The sheriffs in Teller and El Paso counties got it wrong when they decided to hold people in jail — beyond when a judge ordered they be released — at the behest of immigration officials.
To put it simply, no one can be held in jail without a legal basis and violations of federal immigration laws are civil, not criminal, matters.
This isn’t a question of liberal sanctuary city policies that are protecting immigrants from deportation; fundamentally, this is a question of civil liberties. The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado has filed lawsuits against both sheriffs departments for their practices.
We suspect that if these separate cases from southern Colorado come before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, the ruling will be that Colorado law enforcement agencies cannot honor civil detainers — which are tantamount to requests — from immigration officials without a judge issuing an arrest warrant.
Other federal courts have already weighed in on the issue and ruled that law enforcement in Oregon and Pennsylvania cannot hold people in jail on civil detainers. The Massachusetts Supreme Court recently ruled similarly.
This is an issue that the U.S. Supreme Court needs to address.
But aside from the legal question, there is also the pressing policy question, one that gets to the heart of “sanctuary city” policies: Should local law enforcement be in the business of helping federal officials detain people who are immigration priorities?
In other words, should our state lawmakers be attempting to pass a law that recognizes civil immigration offenses as arrestable offenses under Colorado law, something that would empower law enforcement to make an arrest based on a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer request or to take it a step further to make arrests based on suspected immigration violations?
We are convinced that local law enforcement functions best when they are not entangled in the complicated business of trying to enforce federal immigration laws. America is not and should not be a country where everyone must carry their papers or risk arrest. Nor should it be a country where victims who lack citizenship are afraid to call police or where innocent bystanders run from crime scenes so they don’t risk being taken in for questioning.
Already our police and sheriffs departments are cooperating with immigration officials — passing along the fingerprints of everyone booked into jail to federal authorities for screening, and notifying ICE officials if people who have been flagged immigration priorities are going to be released.
A painful reminder of the short-comings of this system was the murder of Tim Cruz at the Sheridan Boulevard RTD station in February 2017. Ever Valles pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and accessory to murder in that case. Valles had been released from jail a year before the crime despite being a priority for ICE agents.
Notice of Valles’s release was sent to ICE agents only 20 minutes before Valles posted $5,000 bond and was released.
Surely, more could have been done in that case to keep Valles off the streets. After all, Valles was held for two months in jail before his release, giving ample time for ICE officials to come up with a plan to apprehend the deportation priority.
Our broken federal immigration laws have hoisted this impossible balancing act upon local law enforcement, who are doing their best to keep our communities safe. It’s time for Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform.
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