President-elect Donald Trump on “Meet the Press” Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024 (NBC News/YouTube).
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is suing the City of Denver, the state of Colorado and locally elected officials over their “disastrous policies” and “sanctuary laws” — saying they “interfere with and discriminate against” the government’s enforcement of federal immigration law.
The DOJ’s lawsuit, filed on Friday, marks the second time the Trump administration has gone after a state over “sanctuary policies” that it claims limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement “by intent and design.” The City of Chicago and Illinois were targeted in a February lawsuit that accused local officials of “making it more difficult for, and deliberately impeding, federal immigration officers’ ability to carry out their responsibilities.”
The DOJ’s suit against Denver and the Centennial State points to headline-grabbing incidents in the Mile High City and its surrounding metro area, including Aurora, related to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as proof of the “sanctuary” laws failing.
“At the end of last year, the nation was shocked by images and videos of members of Tren de Aragua seizing control of apartment complexes in Aurora, Colorado,” the DOJ’s complaint says.
“The fact that a foreign terrorist organization could gain such a foothold in the United States of America is unacceptable,” the department alleges. “It is the direct byproduct of the sanctuary policies pushed by the State of Colorado, and certain of its subdivisions. This is a suit to put an end to those disastrous policies and restore the supremacy of federal immigration law.”
Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.
Responding to the lawsuit, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued a statement saying that if the courts were to deem “any Colorado law” as being not valid, then the state would follow the ruling. The City of Denver, meanwhile, said it “will not be bullied or blackmailed, least of all by an administration that has little regard for the law and even less for the truth,” according to The Denver Post.
Colorado, much like Illinois, has become one of the epicenters for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations since President Donald Trump took office in January.
The DOJ says Colorado’s policies, specifically, have “tied the hands of law enforcement, emboldened dangerous criminals and left [Colorado’s] communities vulnerable,” according to its complaint.
“Local communities in Colorado have borne the brunt of these policies,” the complaint alleges. “In the words of Douglas County Colorado Commissioner Kevin Van Winkle: ‘We swore an oath to protect public safety, but these laws prevent us from doing so. … These laws require us to conceal the identity of those who committed a crime and are here illegally. That’s a serious public safety issue.””
More from Law&Crime: ‘Literally in the middle of the night’: Justice Alito slams SCOTUS for issuing ‘unprecedented’ relief by stopping Trump deportations carried out under wartime law
For its Illinois suit, the Trump administration cribbed from the Barack Obama administration’s playbook and sourced legal theories from a 2010 lawsuit filed by the Obama administration against Arizona S.B. 1070, a statute widely known as the “show me your papers” law. The Obama-era lawsuit ultimately made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2012 case stylized as Arizona v. United States. The result was largely a victory for federal authorities, applying the theory that most of the state law conflicted with or was otherwise preempted by federal immigration law on point.
In 2018, the first Trump administration filed a lawsuit against California over its sanctuary policies. That lawsuit ultimately went nowhere, though, as the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in the Golden State’s favor and the nation’s high court denied the government’s petition for writ of certiorari.
Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
