The Trump Administration’s aggressive new immigration policies have left many members of Eagle County’s Latino communities feeling like they’re under attack.
Their fears led the Eagle County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday to revisit and expand upon an earlier resolution it passed in 2016 in support of all Eagle County residents.
A resolution from nine years ago felt “inadequate” to Commissioner Matt Scherr. During a meeting on April 29, he said that every once in a while, “it’s important to re-express that commitment to community.”
The resolution, which will be posted in both Spanish and English, pledges to protect the civil rights of all community members and recognizes “clear contributions” that residents of all backgrounds make to Eagle County, regardless of their immigration status.
Residents Leslie Lopez and Citlalli Bernal spoke in support of the resolution during Tuesday’s meeting. Lopez drew attention to the 73% of the Latino population, according to U.S. Census data, that is part of Eagle County’s workforce. Roughly three-quarters of those workers start as young as 16, including herself, she added.
“There’s a lack of awareness in general of how many high schoolers are a big part of this labor force and how it’s not by choice but by necessity,” she said. “Without the 73% in Eagle County working, what would Eagle County be?"
Bernal described how the nationwide Day Without Immigrants protest movement on Feb. 3 inspired her to plan her own protest in Gypsum earlier this winter. Roughly 50 people attended, including children of immigrant parents, but one demographic was conspicuously absent: the parents themselves. Many are undocumented and were too afraid, she said.
In recent months, the Trump Administration has set a goal of deporting one million undocumented immigrants annually (more than triple the previous record of 267,000 in 2019). In its attempt to fulfill that goal, the administration has unleashed policies designed to ramp up arrests and deportations, such as expanding immigrant detention capacity and repealing the “sensitive locations” policy, which named certain spaces like schools and hospitals as safe from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests.
Those policies have stoked widespread fear and uncertainty among Eagle County’s immigrant community, said Commissioner Jeanne McQueeney, leading to unsubstantiated rumors of ICE raids at the local Walmart and parents keeping their kids home from school or withdrawing from essential services altogether.
The fear extends not only to immigration enforcement, but local police, who many immigrants won’t call if they worry it might lead to an interaction with ICE.
Commissioner Scherr said that undermines public safety.
“If people are afraid to call your law enforcement because of immigration, then you cannot do your primary function,” he said, noting that the Eagle County Sheriff James van Beek has reiterated that his role is community policing, not federal immigration enforcement.
In response, Eagle County commissioners decided to resurrect a resolution they’d authorized during the previous Trump administration, when local immigrant and Hispanic residents also felt targeted.
Commissioners reached out to members of those communities to ask if the resolution would be helpful, while cautioning that as a local government, they couldn’t promise anything in terms of real protection from deportation.
Still, it felt important to the commissioners to say something, said McQueeney. She noted that while the immigrant community was the impetus for this resolution, she has heard from the members of the LGBTQ community who also feel victimized by the Trump administration.
The resolution is for them, too, she said. “You are welcome here. You’re part of our community — is all we’re really trying to communicate.”
