Masked Vigilantes or Brave Law Enforcement? On Their First Day, Colorado Lawmakers Clash Over ICE.

National political turmoil seeped into Colorado’s statehouse on the opening day of the 2026 legislative session.

Even as state representatives preached about the importance of bipartisan collaboration, the lines separating Democrats and Republicans were evident during the introductory speeches on Wednesday, January 14 — especially regarding immigration enforcement.

House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Democrat, declared that Colorado would not force its immigrant neighbors “back into the shadows” during her remarks. She vowed to remember the killing of Renee Good and the detention of Jeanette Vizguerra-Ramirez to a thunderous standing ovation from her Democratic colleagues.

“It is un-American for the federal government to use masked vigilantes to arrest, detain, and evict people off the street on the basis of their skin color, language, gender or very identity,” McCluskie said. “Colorado will continue to stand against this betrayal of our values.”

Republican representatives sat silently across the aisle.

During his own opening remarks, Republican House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell shot back at this characterization, backing members of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Our brave law enforcement officials must know we support them, and we know why they cover their face,” Caldwell said, receiving similarly partisan-split applause from the Republican side of the room.

These comments were particularly pertinent in the wake of Good’s death. The 37-year-old mother and Colorado native was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month. Hundreds of protesters rallied at the Colorado State Capitol on January 9 in honor of Good and in opposition to ICE.

In response, the Denver City Council began discussing a proposal to ban law enforcement from wearing masks, and the Aurora City Council passed a resolution stating that “ICE extrajudicially killed Renee Nicole Good.”

McCluskie and Caldwell’s speeches on Wednesday set the stage for the next 120 days of lawmaking. Several immigration-related bills are expected to be introduced, including one that would allow lawsuits against ICE agents for violating constitutional rights, the Denver Post reported.

Colorado voters may also weigh in on immigration enforcement this year. A proposed November ballot measure seeks to require local law enforcement to notify the U.S. Department of Homeland Security when a person who is not lawfully present in the country is charged with certain crimes. In past years, the legislature has chosen to pass compromise bills to get the sponsors of conservative measures such as this to remove them from the ballot.

McCluskie described the situation as the White House holding Colorado “hostage.”

“I fear this administration will target Colorado no matter what we do. So members, let’s do what’s right,” McCluskie said. “Coloradans’ civil rights are not to be played with. We won’t shove our immigrant and LGBTQ neighbors back into the shadows. We won’t give up on disability access or voting rights. We are a model for abortion rights in the post-Dobbs reality, and we won’t roll them back.”

Caldwell spoke little of Trump or the White House directly, though he did challenge any upcoming “finger-pointing” at the federal government for Colorado’s woes. In particular, he blamed the state’s roughly $800 million budget deficit on years of “state-level decisions” rather than “a single federal bill,” referring to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut trillions of dollars in taxes by massively scaling back safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP.

McCluskie said the bill “immediately blew a billion-dollar hole in Colorado’s finances.” Much of the legislature’s work this session will revolve around solving the budget shortfall.

Instead, Caldwell’s speech gave special focus to conservative activist Charlie Kirk, describing the “shock and horror” of his murder while holding a public debate on a Utah college campus in September. Caldwell criticized people “in positions of trust” for allegedly mocking Kirk’s death. Colorado representatives clashed in the days following the murder, with the former Republican minority leader calling out Democrats for their social media posts.

“As many of us share those same Christian beliefs with Charlie, we view the celebration and mocking of his murder as a justification for our own deaths,” Caldwell said. “To Charlie, I say this: May we all be so persuasive in our arguments, so just in our actions and so righteous in our convictions that the devil dances on our graves when we die.”

McCluskie also disavowed Kirk’s murder in her speech, in addition to highlighting the killing of Democratic Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman, who was assassinated three months prior to Kirk.

“Their murders crystalized even more powerfully for me that political violence is rising, and it flows downstream from the caustic rhetoric all around us,” McCluskie said. “No matter how bitterly we might disagree on the important issues, we have to raise the decency in our discourse, together.”

That decency will be put to the test this session.

The Colorado Legislature convenes for 120 days each year to consider new laws between January and May. Last year, legislators introduced 657 bills. Of them, 487 passed and all but eleven were signed into law by the governor.

This year, legislators have until May 13 to get their bills across the finish line.