to the arrest of dozens of immigrants.
“We want people to answer the door when a police officer knocks. That officer might be trying to share or acquire information to save a life. But it’s hard for any reasonable person — say they have an accent — to answer if they think the person on the other side of the door might be checking their immigration status or reporting them to ICE because of a suspected immigration status,” said Clear Creek County Commissioner George Marlin.
Opponents of the bill argued that local police and sheriff deputies do not have any business enforcing federal immigration policy and that allowing coordination could lead to roundups and unlawful arrests.
But supporters, including many county sheriffs, said the bill would not permit them to round up immigrants they suspect are in the country without proper documentation. Instead, it would have let them hand over criminals they deem dangerous to immigration authorities.
“I have no interest in conducting or participating in family roundups. I am strictly interested in dangerous, prolific criminals,” said El Paso County Sheriff Joseph Roybal. “Senate Bill 47 will reduce the number of criminals who cleverly utilize Colorado sanctuary laws to escape prosecution for their crimes and return to the community.”
Democratic Sens. Mike Weissman of Aurora, Tom Sullivan of Centennial and Matt Ball of Denver voted against the bill.
“I was arrested for shoplifting when I was 14,” Ball said. “And you’re saying individuals that come into contact with the criminal law as less as that should be deported from this country? I think we’re trapped in political theater and I think we will be for the foreseeable future.”
This article originally appeared in Colorado Newsline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: [email protected].
