COLORADO — Amendment 81 on Colorado's midterm election ballot would require local law enforcement to notify the U.S. Department of Homeland Security within 72 hours when certain people charged with crimes are in the country illegally or their citizenship status cannot be determined.
Right now, state law limits what information local police and sheriffs can share with immigration enforcement officials and bars them from holding someone solely on an ICE detainer.
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If approved by voters, Amendment 81 would change the state constitution to require officers to alert DHS about people whose immigration status cannot be confirmed or are in the country illegally if they are charged with a violent crime or are charged with any crime and already have a felony conviction.
Under the amendment, local law enforcement would have to make an effort to verify the citizenship status of people charged. Boulder County Sheriff Curtis Johnson said that's not something his deputies are trained to do or currently responsible for.
"That's the responsibility of the federal government, and so we would have to completely re-frame how we make arrests and what information we gather," said Johnson. "If my employees can't determine whether you're in the country legally or not, they will have to report you to ICE, even before you've been convicted of a crime."
Johnson said he fears the amendment could lead to racial profiling and deny crime victims the justice they deserve.
"People will assume that just based on color of skin, or their nationality or their origin, that automatically they're going to be assumed to be in this country without legal documentation, and my fear is that people will get lumped together, whether they have committed a crime or a serious crime or not," he said. "If somebody gets arrested for committing a crime of violence against a community member, if they're deported before that case ever goes to trial, I'm concerned that the victim never gets the outcome that they want, and individuals who are quickly deported from our country often find their way back with no consequence."
He said he also worries the amendment would erode trust with immigrant communities.
"People will no longer trust us, no longer want to come forward or work with us to solve crime in the community because they will fear that relationship that we now have to have with ICE will get in the way," Johnson said.
Jon Caldara, the president of the Independence Institute, who supports the measure, disagrees.
"This is not about racially profiling. This is about having cooperation between law enforcement agencies. It's just that simple," he said. "It's for those people that they arrest for violent crimes, and good God, don't we want violent criminals if they're here illegally to be notified that, or to have ICE notified of them? Of course we do."
The conservative group Advance Colorado is responsible for getting Amendment 81 on the ballot. Denver7 reached out to the group multiple times for an interview but never heard back.
Caldara said the vote may come down to how people feel about ICE under the current administration.
"My suspicion is, if Donald Trump were not president right now, that something like 81 would pass pretty easily," Caldara said. "I guarantee you, people will be using this as a proxy vote on how they feel about how Trump is running immigration and customs, and that's too bad because we really should be thinking about the law, not the president," Caldara said.
