Red town stands up to big blue neighbor in immigration fight: ‘Denver does not speak for all of Colorado’
CASTLE ROCK, Colo. – President-elect Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on illegal immigration has heightened partisan divides between deep blue Denver and its conservative neighbors, including the town of Castle Rock, which has already pledged to support Trump’s forthcoming immigration policies.
“Denver does not speak for all of Colorado, and Denver certainly does not speak for Douglas County,” Max Brooks, Castle Rock councilman and newly sworn-in member of the Colorado House of Representatives, told Fox News Digital ahead of inauguration day.
The town council unanimously passed Brooks’ measure last month expressing “strong support for President-Elect Donald Trump’s proposal to solve this nation’s ever-growing immigration crisis by undertaking mass deportations of unauthorized migrants.”
The measure also expressed Castle Rock’s willingness to “cooperate with federal immigration officials” in this effort.
Castle Rock is the most populous town in Douglas County, Colorado, located south of Denver. Officials in the conservative region say they’ve been negatively impacted by the state’s defacto sanctuary status. (Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi/Fox News Digital)
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Brooks said the measure was in direct response to actions in Denver, where Mayor Mike Johnston in November suggested city police could be deployed to resist federal immigration officials. Johnston later walked back that statement.
The Mile High City also welcomed nearly 43,000 migrants between December 2022 and last summer, according to city data. New arrivals dropped off around the same time President Biden took executive action to staunch the flow of migrants across the southern border, and Denver closed its last migrant shelter in early October citing lack of demand.
“You cannot bring [43,000] people into Denver and think that they are going to remain within Denver’s walls,” Brooks said. “They are going to spread out across the Front Range, which makes this a Colorado problem.”
Some locals told Fox News Digital they don’t personally see the influx of illegal immigrants that their neighbors to the north have been affected by, but Brooks said there are still signs. He pointed to the Douglas County Jail, which held 369 inmates on Thursday, 15% of whom were listed as non-U.S. citizens.
Crews from the city and county of Denver prepare to transport people to shelters or housing on Jan. 3, 2024. The city saw an influx of about 43,000 migrants since December 2022, though the surge has slowed in recent months. (Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
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A viral video of alleged Venezuelan gang members carrying guns through an Aurora apartment complex last August put Colorado at the forefront of the national immigration debate. Then-candidate Trump visited the city last fall, vowing to “expedite the removals of these savage gangs.”
One Castle Rock resident, who said he legally emigrated from Brazil, had a difficult time judging people who may have illegally entered the U.S.
“It’s hard ’cause they’re running away from poverty, violence, criminality or whatever they’re running from,” he said. “For them to take that step in their life and be such a vulnerable place that they are, it must be really bad out there.”
But Catherine, who said she legally immigrated to Colorado from Colombia two years ago after a nine-year process, said it’s “necessary to be strict” with border enforcement.
“If you don’t control the rules, probably in [the] future, your country will be the same [as our countries],” she said.
Catherine said she immigrated to Colorado two years ago after a nine-year process. She expressed hope that the government would make it easier for people to immigrate legally, but also said the U.S. needs to protect its borders. (Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi/Fox News Digital)
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Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, has long pushed back on the notion that Colorado is a “sanctuary state,” but Brooks said towns like Castle Rock are “significantly hamstrung” by state laws dictating that police cannot work with immigration officials.
“The words don’t matter so much as action,” Brooks said. “We want cops to be cops. We want cops to be able to do their jobs.”
More recently, Polis said he would welcome help from the federal government removing criminals and gang members, but that “going after law-abiding Coloradans who might’ve lived here for 20, 30 years” would be met with a fight.
Douglas County previously sued the state over its sanctuary policies, but a district court dismissed the suit last month. Brooks said municipalities are mulling new legal action, but are waiting to see how the situation changes after Trump takes office.
“We know that we’re going to secure the southern border,” he said. “So we know that Denver is not going to as much as they perhaps might like, continue to bring in illegal migrants here.”
