[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Uundocumented Persons Ordinance

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Young, Mary

Tom and colleagues,


The following comments were submitted to me by Dr. Violeta Chapin, CU Law Clinic and Chris Lasch, DU law professor. They are reasonable suggestions.


Would it be possible to have a version including them on the dais tomorrow? Thank you.

(1) We would have the legislative intent section start with its last provision, which currently says:

"The City of Boulder is committed to fostering and ensuring equity, social justice and freedom from persecution and is committed to protecting the human rights of all persons regardless of immigration status."

In fact we would tweak that to say "regardless of race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, ethnicity, religion, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, military service, nationality, national origin or immigration status." (You could craft the precise language here by borrowing from other non-discrimination ordinances of Boulder?)

Our thought here is that entangling local officials in immigration enforcement produces discrimination across many of these axes.  The law may be more favorable on some axes than others, so include them all.  Also, to the extent these sanctuary policies are crafted broadly they look more like legitimate local sovereignty and less like purposeful interference with a federal program.

(2) We would also suggest that some prominent mention of racial profiling be made here.  There are plenty of studies that show entanglement with immigration produces racial profiling at the local level, and that's a great reason for localities to be pursuing disentanglement.  You could even mention the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which requires recipients of federal funding to not discriminate on several axes including national origin.

It would also be worth mentioning that racial profiling and other similar unequal treatment targets vulnerable populations and vulnerable populations cross these boundaries of race, creed, color, sex, etc.  So preventing against the unequal treatment of the undocumented also serves to protect vulnerable people who are not undocumented.

(3)  We think you could also include some statement of how enforcement of the immigration laws is the job of the federal government and Boulder is committed to allocating local resources to pursue legitimate local objectives and does not wish to allocate any local resources to immigration enforcement.  Explicitly stating somewhere that the intent of this ordinance is to permit the City of Boulder to control the allocation of its resources to the maximum extent authorized by law and to permit the federal government to pursue its immigration enforcement objectives without entangling the City of Boulder in immigration enforcement and without expending the City's resources to pursue federal objectives.

(4) I think it would be nice to specify also what "no city funds" means. Here is perhaps an example of how that could be defined... it might also be useful to change it to "no city funds or resources" just because the use of a fax line or telephone might not consume city funds (if the phone is prepaid etc.)...

The use of "city funds" includes all use of city resources and includes but is not limited to any use of money, personnel, or equipment, including but not limited to the use of City employees' time; the use of City computers or other information technologies, including but not limited to telephones, telephone lines, facsimiles, and the like; and the use of other City property, whether real, tangible, personal, intellectual or otherwise.


Mary Dolores Young
Boulder City Council
303-501-2439

"All ethics . . . rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts . . ." - Aldo Leopold