She fled. It was the middle of the night. Her boyfriend had hit her hard enough to blacken her eye. Fearful of going to the police because she was in the country illegally, she went to her workplace instead. Though closed for business, the security guard was on duty, she reasoned, would protect her from another blow. Though my friend, a manager at the company, encouraged the young woman to go to the police, she feared they would tip off federal immigration enforcement. The crime went unreported.
This is the kind of situation that Colorado laws are designed to prevent. By limiting communication between state and local law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), victims of crime, regardless of legal status, can feel safe approaching local police to report crimes and receive protection. These laws do not stop federal agents from enforcing federal immigration laws, they ensure that our police officers have the trust of the public as they enforce state and local laws.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration is trying to bully Colorado into repealing these laws with threats and litigation. These efforts, if successful, would cripple our state’s autonomy under the Constitution to govern law and order.
The Department of Justice’s most recent intimidation tactic, a letter sent last month to Colorado and the city of Denver and other jurisdictions around the country, demanded that the state and city repeal their so-called “sanctuary” laws or face criminal charges. The so-called sanctuary laws–so-called because “sanctuary” is nowhere defined in law—refer to legislation passed by the Colorado General Assembly over the past six years limiting communication and cooperation between state and local law enforcement and ICE.
For example, Colorado laws state that local law enforcement cannot arrest someone based on whether he or she is here illegally or share immigration status information with federal authorities unless a judge has issued a warrant in a federal criminal investigation.
Additionally, police cannot hold individuals in jail past their release time so they can be picked up by ICE. However, local authorities can still respond to ICE requests to provide information on when inmates will be released so ICE agents can be on hand.
The threat to prosecute so-called sanctuary jurisdictions comes after the administration’s failed attempts to starve and sue them into submission. The courts quashed the administration’s efforts to withhold funding from noncompliant jurisdictions as a violation of the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment and other provisions.
The Tenth Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Policing, a government responsibility nowhere delegated to the federal government, is clearly a state and local prerogative.
For similar reasons, the Trump administration’s suit against the state of Colorado and city of Denver, lodged in May, is also unlikely to succeed. A federal judge dismissed a similar suit against Illinois, Chicago and Cook County reasoning that the Tenth Amendment protects these jurisdictions’ “decision to not participate in enforcing civil immigration law.”
Given past precedents, the Supreme Court will uphold these lower court rulings and back states and localities against the Trump Administration. Back in 1997, when the Clinton administration and Congress tried to commandeer local law enforcement into enforcing the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, the Supreme Court ruled in Printz v United States that thanks to the Tenth Amendment, the federal government cannot “command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.”
The application to this situation couldn’t be clearer. The Trump administration’s efforts to coerce states and localities by carrot or cudgel to repeal duly enacted laws will come to naught, an expensive taxpayer-funded naught, but naught nonetheless.
In the meantime, state and municipal elected officials are to be commended for not backing down.
Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.
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