Moss, the director of the Colorado Labor Standards and Statistics Division, talked about his first victory in the lawsuit during a press conference on Thursday, June 26, the day after a judge halted Polis's orders to cooperate with ICE.
"Yesterday's ruling was a victory for everyone in Colorado," Moss told media on the steps of the State Capitol Building "It's a warning to any governors, any mayors or any state or local agencies thinking of turning over their community's private information to ICE. Your collaboration with ICE and against your communities will see the light of day. It won't be done in the shadows or in the darkness as was attempted here."
According to Moss's lawsuit, filed on June 4, Polis ordered state employees to comply with an ICE subpoena demanding the personal information of 35 sponsors of unaccompanied child immigrants. Sponsors register with the state as caretakers for immigrant children separated from their parents, often while the parents are going through immigration proceedings to decide if they can stay in the U.S. The sponsors are usually immigrants themselves, or families or friends of the family whose child they're supervising, according to advocates working with Moss.
According to the lawsuit, ICE wanted the email addresses, phone numbers, residential addresses and names of sponsors; immigrant rights advocates say that they suspect ICE wants the information to target workplaces for raids and arrests. None of the nearly three dozen sponsors mentioned in the subpoena knew that their information was at risk of being handed over to ICE, according to Moss's lead attorney, Laura Wolf.
"If I had not filed this lawsuit, ICE would have gained the private information of innumerable Coloradans without anyone knowing," Moss said. "This is just an effort to work with and say 'yes' to ICE's overly aggressive campaign against our community, against immigrants, drafting state workers as unwilling troops in the ICE army."According to the lawsuit, ICE wanted the email addresses, phone numbers, residential addresses and names of sponsors; immigrant rights advocates say that they suspect ICE wants the information to target workplaces for raids and arrests. None of the nearly three dozen sponsors mentioned in the subpoena knew that their information was at risk of being handed over to ICE, according to Moss's lead attorney, Laura Wolf.
Colorado WINS, a union representing more than 27,000 state employees, and Towards Justice, a nonprofit labor rights groups, also joined the lawsuit. Colorado WINS president Diane Byrne said her organization got involved to protect employees from being forced to break state law and put themselves at legal risk. She also encourages other state employees to blow the whistle and come forward, like Moss, if Polis ordered their agency to hand over similar information to ICE.
"We can't expect that there's going to be a Scott in every division of every department, someone who is willing to come forward the way he has," Byrne said. "I hope we hear from Governor Polis soon that he will not direct any state employees to comply with this subpoena."
Polis defended his orders in a June 9 statement, explaining that ICE subpoenaed the city as part of a child trafficking investigation and the governor wanted to assist in "preventing the illegal exploitation and trafficking of children." Wolf said on Thursday that Polis "has shown no evidence that there's a legitimate criminal investigation."
New Protections Against "Overbroad" Subpoena
On Wednesday, June 25, Denver District Court Judge A. Bruce Jones granted a preliminary injunction stopping Polis's orders. Jones said the “overbroad” subpoena would undermine state laws that Polis signed himself, according to Wolf.
The judge's ruling now protects all state employees, not just in Moss's division, from having to follow the governor's orders to comply with the ICE subpoena and requires the state to notify people if their information is given to ICE.
"The court made it very clear that any production under the subpoena on its face would be a violation of state laws. Any person who is asked to produce now has an order from this court to say 'absolutely not, I will not collaborate with ICE,'" Wolf said. "We need to make sure that everyone in the state knows and the governor knows that he is required to notify these individuals...our governor is not above the law here in Colorado."
The injunction only halts Polis's orders while Moss's lawsuit plays out. The court could still rule in Polis's favor and require state employees to comply with his orders, however.
"This is the first battle in a long war," Moss said. "We still have to go through the full process of litigation, to gather evidence...we're just getting started."
Moss said that he and his fellow plaintiffs want to find out which agencies received similar orders to provide information to ICE. So far, they know that the Unemployment Insurance and Family and Medical Leave divisions received the same orders as Moss's division (all three divisions are part of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment), and that employees those two divisions complied and handed over personal information to ICE, according to Byrne.
"We don't know of any other ICE subpoenas at this time," Byrne said. "There is general data gathering that is happening that may end up in the hands of ICE. Those are things that we're very concerned about, and that may be the next fight."
The governor's office responded to the injunction in a statement from spokesperson Shelby Morse, who says the governors office promises to abide by the ruling, but also to continue working with ICE in future child trafficking cases while Polis tries to "determine next steps in this matter."
"Governor Polis remains committed to fully and promptly cooperating with federal criminal investigations into child trafficking and exploitation while protecting unaccompanied children in Colorado," Morse said. "We hope If information is needed for criminal investigations, that going forward [ICE] will provide subpoenas for state information consistent with this ruling."
Polis's response raised "a number of concerns" for Wolf, as she believes the governor's office was sending a message to ICE to try again. She wants reassurances from Polis that he's not going to give these orders again, that he'll create a process to notify people if their information is handed over, and that he'll only hand information over if it's "legitimately for a criminal investigation" and "narrowed to specifically what is necessary."
"This statement essentially solicits ICE to re-serve its subpoena in a way to find some type of loophole," Wolf charged. "Of course, we're glad to hear he plans to follow the judges order. I assumed he would do that. It's actually concerning that he felt the need to say that."
Colorado WINS sent a letter to Polis on Thursday morning "asking him to confirm that he is not going to ask any state employees to comply with this subpoena." Polis hasn't responded to the letter yet, but "once we get that confirmation, people will be reassured," Byrne said.
The judge's ruling now protects all state employees, not just in Moss's division, from having to follow the governor's orders to comply with the ICE subpoena and requires the state to notify people if their information is given to ICE.
"The court made it very clear that any production under the subpoena on its face would be a violation of state laws. Any person who is asked to produce now has an order from this court to say 'absolutely not, I will not collaborate with ICE,'" Wolf said. "We need to make sure that everyone in the state knows and the governor knows that he is required to notify these individuals...our governor is not above the law here in Colorado."
The injunction only halts Polis's orders while Moss's lawsuit plays out. The court could still rule in Polis's favor and require state employees to comply with his orders, however.
"This is the first battle in a long war," Moss said. "We still have to go through the full process of litigation, to gather evidence...we're just getting started."
Moss said that he and his fellow plaintiffs want to find out which agencies received similar orders to provide information to ICE. So far, they know that the Unemployment Insurance and Family and Medical Leave divisions received the same orders as Moss's division (all three divisions are part of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment), and that employees those two divisions complied and handed over personal information to ICE, according to Byrne.
"We don't know of any other ICE subpoenas at this time," Byrne said. "There is general data gathering that is happening that may end up in the hands of ICE. Those are things that we're very concerned about, and that may be the next fight."
The governor's office responded to the injunction in a statement from spokesperson Shelby Morse, who says the governors office promises to abide by the ruling, but also to continue working with ICE in future child trafficking cases while Polis tries to "determine next steps in this matter."
"Governor Polis remains committed to fully and promptly cooperating with federal criminal investigations into child trafficking and exploitation while protecting unaccompanied children in Colorado," Morse said. "We hope If information is needed for criminal investigations, that going forward [ICE] will provide subpoenas for state information consistent with this ruling."
Polis's response raised "a number of concerns" for Wolf, as she believes the governor's office was sending a message to ICE to try again. She wants reassurances from Polis that he's not going to give these orders again, that he'll create a process to notify people if their information is handed over, and that he'll only hand information over if it's "legitimately for a criminal investigation" and "narrowed to specifically what is necessary."
"This statement essentially solicits ICE to re-serve its subpoena in a way to find some type of loophole," Wolf charged. "Of course, we're glad to hear he plans to follow the judges order. I assumed he would do that. It's actually concerning that he felt the need to say that."
Colorado WINS sent a letter to Polis on Thursday morning "asking him to confirm that he is not going to ask any state employees to comply with this subpoena." Polis hasn't responded to the letter yet, but "once we get that confirmation, people will be reassured," Byrne said.
Governor's Office Hints at More to Come
In April 2021, Polis signed a law prohibiting state employees from sharing private information with federal law enforcement agencies like ICE, a law that made Colorado a sanctuary state in the eyes of conservatives. Immigrants give their private information to the state when accessing unemployment and family benefits, healthcare services and childhood education, Moss said. Polis signed a law earlier this year to strengthen protections for their personal information by applying the type of restrictions to state subdivisions like counties."The governor signed many admirable laws and won deserved praise for doing so," Moss said. "Those laws were promising new Americans the most basic protections that anyone is entitled to."
Public outrage against ICE has been heating up since President Donald Trump returned to office with plans for mass deportations. In Colorado, ICE has already carried out three large raids since January, including in Denver and Aurora where agents reportedly burst into homes and arrested people who showed asylum paperwork.
ICE has already circumvented Colorado laws prohibiting the sharing of residents' private information between local and federal enforcement. Earlier in June, news broke that the Loveland Police Department shared license plate tracking data from its surveillance cameras with ICE. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser hasn't said whether his office is investigating the case yet.
Federal ICE agents also arrested families with small children and asylum seekers while they attended court-mandated appointments to stay in the country. In March, ICE arrested notable immigrant activist Jeanette Vizguerra, who is incarcerated with more than 1,300 other immigrants in the Aurora ICE detention facility. On June 20, Utah student
Caroline Dias Goncalves was released from the Aurora ICE detention center, and said in a public statement that she was fed soggy bread and treated better because she speaks English.
Protests in Los Angeles against ICE arrests erupted earlier this month, to which Trump responded by sending the National Guard and Marines. Thousands of Denver residents joined the nationwide protests, clashing with police and accusing officers of excise force twice on June 10 and 15. Over the weekend, someone hacked into Denver's electronic traffic message boards to write "Fuck ICE" where plenty of people could see. Meanwhile, Governor Jared Polis, who's nearing the end of his last term in office, has upset fellow Democrats in the state legislature by saying in January that he planned to cooperate with ICE to deport criminals, and again with his most recent efforts to help ICE.
Polis still has one more legislative session where he'll be working with the Democratic majority in the Legislature. State Senator Julie Gonzales, a Democrat from Denver, and State Representative Elizabeth Velasco, a Democrat from the Western Slopes, spoke at the Thursday press conference in support of Moss, but said that they don't plan to snub Polis despite his willingness to work with ICE.
"We hope we can still be partners to address the issues that harm our communities," Velasco said. "But there's also a breach in trust. ...We definitely look forward to moving forward and supporting our communities, but I do think harm has been done to the public trust and trust with the Legislature."
