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Garfield County commissioners say they won’t be opening shelters or providing non-emergency services to “uninvited migrants and/or undocumented immigrants” that come to the area.
That’s according to a resolution that declares Garfield a “non-sanctuary county” that the commissioners unanimously approved during Monday’s meeting in Rifle.
This comes after county commissioners denied the town of Carbondale’s request for assistance in sheltering newcomers, many of whom are from Venezuela. Carbondale has been looking to transition to a more regional response to the unhoused refugees, and will close its temporary shelters at the end of the month.
The resolution says Garfield County “supports legal immigration to the United States,” and that it recognizes people seeking asylum from “oppressive governments.”
But the resolution also goes on to say that “those who enter the country illegally can pose a significant public health and safety risk to a community.” It gives examples like an increase in crime, communicable disease, and putting a burden on public infrastructure, like social services, public safety, schools, and the justice system.
The resolution claims that the county doesn’t have the infrastructure “to address the human needs it is currently facing,” and says the county’s resources are strained by “the population of unsheltered homeless individuals” and greater numbers of people receiving public benefits.
Commissioner Mike Samson told his fellow commissioners that he asked the county attorney to draft the resolution in response to community feedback.
“It has been several years since I have had so many phone calls, emails, texts, personal conversations with people who are very concerned about this issue,” he said, adding that only one of the calls was against such a resolution, while everyone else he spoke to was in favor.
Samson added that the county’s priority needs to be serving local citizens rather than new arrivals, because their resources are stretched so thin.
After objections from fellow commissioner Tom Jankovsky, Samson agreed to remove several “whereas” clauses that detail how the city of Denver has been impacted by an uptick in immigration in recent months. Jankovsky said the resolution should be focused on the county and its response.
What is a “sanctuary county”?
Jennifer Smith is an immigration attorney at Smith Immigration in Glenwood Springs.
In an interview with Aspen Public Radio, Smith said there’s not really an established legal definition of a “sanctuary city,” or county, or any other government entity. Most commonly, however, it refers to a municipality that limits local law enforcement’s cooperation with the federal government, most commonly U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on enforcing immigration law.
Smith says oftentime agreements between ICE and local law enforcement can violate a person’s Fourth Amendment rights, which protects people from unreasonable search and seizure. She said she’s had clients experience those issues in Garfield County.
“In these smaller communities, the police knew who had driver's licenses and didn't, and they would pull them over, and then ICE would show up at the traffic stop,” she said. “That happened to some of our clients. We've had instances where… essentially, the local police and sheriff would show up at someone's house with ICE with them. And, you know, this person hadn't been convicted of anything. And so it was really a problem.”
Sanctuary city ordinances came into effect in order to combat these incidents in communities across the country, she said.
“We're not going to use our local taxpayer dollars to do the federal government's job,” Smith explained of the rationale.
But the term’s definition hasn’t stayed contained to law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE.
“It seems to have gotten morphed in my mind into, like, whether you're welcoming to immigrants or not, which — that's a pretty broad term, right?” she said. “Being welcoming to immigrants can mean a lot of different things. It doesn't mean you said, necessarily, ‘give them free houses’ or anything.”
The Garfield County sheriff’s current policy is to not hold ICE detainees in the county jail that have not been criminally charged.
During the BOCC meeting, Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario told commissioners over Zoom that the county still cooperates with ICE to the extent allowed by Colorado law — something also outlined in the resolution.
“For whatever reason, they’re no longer eligible to be held on criminal charges, we notify ICE, let them know this person is going to be released, and then ICE has the opportunity to be able to come and get them,” Vallario said of detainees.
Smith said she’s not sure why this needed to be spelled out in the resolution, because if someone commits a crime, they’re entitled to due process under the Constitution and the law, regardless of their immigration status.
“The sheriff has their job. ICE has their job,” she said. “This person needs to go through a constitutionally protected criminal proceeding and then (officials) decide if they're, you know, someone who then is worthy of the attention of ICE. But that's not a decision the sheriff makes. That's a decision ICE makes, based on their own enforcement priorities. And so what worries me about that language is it sounds like the sheriff's assuming that any immigrant who comes into contact with law enforcement is someone that should be detained by ICE.”
Community responses to the resolution
Local Latino advocacy group Voces Unidas de las Montañas said in a statement that the resolution is political, and does nothing to actually address the county’s lack of resources for homelessness and social services. The group also wrote that it perpetuates racist stereotypes by linking increases in immigration to increases in crime.
State Rep. Elizabeth Velasco (D-Glenwood Springs) also issued a statement denouncing the resolution, saying it spreads “inhumane anti-immigrant rhetoric and promote(s) dangerous stereotypes and misinformation.” She went on to write that not only did it dehumanize new arrivals in Garfield County, but it “also sent a message that the established immigrant community in Garfield County is not valued, seen, or welcome.”
Jennifer Smith agreed, and said that some of the language used in the resolution is concerning, particularly the idea that an increase in immigration contributes to an increase in crime. She said it’s a “false, fear-mongering kind of statement.”
“That’s… in no way is backed by any kind of data or statistics. In fact, multiple studies have come out that are nonpartisan… that's shown over years and decades that there's never been a correlation or causation between immigration and crime. That's just false,” she said.
Smith also pointed out that if the resolution is referring to the new immigrants that have come to Carbondale, many of whom are from Venezuela, the characterization that they are “entering the country illegally” is not true.
“All of those people had been processed at the border and allowed entry into the country while they worked on their cases, whether that was through the CBP One app, or parole or something else,” she said.
She also agreed with Voces Unidas and Velasco that the resolution’s message could have a negative impact on Garfield County’s existing immigrant communities.
“Our county has benefited from the work of generations of immigrants,” she said. “And so it's really confusing that they would make the statement and not really try to separate that out a little bit or honor that history that we have. And instead, it just feels like a target on anyone's back who… may look like an immigrant.”
Other Colorado communities that have approved similar resolutions are Mesa County, El Paso County, Moffat County, and the city of Colorado Springs.
Editor's note: The resolution linked in this article is not the version approved by commissioners; it was amended during the meeting. Garfield County has not yet published the final version of the resolution.
