By BRIAN PORTER | Rocky Mountain Voice
LONE TREE — It might be a complex problem but the solution could be quite simple, participants in an immigration forum told a large audience gathered here Wednesday in Douglas County.
“We can secure the border, and then the work begins,” said Deborah Flora.
A candidate in the 4th District U.S. House race, Flora has pledged that, if elected, immigration will top her list of priorities. She organized a forum here with local law enforcement officials, including a sheriff, district attorney and former ICE director.
“The State of Colorado has made it essentially against the law to participate with our federal partners,” said Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly.
He and other sheriffs have complained the Democrat-led House Bill 19-1124 is to blame. The bill titled “Protect Colorado Residents from Federal Government Overreach” has created a sanctuary state situation where sheriff’s deputies and police officers everywhere in Colorado are limited in their ability to work with federal agencies such as ICE.
“It made you less safe,” said John Fabbricatore, a former ICE field office director of a 200,000 square-mile region of Colorado and Wyoming. “They put this law in place not to help people, but to help criminals.”
Fabbricatore is seeking election to the U.S. House in Colorado’s 6th District. He estimates 10 million illegal aliens have crossed America’s southern border in the past three years.
“We are the drug distribution capital of America,” Flora said.
Some of the most violent cartel gangs, MS-13 for example, are now operating in Colorado after not previously having a presence, said John Kellner, the district attorney for the 18th District, including Douglas County.
He detailed a series of three murders involving the gang for those attending the forum.
“These are [MS-13 members] who will chop people with a machete and then set their bodies on fire,” Kellner said. “Every person involved was in the country illegally.”
The work of district attorneys has been impacted by HB 19-1124, as well, Kellner said. He recalled previously being able to consider immigration status in a case.
“Now, I will have to say [if asked] I don’t know,” Kellner said, explaining he doesn’t because of the law.
A reason Flora wanted to provide the forum, she said, was to demonstrate she would be a different type of lawmaker in Congress, one who listens. She fielded a number of audience questions during the forum.
“It is time to get back to representatives who listen to us, to you, to We the People,” she said. “If I’m elected, you see here some of the people I will seek out.”
Fabbricatore complains that HB 19-1124 was legislation in search of a problem.
“We were going out and arresting criminal aliens,” he said. “We were not going out and arresting roofers on a roof.”
The illegal immigration issue experienced by the city and county of Denver has largely not extended to Douglas County, Weekly said.
“I don’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican, people want to live in safe neighborhoods,” he said. “The only way to do that is aggressive enforcement of the law.”
Flora detailed a visit she made to the border with Fabbricatore, long before her bid for Congress. She explained visits to El Paso, Texas, and into New Mexico.
“I am terrified we are going to have a terrorist attack,” Weekly said. “Our federal partners don’t know what is coming across the border. We have got to close the southern border.”
The panel agreed with Flora, sealing the border could just be a matter of enforcing immigration laws already on the books. She details a plan of finishing the border wall, defunding sanctuary cities of all varieties, and allowing Border Patrol to patrol the border and not just process illegal crossers.
Fabbricatore estimates there are 7 million outstanding cases on the ICE docket, “so that could take the next 15 years.”
Flora’s “Roadmap to Restoring America” includes a border plan that would support states like Texas that are protecting the border, with the federal government suing the state for doing so. She also has indicated her support for empowering DEA agents to stem the flow of fentanyl into America and a variety of other policy she says would solve illegal immigration.
Also attending the forum was George Brauchler, a candidate for district attorney in the newly-formed District 23.