DENVER – Denver has lost its bid to stop federal immigration officials from forcing it to turn over information about three men wanted for deportation.
A federal magistrate ruled Monday that Sheriff Fran Gomez must comply with subpoenas issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this year to provide addresses and other details about the men, who were arrested in Denver on criminal charges.
Two of the men are from Mexico and one is from Honduras and all have been deported multiple times, according to ICE. One of the men from Mexico was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault and the other on allegations of vehicular homicide. The Honduran man was accused of domestic violence.
Denver was evaluating its next steps after the ruling, Ryan Luby, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, said Tuesday.
In a sign of the tensions between U.S. officials and so-called sanctuary cities that limit cooperation on federal immigration law, ICE took the unusual step of issuing the subpoenas to the sheriff to get the information in January. Denver accused ICE of seeking the information for “political reasons” and said it would not comply with the subpoenas unless a court determined that they were appropriate.
Federal Magistrate Judge Michael Hegarty ruled that while the subpoenas were unusual, Denver did not show that ICE was trying to use them to do anything legally inappropriate.
The city argued that the 10th Amendment, which says powers not delegated to the federal government belong to the states, prevents local authorities from being made to enforce federal immigration laws.
But Hegarty said turning over the kind of information requested in the subpoenas did not come close to that.
“If such subpoenas become a regular occurrence, then some day a federal court may have a more difficult decision, but this is not that day,” he wrote.
