A Denver judge this week dismissed a lawsuit filed by Douglas County — and supported by five other Colorado counties — that challenged state laws limiting local law enforcement cooperation with federal authorities on immigration matters.
Denver District Judge David Goldberg concluded in a ruling issued Monday that Douglas County didn’t have standing to bring the action against the state.
The ruling comes after the issue of illegal immigration played a key role in shaping last month’s presidential election, which will result in former President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January. Reducing illegal crossings and deporting people who are in the United States without authorization were key planks in Trump’s campaign platform.
After Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said the city would resist any mass deportation efforts, the Town Council in Castle Rock — Douglas County’s seat — declared earlier this month that it would support “any and all” immigration actions by the Trump administration.
Immigration has affected Colorado strongly, with more than 40,000 migrants arriving in Denver over the last two years. Last month, the Common Sense Institute issued a report estimating that Denver, along with regional education and healthcare organizations, have spent $356 million on migrant response — or roughly $7,900 per migrant — since late 2022.
Douglas County Commissioner George Teal on Tuesday vowed the county would take its case to the federal courts. He said “the judge got it wrong.”
The county’s suit, filed in April, targeted two bills — one from 2019 and the other from last year — passed by the Democratic-led Colorado General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis.
House Bill 19-1124 prohibited police and sheriff’s deputies from holding undocumented immigrants solely in response to detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And House Bill 23-1100 further prevented state and local governments from entering or renewing contracts with federal immigration authorities to detain people suspected of civil immigration violations.
Douglas County, which named Polis as a defendant in the suit, claimed that the laws trampled on local governments’ ability to cooperate or contract “with one another or with the government of the United States,” as guaranteed by the Colorado Constitution’s Article 14.
The complaint specifically alleged that the legislation violated the “distribution of powers” provision in the state constitution.
But in his ruling, Goldberg wrote that the law “is silent as to whether the General Assembly may place any boundary on a political subdivision’s right to cooperate or contract with the federal government.”
“As such, Plaintiffs did not suffer an injury in fact to a legally protected interest … because the Colorado Constitution grants the General Assembly the authority to promulgate laws, such as HB 19-1124 and HB 23-1100, that dictate the manners in which a political subdivision may cooperate or contract with federal governmental entities.”
The judge also noted that because the federal government may not mandate that a state comply with a federal civil immigration detainer request, the “defendant is free to determine the extent, if at all, the state will comply with civil immigration detainer requests and whether the state will enter into or renew immigration detainment agreements.”
Teal argued the judge’s ruling made no sense. The county sheriff’s deputies cooperate with federal authorities on U.S. Forest Service land when it comes to poaching, he said, and with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency when it comes to cracking drug cases.
“This is the one area of public safety that we are barred from utilizing public federal safety resources,” Teal said. “We are taxpayers and we are funding ICE, yet we cannot access that service as a community of taxpayers.”
Douglas County’s lawsuit was supported by El Paso, Mesa, Rio Blanco, Elbert and Garfield counties. Their hardline opposition to so-called sanctuary policies when it comes to migrants contrasts sharply with that of Denver, which has provided housing and other services to people newly arrived from Venezuela and other countries.
Johnston, a Democrat, generated blowback in Colorado and nationally in November with his public comments on immigration. He warned that any federal mass-deportation effort could be met with stiff resistance — including a suggestion that he would mobilize the Denver Police Department to face off with federal and National Guard troops; he later walked back that comment.
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