For the second time in 10 months, a Denver judge on Tuesday prohibited Gov. Jared Polis from directing state labor officials to provide records to federal immigration officials about the sponsors of immigrant children.
Denver District Court Judge A. Bruce Jones found that the new subpoena sent to last month was substantially the same request that Polis fought to be able to fulfill last spring. Jones found that complying with both the new request and the first subpoena, which had sought identical employment and personal information about the sponsors of children without permanent legal status, would likely violate state law prohibiting information-sharing with federal immigration officials.
“It is impossible to reasonably look at the March 13 subpoena and not consider it against the backdrop of what has happened in this case before,” Jones said about the more recent subpoena, at the end of Tuesday’s two-hour hearing. “Because it’s the same people being asked about. It’s the same agency. It’s the same apparent-looking subpoena.”
His order specifically prohibits Polis from ordering officials in the labor department’s Division of Labor Standards and Statistics to comply. While Jones said complying with the subpoena would likely violate state law, he did not block Polis from otherwise complying with the subpoena or directing other state employees to do so. It’s similar to the ruling Jones issued against Polis in June.
In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama said the governor was “committed to working with our federal partners on criminal investigations, and will follow state law and will abide by the court’s decision regarding this particular subpoena.”
“The Governor is grateful that this is a limited ruling and the court did not preclude the state from complying with all other subpoenas or strengthening ongoing efforts with all law enforcement, including local and federal, to tackle serious crime,” Maruyama wrote.
Polis’ attorneys said Tuesday that the governor essentially trusted an ICE agent’s word that the agency wanted the information for a criminal probe, rather than so that ICE could arrest and deport immigrant children or their guardians, as the groups suing Polis have alleged.
State officials and Polis’ staff would not say if the state intended to comply with this latest request when asked by The Post last month.
Jones’ verbal order did not go as far as had been requested by attorneys representing a former state labor official, Scott Moss, as well as the state employees union. They had asked the judge to issue a far more sweeping injunction limiting compliance with future immigration subpoenas sent to the labor department.
The governor had argued he could comply with the 2025 subpoena because, he claimed, it was part of a criminal investigation — which would make information-sharing allowable under state law. But Jones rejected that claim in June, and did so again about the latest request, which seeks the same employment information — about 10 of the same people — as the prior subpoena.
In the new subpoena, however, ICE agents repeatedly said the information was now needed as part of a specific criminal investigation. Polis’ attorneys argued that was sufficient to allow information to be shared under state law.
But Laura Wolf, one of Moss’ attorneys, argued that the new subpoena’s language was evidence only that ICE agents were monitoring the lawsuit and knew what they needed to say.
Jones agreed.
“I think it’s a pretty fair inference (to make), that somebody out there were with the authority to issue subpoenas is looking at this (case) and saying, ‘The governor really would like to cooperate with us, if we just provide him with the means to do so,’ ” Jones said. “And apparently, the means to do so is to use a talismanic phrase — ‘criminal investigation’ — at which point, boom, we cooperate.”
Christopher Beall, one of the attorneys hired by the state to represent Polis, told Jones that the court should look at the new subpoena on its own and not draw conclusions about ICE’s intentions based on the prior request.
“I did not wake up in a new world today,” Jones said in response. He looked across the room at Beall. “And nobody here did, either.”
Last week, Polis was deposed under oath by Moss’ attorneys. The transcript of that exchange has not been publicly released, though Wolf referenced excerpts in court Tuesday. She said that a lawyer from the state attorney general’s office had emailed ICE officials, requesting that they obtain a subpoena authorized by a grand jury if they wanted the information they were seeking.
But in his deposition, according to Wolf, Polis indicated that the state attorney’s request wasn’t made at his office’s direction, and he said the state’s new subpoena policy — which gives the governor broad discretion to determine when to turn over records to ICE — did not require a grand jury subpoena.
Indeed, Polis’ policy prioritizes swift responses to subpoenas that mention criminal investigations, while also seeking to shield discussions of compliance from ever being made public.
Tuesday’s hearing came after Wolf learned that the labor department received the second subpoena in March. Wolf had previously requested that Jones issue a more sweeping injunction against Polis in case state officials receive more subpoenas seeking similar information to the one rejected last year.
Polis’ attorneys responded to that request dismissively, arguing that there was no indication that such a subpoena was imminent.
In fact, the new subpoena had been sent to state officials a week before Polis’ attorneys asked Jones to deny Wolf’s request.
