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Federal Government Requires Colorado to Share Medicaid Data With Homeland Security
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Colorado Public Radio, Approved, State

Federal Government Requires Colorado to Share Medicaid Data With Homeland Security

By Bente Birkeland and John Daley | Colorado Public Radio In January, the state’s flagship safety net hospital, Denver Health, distributed a one-page notice about patient privacy that carried groundshaking implications, especially for Colorado’s immigrant population. The notice stated that due to federal changes within Medicaid, the federal-state program for hundreds of thousands of low-income and disabled Americans, “limited” personal information could be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Denver Health said the information applied only to people who are not lawfully residing in the U.S and are enrolled in a program called Emergency Medicaid or pregnant and enrolled in Medicaid through Cover All Coloradans. But if a person is in one of those groups,...
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Colorado cuts health subsidies for illegal immigrants with lottery system deciding who keeps coverage
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Colorado Public Radio, Approved, State

Colorado cuts health subsidies for illegal immigrants with lottery system deciding who keeps coverage

By Mateo Schimpf | CPR News On Nov. 17, phones started lighting up at a first-floor office in north Denver. Hundreds of people wanted to know whether they had won the lottery, and if not, if they had other options. The callers were not looking for the winning Powerball combination. They wanted to know whether they would be able to afford health insurance next year. The days leading up to Nov. 17 were excruciating for Blanca, who’s 52 and a single mother, and whose last name we’re not using because of concerns she could be targeted by federal law enforcement due to her immigration status.  She’s among 12,000 undocumented Coloradans who received subsidies from the state to get free health insurance through the OmniSalud program in 2025. But she had to wait to see if she w...
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Sheriff’s Deputy Resigns Amid Colorado Law Enforcement Debate
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Sheriff’s Deputy Resigns Amid Colorado Law Enforcement Debate

By: Tom Hesse | Colorado Public Radio The Mesa County Sheriff’s Deputy who tipped off federal immigration officials about a college student’s immigration status has resigned. Alexander Zwinck had been placed on unpaid leave by the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office for violating state law that limits what information local law enforcement can share with immigration officials. Zwinck pulled over 19-year-old Caroline Dias Goncalves in June for following a semi-truck too closely. During the stop, Zwinck alerted federal officials of her immigration status via a Signal chat intended for drug interdiction cases called “GJ Highway Hitters.” Dias Goncalves was born in Brazil. After Zwinck let her leave with a warning, she was stopped later down the road by federal agents. She was detained for t...
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Colorado judge blocks ICE from courthouse arrests, raising questions of state vs federal authority
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Colorado judge blocks ICE from courthouse arrests, raising questions of state vs federal authority

By Chuck Murphy | CPR News Another Colorado judge has ordered federal immigration agents to stop making civil immigration violation arrests in courthouses. Amanda C. Hopkins, chief judge of the 12th Judicial District for six south central Colorado counties, issued an administrative order Tuesday barring anyone from making civil detentions in the district’s courthouses. “Effecting civil arrests against people attending to court matters has several consequences to the court’s constitutionally-mandated administration of justice,” Hopkins wrote in the order. “Civil arrests have a chilling effect not only on criminal defendants’ presence at their hearings, but also on victims reporting crimes.” Colorado law prohibits arrests for civil violations at courthouses: “[A] person shal...
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Perspectives on water after 30 years of talking about it in the Arkansas River Basin
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Perspectives on water after 30 years of talking about it in the Arkansas River Basin

By Shanna Lewis | CPR Water in the Arkansas River Basin is in high demand. Farmers, rafters, and fishermen use it. So do cities and towns far from the river, where hundreds of thousands of people live and work. Like elsewhere in the West, the region’s water resources are stretched by drought and growth, along with downstream obligations to Kansas. The 30th annual Arkansas River Basin Water Forum in Pueblo recently brought together water managers and users from all over Colorado to talk about the often contentious nature of water in the basin and around the state and to look for possible solutions to longstanding, reoccurring and often vexing questions about the precious resource. Water experts and advocates from the San Luis Valley, the Arkansas River Basin and Northern Colorado e...
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How millions in tax money has failed to deliver a change to Denver’s mental and behavioral health needs
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How millions in tax money has failed to deliver a change to Denver’s mental and behavioral health needs

By Ben Markus | CPR News The campaign’s premise was simple: For nothing more than a modest sales tax increase, Denver could create a $45 million-a-year stream of grants to nonprofit mental health and drug treatment programs. “This initiative will give us the capacity to get everybody who needs help into a place where they can get the help that they need,” said Dr. Carl Clark, the president and CEO of WellPower, a large Denver community mental health provider.  “It's the type of thing that is a gamechanger.” Voters enthusiastically bought into the concept. And after six years and more than $170 million in tax dollars granted, a year-long review by CPR News found that the game has indeed changed, but perhaps not in the ways supporters and voters envisioned. READ THE FULL ...
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