2 days Ago By The Gazette editorial board
Much of Colorado’s progressive political establishment has been on an oblivious quest to suspend the rule of law on illegal immigration. It’s a quest that ultimately will fail. It will fail, in part, because a new president and Congress in Washington have resolved, at last, to get serious about U.
S. border security. It also will fail because rank-and-file Coloradans — as opposed to the state’s posturing politicos and dogma-driven activists — are fed up.
They are tired of footing the bill, in one way or another, for the latest tidal wave of people who entered the U.S. illegally and then headed to Colorado.
The “newcomers,” as progressives have dubbed them, know Colorado has become a sanctuary. Try as our politicians might to deny our state’s sanctuary status, the label has stuck because it fits. Those politicians went out of their way to make it so.
Our Legislature and governor enacted laws to hinder local law enforcement’s ability to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The mayor of Colorado’s largest city cut basic city services to his own taxpaying residents so he could fund shelter, meals and doctor’s visits for some 40,000 Venezuelans who poured into the city. Nothing says “sanctuary” like free room, board and health care.
Denver’s Mayor Mike Johnston made himself innkeeper to the world — on the backs of city taxpayers, who were handed the room tab. Now that Washington finally is cracking down, key voices in Colorado’s political class are crying foul. Disingenuously so.
Just the other day, Colorado’s Democratic U.S. Sens.
Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper responded to illegal-immigration sweeps by federal authorities in Colorado and elsewhere by introducing the “Protecting Sensitive Locations Act.” It is a bill they are co-sponsoring to “limit immigration arrests at sensitive locations like schools, hospitals, and places of worship.” It is unlikely to pass given the U.
S. Senate’s Republican majority as well as a whole lot of Bennet and Hickenlooper’s own Democratic minority who would stand in the way. Just as well.
The bill is bad policy partly because it would limit law officers’ ability to apprehend even the most dangerous criminal suspects among illegal immigrants if they happen to be in a courthouse or perhaps a hospital. It’s also bad policy because it attacks a problem that doesn’t exist. As we noted here last week, it’s not like armed ICE agents have been kicking open the doors of kindergarten classes.
Or ever will. It’s simply political drama that plays well with the progressive set. Which explains the latest such ploy sure to please the sanctuary movement’s diehards in our state.
It’s the lawsuit filed in federal court last week by Colorado’s largest school district, Denver Public Schools, seeking to shield the same ”sensitive" locations, including schools and churches, from immigration enforcement operations. It’s as if the senators had shared their talking points with the district (where Bennet himself once was superintendent, by the way). A district spokesman boasted Denver’s is the first school system in the country to file such a suit.
How creative. If only the district were as innovative at boosting its students’ abysmal achievement scores. Of course, the fears raised in the lawsuit are phony.
There hasn’t been a single incursion onto Colorado K-12 campuses by federal immigration agents, and there likely never will be. Denver’s school district officials only have cited lower attendance and “emotional distress” among students and staff. Because of, you know, fear.
It’s a legal bid born of sheer desperation. We can’t presume how Denver Public Schools’ gambit will fare in court though if sheer absurdity were grounds for tossing it out, well..
. In any event, with so flimsy a case, the sanctuary movement just might be running out of gas. Let’s hope so.
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