Roughly three dozen people waving banners, American flags and an image of the mayor urinating on a police badge rallied Monday afternoon at the Denver City and County Building to oppose a policy that they say gives sanctuary to illegal immigrants.
The protest was the latest in an ongoing debate between City Hall and anti-immigration activists who cite the recent killing of Detective Donald “Donnie” Young as an example of why police should do more to enforce immigration laws.
Young’s accused killer, 19-year-old Mexican national Raul Garcia-Gomez, had been involved in three traffic violations since October, and was never required to provide any proof of legal residence.
After the rally, the members of Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform and Defend Colorado Now went to the office of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and hand-delivered a letter to the mayor’s chief of staff, Michael Bennet, asking that Hickenlooper issue an order that “unequivocally condemns illegal immigration” in the city.
The letter also condemns Order 116, implemented in 1998 by Mayor Wellington Webb, which the groups described as an “artfully worded treatise on sanctuary for illegal aliens.”
Bennet said that Denver’s order focuses only on legal immigration and doesn’t deal with sanctuary of illegals.
“There are some who believe that a traffic stop should become a moment of defining whether someone is in the country illegally or not,” Bennet said. The Police Department’s “main job is catching people who are committing crimes.”
Bennet said the city has cooperated fully with immigration officials.
William Herron, chairman of Defend Colorado Now, said his group will try to put an initiative on the 2006 ballot to restrict non-emergency government services to illegal immigrants coming to Colorado, including driver’s licenses and in-state tuition.
