Colorado Gov. Jared Polis directed state employees to turn over information on sponsors of undocumented children to federal immigration authorities, despite protests that the order violated state laws limiting cooperation, according to a new lawsuit filed by a senior official.
Scott Moss, a director within the state Department of Labor and Employment, alleged in the suit filed Wednesday evening that Polis personally decided to comply with an administrative subpoena from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The subpoena was part of “investigative activities to locate unaccompanied alien children” and to ensure they were being cared for, according to the lawsuit.
But Moss, in a four-page memo protesting the legality of the request, alleged that the subpoena “is for purposes of finding minors to deport.”
Moss is now asking a Denver District Court judge to immediately block Polis’ order to furnish the information, which Moss was directed to complete by the end of the day Friday. In the suit, Moss’ attorneys allege that Moss and other employees are being asked to choose between illegally turning over information or risking termination for refusing Polis’ directive.
The subpoena, issued by ICE to the state in April and not signed by a judge, requested employment and family records for the sponsors of undocumented children separated from their parents, according to the lawsuit. Sponsors are typically family members, and the information requested would include birth dates and addresses. Moss was involved in handling the request as director of the labor department’s Division of Labor Standards and Statistics.
The suit says Polis’ office had decided by early May not to comply with the subpoena because of state law prohibiting certain information-sharing with federal authorities. But that stance shifted near the end of the month, the suit alleges, when Polis “personally decided” to reverse course and turn over the requested information to ICE.
A governor’s spokesman confirmed Thursday that the state intends to comply with the subpoena.
That decision came around the time that Polis signed a new law creating additional protections against sharing personal information with federal authorities.
Colorado law prohibits state and local employees from sharing personal identifying information with immigration authorities unless required by law or a court order. Polis signed that law in 2021, and Moss then drafted rules further enshrining the protections into practice.
Moss, the suit alleges, repeatedly told Polis’ office that complying with the subpoena would violate those laws. He reiterated those objections in the memo he wrote last month, in which he argued that complying with ICE’s request would renege on promises made by state employees — and by Polis — to protect immigrants’ information.
“In short, this sort of subpoena compliance stopped being a viable option once Governor Polis signed a law banning exactly this sort of immigration enforcement collaboration, on threat of fining state workers heavily, leading Governor Polis and state officials to reassure immigrants they can safety provide us information without fear — all against a backdrop of abusive practices by the ICE officials we’d be telling where to raid,” Moss wrote in the memo.
“Preventing criminal activity” is Polis’ goal
In a statement to The Denver Post, Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama wrote that Polis’ office had determined that the state should comply with the subpoena because it requested information related to “investigative activities.” State law directs employees to cooperate with criminal investigations, even if that includes sharing personal information that’s otherwise protected.
“After careful consideration of the subpoena and Colorado law that allows for the sharing of information to support timely criminal investigations, we do believe complying with this subpoena meets requirements set forth in law and is in the service of investigating and preventing criminal activity,” Maruyama wrote to The Post.
“Specifically,” he continued, “the subpoena states Homeland Security Investigations ‘is conducting investigative activities to locate unaccompanied alien children … to ensure that these children are appropriately located, properly cared for, and are not subjected to crimes of human trafficking or other forms of exploitation.’ ”
Laura Wolf, one of Moss’ attorneys, said in a statement that ICE “never claimed nor showed evidence of crimes against children.”
“ICE admits it wants the state’s help finding children ICE already ‘apprehended,’ yet somehow lost track of ‘while they await immigration proceedings,’ ” Wolf wrote. “Musing that it’s important to know where children are, to make sure they’re ‘cared for’ and not ‘exploited,’ does not turn civil immigration proceedings into criminal investigations.”
A spokesman for ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Colorado and Denver over their “sanctuary laws” limiting or prohibiting cooperation with immigration authorities.
Outside counsel retained
Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office is defending the state — and the law — in that suit. But the office is not defending Polis in Moss’ case.
Maruyama said Weiser’s office “provided counsel to the governor’s office and (the labor department) on the matter and, therefore, is conflicted out. As a result, we’ve retained outside counsel.”
Weiser spokesman Lawrence Pacheco declined to comment on the lawsuit or what advice the AG’s office gave to Polis and labor officials about complying with the subpoena.
Amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, Polis has invited immigration authorities to expand their presence in the state to apprehend “dangerous criminals,” though he has also said he doesn’t fully know what ICE is doing in Colorado. The governor has repeatedly denied that Colorado is a “sanctuary state” — a position that his spokesman reiterated Thursday.
ICE previously used “wellness checks” in an attempt to contact immigrant children at Los Angeles schools. School personnel denied agents entry to the buildings, according to news reports, and immigration attorneys in the city raised alarms in April about the true intent of the checks.
A Homeland Security spokesperson told the news outlet LAist that the school visits were to “check on the health and welfare of students ‘who arrived unaccompanied at the border.’ ”
Unaccompanied and undocumented minors are children detained by immigration authorities and released to sponsors while the children “await immigration proceedings,” according the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The sponsors are typically family members.
Maruyama wrote that “attempts to delay or block (the information requested in the subpoena) could prolong criminal exploitation and abuse of children, and we are eager to assist.”
In the lawsuit, Moss argued that the information gleaned from the subpoena could be used more widely against family members and the children themselves. In his earlier memo, Moss argued that there had been a “troublingly dishonest divergence between what ICE claims it is doing, and what ICE actually does.”
“There’s no real argument that every civil, administrative immigration subpoena is actually ‘criminal’ just because a civil, administrative investigation could find crimes that then might trigger an actual criminal investigation,” he wrote.
Polis’ decision also drew condemnation Thursday from the nonprofit law firm Towards Justice, which represents migrant workers and is led by attorney general candidate David Seligman.
In a statement, the firm — which is not representing Moss — accused Polis of supporting President Donald “Trump’s efforts to weaponize immigration laws in support of corporate lawbreakers.”
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