Colorado state officials have turned over records requested by immigration authorities at least four times this year — including once by mistake, Gov. Jared Polis’ office said Tuesday.
The state Department of Labor and Employment provided records to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in response to three subpoenas from the agency this year, Polis’ office said. One of those was a request that state officials “erroneously” complied with. The Marijuana Enforcement Division provided records to ICE in response to another request.
That information, newly confirmed to The Denver Post, comes as state agencies have now acknowledged receiving nine immigration-related subpoenas this year from the Trump administration. Whether to comply has stoked political tension internally as well as with immigrant-rights advocates since state law generally prohibits government employees from turning over personal identifying information to ICE.
The exceptions are if the state is ordered to comply by a judge or if the information is sought as part of a criminal investigation.
The state did not turn over records in response to five of the ICE subpoenas received this year, including one that Polis had initially decided to comply with before he was ordered not to by a Denver judge.
One subpoena, sent to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, sought a list of all individuals born in Colorado on a specific date in February in 2004 and 2005. In an email to ICE agents in March, a state attorney said the agency couldn’t provide the records because the state didn’t keep lists of that nature.
Polis spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said in an email that one subpoena sent to the labor department shouldn’t have been complied with. That subpoena sought wage and employment records from an employer whose name was redacted from the document before it was provided to The Post.
“We are implementing procedures to ensure that erroneous sharing does not happen in the future, including elevating any potential responses to (Department of Homeland Security) subpoenas to the Governor’s Office for review and approval,” she wrote.
In a follow-up email, Wieman said a labor department employee “produced records in response to a subpoena request without first getting final approval from department leadership or the Governor’s Office.” The agency then reassigned “subpoena response duties to a higher authority.” She did not respond when asked if the employee had been disciplined.
The department also “critically analyzed its current subpoena process, implemented stricter protocols, and provided additional training to staff members involved in the subpoena process and how to elevate requests.”
Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat who sponsored legislation limiting data-sharing with ICE, said she wanted to know what processes the state had been following to ensure compliance with the law, and what processes officials will follow now.
“What is the process now? And when should we expect that in writing, so that everybody in the state is clear?” she said Tuesday.
The three subpoenas that Wieman said were correctly fulfilled all involved alleged criminal investigations. In emails to agency officials provided to reporters Tuesday, an ICE agent said one subpoena was related to “waste, fraud and abuse” investigations and not immigration.
Two were sent to the labor department in February. One involved an investigation into human trafficking, according to the document, and the other was an investigation related to human and drug trafficking. Both sought employment records from specific companies.
The narcotics subpoena stated that the investigation “includes numerous victims from other countries.”
The subpoena sent to the marijuana regulators also sought employment data.
Tuesday’s disclosure, provided by Wieman, is the first time that state officials have acknowledged complying with subpoenas from ICE. The labor department earlier told The Post that it had received four subpoenas; the Colorado Sun reported late last week that the agency had received seven subpoenas.
The marijuana regulatory division and the health department each received one such request.
Spokespeople for the state had previously refused to turn over the subpoenas or say if they’d complied with them, citing exemptions in state public records law allowing records related to criminal investigations to remain private.
Then, early Friday evening, the labor department released several of the subpoenas it had previously withheld. A spokeswoman for the marijuana enforcement division told The Post this week that it couldn’t turn over the records, shortly before Wieman released the document to The Post and other media outlets.
A spokeswoman for the labor department did not immediately respond when asked why the state chose not to respond to the other subpoenas they’ve received from ICE so far this year. Wieman said that the “state makes determinations about which subpoenas to respond to based on state and federal law.”
The disclosure came shortly after Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office announced Tuesday morning that it had filed a lawsuit against a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy who had flagged a University of Utah student to ICE. That was an apparent violation of state law prohibiting such conduct.
Gonzales, the Denver senator, said the AG’s lawsuit showed that state law was clear about acceptable and prohibited data-sharing with immigration authorities.
“What I’m unclear about is whether or not the governor of the state of Colorado is following the law as we clearly sought to (write it), and as we worked with his team to craft,” she said.
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