Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams visited Washington D.C. last week to speak with members of Congress about immigration reform. He said he discussed the “absolute need to codify what President Trump is doing to secure our borders, deport illegal aliens and create a modern pathway to citizenship.”
Sheriff Reams said he spent the day with retired sheriff Mark Lamb and National Border Patrol Councilmember Art Del Cueto. Reams met with six House Representatives, including Colorado’s fourth district representative Lauren Boebert. He also met with staffers for three senators, including Colorado Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper.
“No doubt that the Republicans we met with understand the importance of getting things right with immigration reform and there was some glimmers of hope with a few of the Democrats,” Reams wrote.
Representative Boebert along with Colorado Representatives Gabe Evans and Jeff Crank wrote a letter in January, calling upon Governor Jared Polis to reverse what they call “sanctuary state” laws. HB 19-1124, as mentioned in the letter, “explicitly prohibits state and local law enforcement in Colorado from complying with federal immigration detainers.” SB 21-131 “prevents state agencies and law enforcement from sharing non-public personal identifying information with federal immigration authorities except when forced to do so by a court of law.”
The state laws mentioned in the letter have caused Sheriff Reams to refrain from interacting with ICE for purposes of servicing immigration detainers. As reported in the Denver Post in January, Reams said that “the way I interpret the law and the way my legal counsel interprets the law is we’re not supposed to be interacting with ICE for the purpose of serving civil immigration detainers. And notifying ICE when we are releasing folks we suspect have civil immigration detainers awaiting them I think facilitates the same process.”
The Denver Post identified eight front-range sheriff’s departments that do notify and interact with ICE, despite the state laws that were signed by Governor Polis.
Reams also said in a post that he was happy to have Captain Matt Turner representing the Weld County Sheriff’s Office in support of Senate Bill 25-47 while Reams was in Washington. The bill would have given local officials the ability to inform ICE about individuals they suspect to be here illegally. The bill was denied in the committee vote with three Democrats opposing the measure and two Republicans supporting the bill.
“I believe that the United States is a country built on immigration,” Turner wrote in a Facebook post. “I believe that healthy immigration will help our country be a better place. That said, I don't believe that people should remain in this country illegally. And I definitely believe that people who are here illegally and do crime should be deported. I believe that we should be able to communicate with and support our federal partners as they work to remove criminals who are in this country illegally.”
