Colorado House panel advances immigration bill after hours of testimony

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

After hours of testimony that moved between legal arguments, the House Judiciary committee advanced a sweeping immigration bill Tuesday.

House Bill 26-1276 passed the committee on a 6–5 vote.

The “Protect Safety of Individuals Who Are Immigrants” bill, sponsored by Reps. Elizabeth Velasco and Lorena García, focuses on how state and local entities interact with federal immigration enforcement through information sharing, task-force reporting, detention oversight and the use of public resources.

Velasco told the committee the bill grew out of what sponsors saw as gaps in existing law.

“This bill was written in response to issues…as well as growing concerns that we are seeing across Colorado and the nation,” she said. That included “the conditions in detention centers, instances like Mesa County sheriffs using Signal to communicate with ICE about a DACA student, and even our own governor, complying with a non-judicial subpoena from ICE.”

What followed was a hearing that repeatedly returned to the same fault line: where Colorado’s authority to regulate its own systems ends, and where federal immigration power begins.

Subpoenas, transparency and timing

One of the most contested parts of this bill deals with how state and local authorities respond to federal immigration subpoenas.

The bill requires that unsealed subpoenas are sent to the Department of Public Safety, where they are made available on a public website.

If the agency complies with the subpoena, it must also notify the individual whose information was requested. Amendments narrowed that language to unsealed subpoenas and shifted one trigger from “receiving” to “fulfilling.”

Supporters framed that as basic notice and transparency.

“Whenever there is an unsealed subpoena, those subpoenas for information need to be made public after they have been executed,” García told lawmakers. “If your information is turned over because of a subpoena, you actually have a right to know.”

But that section drew some of the clearest legal questions of the day.

“Federal subpoenas issued under agencies like the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, are legally binding,” said Rep. Rebecca Keltie. “How does requiring public posting and notification to the subject of a subpoena not interfere with active federal investigations or violate federal confidentiality standards?”

Earlier in the hearing, Rep. Matt Soper raised a more practical version of the same concern.

“If you are publicly having the subpoena out there before action has taken effect,” he said, “you’re basically saying to any sort of bounty hunter, private investigator, any other person who wants to make a point or even scare off certain Coloradans, you’re giving them carte blanche authority to do so.”

García acknowledged the section needed tightening.

“Because right now, as written, it could potentially result in a challenge with the federal government,” she said. “We can’t really tell a federal judge what to do and we’d have no intention of doing so.”

The bill does not require advance notice before an arrest or enforcement action. But the public-posting requirement, and the speed built into it, remained one of the clearest flashpoints in the hearing.

A warrant requirement in a civil system

Another provision, added in committee through Amendment L.006, would require federal immigration agents to present a judicial warrant before accessing non-public areas of detention facilities.

“Our goal is to make sure that ICE is not allowed to enter secure areas of jails… without a judicial warrant,” Rep. Elizabeth Velasco said, pointing to cases where individuals posted bond but “never walked out of the jail.”

Unlike some of the bill’s other sections, that language drew little direct discussion during testimony. But it sits near the center of the bill’s legal tension.

Because most immigration enforcement is civil, not criminal, requiring a judicial warrant imposes a standard that federal law does not require and is often not available in routine cases.

In practice, civil immigration enforcement typically relies on administrative warrants, detainers and internal federal authority rather than judicial warrants issued through criminal process. The question raised by the amendment is not whether Colorado can regulate access to its own facilities. It is whether the state can condition that access in a way that changes how federal immigration enforcement works in practice.

That issue was not fully aired in committee. It is likely to follow the bill anyway.

Transportation, airports and control over infrastructure

If the subpoena provisions raised questions about timing and disclosure, the bill’s transportation restrictions brought the debate down to logistics.

HB26-1276 would prohibit state and local entities, including law enforcement agencies and municipal airports, from using public resources to transport individuals detained by federal immigration authorities for the purpose of deportation.

For some testifying in opposition, the concern was immediate and operational.

“If, in fact, we end up making an arrest and discover that they have an immigration detainer on them, we’re almost stuck with them,” testified Deputy Chief Todd Reeves of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police. “We can no longer use our transportation fleets to be able to then move them to another facility. It makes it very difficult.”

He added, “This adds complexity to those abilities to do those kinds of things.”

Lawmakers also pressed sponsors on how the bill uses the word “deportation.”

“The term that you’ve used in this paragraph is deportation,” said Rep. Regina Espinoza. “Deportation can only occur after a process and a determination the individual is removable from the country. If what you’re trying to get at is the illegal movement or transfer of individuals prior to that due process happening, that is not at all what’s in this bill, and that’s a concern for me.”

When the discussion turned to airports, García made clear what sponsors intended.

“We are only prohibiting the use of our local municipal airports for the transportation of immigrants for immigration enforcement,” she said. “They have the ability to use their military base.”

“Looking at airports, this also is another exclusive federal area when it comes to the runway,” said Rep. Matt Soper.

Municipal airports may be locally owned, but they operate inside a federally regulated aviation system. Airports that accept federal funding are subject to federal grant assurances requiring them to remain available for public use on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms under federal law.

Detention facilities, inspections and expanding state oversight

While much of the hearing focused on subpoenas and transportation, another part of HB26-1276 reaches deeper into detention facilities.

The bill would expand the state’s role in overseeing those facilities, requiring more frequent inspections, broader health and safety reviews, additional reporting requirements, and new penalties for refusal or noncompliance.

“If you are going to have a detention facility, then you are going to be subject to quarterly, spontaneous health inspections,” García told the committee.

She said lawmakers had seen “countless reports of detainees who die in custody of ICE because of not having access to health care.”

“Melvin died because the medical staff here failed to diagnose and detect a dangerous blood clot in his right leg,” testified Jordan Garcia. “The only care that Melvin received was from a low-level, entry-level medical professional who was not qualified for diagnosis, treatment, or medical decision-making.”

Colorado already has some inspection authority in this area — under HB20-1409. Under current law, the state health department can inspect certain facilities housing noncitizens in civil immigration proceedings for sanitation, food safety and general public health conditions.

HB26-1276 would expand that authority — requiring more frequent inspections, broadening what can be reviewed, expanding the role of local public health agencies, and requiring facilities to pay for inspections and environmental impact studies.

“Who we are regulating here are contractors,” García said. “These are not any sort of facilities that are directly operated by the federal government.”

By the time the vote was called, the hearing had settled into two very different views of what the bill actually does.

“If you reread the bill, you’ll see that 1276 does not actually, in fact, address ICE at all,” Lorena García said. “We are not talking about the Immigration Enforcement Agency in any sense of the word. We are addressing what the state is doing… We’re not telling ICE what they can and cannot do.”

But much of the questioning in committee focused on the practical effect of the bill’s provisions.

Keltie questioned whether the subpoena section interferes with federal investigations. Soper raised concerns about airport restrictions in a federally regulated system. Reeves described agencies being “almost stuck” with detainees they can no longer move.

HB26-1276 now moves forward to the Finance committee with its core structure intact: more reporting, more oversight, and new limits on how state and local entities interact with federal immigration enforcement.