Colorado lawmakers introduce bill to expand protections for undocumented immigrants

DENVER — Colorado lawmakers introduced legislation Friday to expand protections for undocumented immigrants in the state, including by further limiting where federal immigration authorities can operate and how information can be shared with those authorities.

Senate Bill 276’s Democratic sponsors have been drafting the measure for weeks, and its introduction has been delayed amid negotiations with a leery Gov. Jared Polis.

The measure also lands almost exactly two months after federal raids were launched across metro Denver and amid broader scrutiny of the Trump administration’s immigrant crackdown, which has included the deportation of people — including a soccer player, a makeup artist and at least one person from Colorado — to a prison in El Salvador.

“The outcry from (the) community to not sit on our hands when there is this level of uncertainty, anxiety and fear is palpable, in communities across the state,” said Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat. She’s co-sponsoring the bill with fellow Democrats Sen. Mike Weissman and Reps. Lorena Garcia and Elizabeth Velasco.

With the legislative session set to end May 7, lawmakers will have just over a month to debate and vote on the bill. Republicans — who have introduced bills to increase the state’s cooperation with immigration authorities — are certain to oppose the proposal, and House Republicans criticized a previous draft of the bill during a press gaggle last month.

The debate will likely have national implications, too: The U.S. Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against cities and states with so-called “sanctuary” policies, and Polis and his staff have privately told lawmakers the governor doesn’t want to paint a target on the state’s back, Garcia said.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston testified in front of Congress last month about his city’s immigration policies, and Colorado’s four Republican members of Congress wrote a letter to Polis asking him to consider repealing the state’s existing immigration protections.

For his part, the governor has repeatedly said he welcomes the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — or ICE — in the state to arrest “dangerous criminals,” though he’s also said he doesn’t fully know what they’re doing.

The governor’s office didn’t immediately provide comment Friday morning.

What the immigration bill would do

Gonzales said that Senate Bill 276 would prohibit local governments from sharing private data on residents with immigration authorities, including ICE agents, unless they have a warrant, and any local government that ignored that order would face a fine of up to $50,000.

The measure would similarly ban those immigration authorities from entering “non-public” parts of public buildings — from hospitals and child care centers to schools and college campuses — without a warrant, Gonzales said. An agent without a warrant could enter a hospital lobby, for instance, but not a hospital room itself.

Both of those provisions would expand current law: State employees are currently prohibited from sharing information with ICE, and it also essentially blocks ICE from arresting people in or near courthouses. Local law enforcement is also prohibited from arresting someone based solely on their immigration status or holding someone in jail beyond their scheduled release so ICE can be alerted.

SB 276 would also remove two provisions of state law requiring undocumented people to file affidavits related to getting driver’s licenses and in-state tuition, in a bid to further blunt data-gathering from federal law enforcement. It expands the jail release requirements, too, to further prohibit facilities from keeping people who are ready to be released.

Finally, the measure would also seek to limit local law enforcement’s ability to work with ICE solely on civil immigration enforcement, Garcia said. That wouldn’t apply to anyone under investigation for committing a crime.

Weissman, who represents Aurora, said his community has become an epicenter for the immigration debate. During an October rally in the city, President Donald Trump announced his intention to invoke an 18th-century law to mass deport people and to call the program “Operation Aurora.”

“When these things happen, the cover story is folks who have a particular prior (criminal history),” Weissman said. “But what we know about these actions is they’re not that targeted and they do put fear and even terror into a much broader universe of people. People with various statuses, people just trying to live their lives, people part of the Aurora community and communities all over Colorado. Frankly, if you really listen to the rhetoric of officials in the Trump administration, that’s the point.”

Nonprofit partners weigh in

The bill was developed with guidance from Colorado immigrant rights groups, including Voces Unidas, the American Friends Service Committee and the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.

Alex Sánchez, the president and CEO of Voces Unidas, has personally felt the impact of deportation.

His parents immigrated from a rural community in the Mexican state of Jalisco for farmwork. Sánchez was born in Los Angeles and raised in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley. When he was 9 years old, his mother was deported in a mass raid in El Jebel that affected dozens of families.

“Those of us who grew up also on the Western Slope have also seen the historical trauma that has occurred over the years,” Sánchez said. “This is not the first time that we’ve had a hostile federal government that has used immigration policy as a political football.”

His organization is headquartered in Velasco’s district, and it has confirmed ICE operations in Glenwood Springs, Gypsum, Gunnison and more.

“One bill will not solve all of the challenges that we’re going to be facing as a community,” Sánchez said. “We also have to make sure that we’re willing to — as a state — to have the political courage to react live as executive orders come through.”

He also wants to see the strengthening of state policy around data about immigration status.

To Jordan Garcia, a program director at the American Friends Service Committee, the legislative push reflects some of the local public opinion.

In Colorado, “people here have said we want to do our best to protect people,” he said.

His organization helps run the Colorado Rapid Response Network and a statewide hotline to report ICE activity — to his knowledge, the only statewide hotline in the country. So far, it’s tracked ICE activity in Pueblo, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Brighton, Grand Junction and Durango.

While Jordan Garcia believes there are still more safeguards needed to protect immigrant communities — such as for laborers in the dairy, sheepherding and farming industries — he said the upcoming bill represents an effort by local lawmakers.

It stands out to him because, “right now, we’re hearing a lot of radio silence from other elected officials,” he said, adding that he has heard some movement about other potential proposals from U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper‘s office.

“We’ve had a lot of elected officials say, ‘We don’t want to bring a bigger target to Colorado because we’re already kind of in the crosshairs,’ ” Garcia said. “To that, we say, nothing you do is going to take those crosshairs away.”

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