Politics
Undocumented father who sought sanctuary in Denver church detained by ICE at work
CENTENNIAL, Colo. – An undocumented man who was the first in Colorado to seek sanctuary from deportation when he did so in 2015 was detained at work Wednesday by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents.
It was quite the change of course for Arturo Hernandez-Garcia, who was told in 2015 after nine months of being in sanctuary at Denver’s First Unitarian Church that he was not a priority for deportation.
Hernandez-Garcia, a 44-year-old Mexican native, returned to his normal life in Colorado until he was again picked up Wednesday.
Hernandez-Garcia first came to the U.S. through El Paso, Texas in January 2003 on a six-month work visa, according to ICE, but outstayed his visa. He was first targeted for deportation after his 2010 arrest on an assault charge for a fight at work – a charge that was later dropped.
In October 2012, a federal immigration judge granted a 60-day voluntary departure request, but those turned into final deportation orders in December 2012, when he failed to voluntarily remove himself from the U.S., according to ICE.
In 2014, an appeal of his deportation was dismissed, but the Board of Immigration Appeals extended his voluntary departure date through Aprill 2014. However, when he didn’t leave, a final order of removal became active again, according to ICE. He had applications for stays of removal denied in May 2014 and March 2015, according to ICE.
He will now be held until his removal, according to ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok.
Hernandez-Garcia was one of 10 people living in sanctuary across the country at the time – something that has become more common under the Trump administration’s increased focus on deporting undocumented immigrants, since churches are generally respected by immigration agents as off-limits.
Hernandez has a wife and two daughters – one of whom was born in the U.S., which generally kept him safe under the Obama administration’s directive that protected undocumented parents of citizen children.
Arturo Garcia, first person to seek sanctuary in CO is in ICE custody. A protest happening now outside ICE building @DenverChannel pic.twitter.com/Vzo7iFCSvw
— Sally (@sallymamdooh) April 26, 2017
The First Unitarian Church has also been a sanctuary haven for Jeanette Vizguerra, a Mexican national who took sanctuary at the church earlier this year when she was scheduled to be deported. Vizguerra was named as one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year last week, and is one of at least two women in the Denver area currently in sanctuary.
In a Facebook video she posted Wednesday, she pleaded for Hernandez-Garcia’s release.
“We need for the community to get active, for the community to do something, and we need to join in this campaign. Today, we are all Arturo,” she said.
Hernandez-Garcia’s detainment comes less than a week after an Aurora mother of four was deported and removed from the country without her children.
MORE | Learn about the undocumented mother of 4 who ICE agents detained, deported from Colorado.
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Undocumented mother of 4 from Aurora has been deported from US by ICE agents
AURORA, Colo. – An undocumented mother of four who has spent much of the past two decades in Aurora has been deported and removed from the country by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The lawyer for Maria de Jesus Jimenez-Sanchez confirmed to Denver7 Tuesday that she was deported on April 18 – five days after she was originally detained in Centennial by ICE agents.
Her lawyer, Lakewood attorney Jennifer Kain-Rios, says that Jimenez-Sanchez is the mother to four children, including a 15-year-old developmentally-disabled daughter.
ICE says that Jimenez-Sanchez, whose real name is Karen Araujo-Jimenez, first entered the U.S. illegally in October 1999, and that she was immediately confronted by federal agents and voluntarily returned to Mexico the same day.
She was then caught posing as another person while trying to enter the U.S. in Douglas, Arizona in May 2001, according to ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok, and was again deported immediately.
Jimenez-Sanchez was taken into custody by ICE again in December 2012, when she was pulled over and cited for driving without a license.
She spent six months in ICE custody. In May 2013, according to ICE, an immigration judge upheld a previous removal order for her and ordered her to be deported by the Department of Homeland Security.
But she had been granted a one-year stay of deportation a month earlier. The stays were extended for another year in May 2014, March 2015 and March 2016, Rusnok said, but her latest stay request was denied March 14 of this year.
But she was picked up again last Wednesday when she showed up for a routine immigration check-in despite knowing her latest stay request had been denied, according to Kain-Rios.
Kain-Rios said she could not divulge where Jimenez-Sanchez had been deported to, but said she had been in communication with the woman since she was deported.
Kain-Rios says Jimenez-Sanchez is trying to decide whether to continue fighting to be in the U.S. Many of her stays had been granted because she was caring and helping educate her disabled daughter, Kain-Rios says.
Her case is the third high-profile case involving women scheduled to be deported out of the Denver area. Jeanette Vizguerra and Ingrid LaTorre are both in sanctuary at Denver-area churches to stave off their deportations.
The cases come amid an increased effort by immigration officials under the Trump administration to deport people living in the country illegally no matter if they’ve been convicted of a violent crime or not.
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Federal lawsuit argues Amendment 71, requiring rural input on ballot measures, is unconstitutional
DENVER – A handful of ballot measure proponents have filed a federal lawsuit arguing that Amendment 71, which changed the way constitutional amendments can reach Colorado’s ballot when it was approved by voters last year, violates the U.S. and Colorado constitutions.
The lawsuit is the first legal challenge to Amendment 71, which despite being among the more-controversial measures on last year’s Colorado ballot, was approved by 55.7 percent of the vote. Voting against the measure were 44.3 percent of Coloradans. Continue reading
Colorado Hospital Association: State budget puts dozens of Colo. hospitals in jeopardy
DENVER – The Colorado Hospital Association says the state budget for the fiscal year that starts this summer could cost state hospitals millions of dollars and have “devastating” effects on rural health care if a proposed fix doesn’t find support in the state Legislature.
The state budget has been the subject of most of the legislative debate at the state Capitol over the past few weeks – much of it centering on transportation and health care costs in trying to find a balanced budget.
But an analysis out Monday from the Colorado Hospital Association shows that the budget could have huge effects on health care across the state.
As the budget currently stands, it would cut $264 million from the Health Provider Fee, which hospitals pay to bring down hospital and health care fees for people on Medicaid and those without insurance.
The fees are redistributed after being matched by the feds through a formula that gives lower-income and Medicaid-receiving populations in Colorado a larger amount of money that providers in higher-income areas of the state.
When adding in matching funds from the federal government, which the state is due under its decision to expand Medicaid, the current budget as it stands would lead to a $528 million reduction to the HPF, according to the Colorado Hospital Association.
“In addition to potential closures, many hospitals in the state will have to consider layoffs, service line closures and delaying facility upgrades or service additions,” CHA said Monday.
The state budget writers say they need to cut money to the HPF this year in order to keep the budget under TABOR limits so they don’t have to issue taxpayer refunds, which they say would lead to cuts in other parts of the budget related to education and transportation.
The CHA’s analysis shows 80 percent of Colorado hospitals would see cuts this year – 13 of which would see reductions of at least $5 million, and six that would see cuts of at least $10 million.
Some of the most outstanding figures are as follows:
- Denver Health Medical Center would see cuts of $52.5 million;
- Children’s Hospital Colorado would see cuts of $17.3 million;
- Memorial Hospital would see cuts of $17.8 million
- University of Colorado Hospital would see cuts of $15.1 million
But CHA says the worst effects would be seen in rural hospitals, such as the Lincoln Community Hospital and Nursing Home, Kit Carson County Memorial Hospital, Montrose Memorial Hospital and San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center, which, among other rural health care facilities, face cuts of between a couple hundred thousand dollars and millions of dollars.
“Lincoln Community Hospital is the only hospital along a 160-mile stretch of I-70 and is the top employer in our 722-person town,” said Kevin Stansbury, the CEO of the Lincoln Community Hospital (Hugo). “The proposed cut to the Hospital Provider Fee would immediately move our hospital from operating in the black to operating in the red.”
“San Luis Valley Health Regional Medical Center is the only hospital that delivers babies in a five-county region in south-central Colorado and is the largest employer with more than 650 employees,” said Konnie Martin, the CEO of San Luis Valley Health, based in Alamosa. “This cut would mean that our hospital would lose more than $3.8 million this year. It will profoundly change the face of a rural community when you make these kinds of cuts, so we are hopeful that legislators will work together to get this deal done in this year’s session.”
The CHA says it is supporting a different bill that would modify state law keep the cuts from happening.
Senate Bill 267, which has bipartisan support from several Democrats and Republicans across the state, aims to make several changes to the state’s General Fund so as to help out rural Colorado.
It includes a provision that would move the HPF funds out of the General Fund so as that it is not subject to TABOR limits, which would be, at least, a temporary fix to the FY 2017-18 problem, according to the CHA.
The bill, if passed, would create a new board of governor appointees that would receive fees from hospitals and redistribute them similarly to how they are distributed under the HPF. It would, however, still be subject to review from federal Medicare and Medicaid programs as to its constitutionality. The current HPF would be eliminated.
“History will judge this legislature with acclaim or with embarrassment based on whether or not they finish the job of saving Colorado hospitals – by coming to consensus on a deal that passes SB 17-267,” said Steven Summer, president and CEO, CHA. “Failure is not an option for Colorado hospitals, communities, and the patients they serve. All legislators have a responsibility to those with so much riding on this issue. It’s time to put aside the antics and partisan speak and get this deal done.”
Senate Bill 267 is set for another hearing Tuesday in the Senate Appropriations Committee. It was amended in the Senate Finance Committee and referred back to appropriations on April 11.
The CHA says if the current budget is not amended, it will “immediately jeopardize the future of as many as a dozen Colorado hospitals.”
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Study: Nationwide medical marijuana program would save more than $1B in tax money, lives too
DENVER – A new study says that a nationwide rollout of medical marijuana would save taxpayers close to $1.1 billion each year on Medicaid prescriptions because medical marijuana use correlates with a decline in prescription drug usage.
The study by the University of Georgia’s father-daughter research team of Ashley Bradford and W. David Bradford lines up with a similar study the two did last year, which found similar correlation with Medicare prescriptions and states with medical marijuana programs.
That study found that taxpayers would save about a half-billion dollars each year under a national medical marijuana program.
But the new study, published this week in Health Affairs, looked at Medicaid – the country’s health care program for low-income people and not Medicare, the health system for elderly Americans.
It found that in states with legal medical marijuana programs, the number of prescriptions through Medicaid written and filled for certain types of drugs fell significantly.
The researchers saw an 11 percent drop in the prescription of painkillers, which include opioids – often blamed for the ongoing opioid and heroin epidemic currently plaguing the U.S.
But they saw larger drops in prescriptions for other drugs as well: There was a 17 percent reduction in nausea medication prescriptions; a 13 percent reduction in depression drug prescriptions; a 12 percent drop in seizure medication prescriptions; and a 12 percent drop in psychosis medication prescriptions.
“Patients and physicians in the community are reacting to the availability of medical marijuana as if it were medicine,” the researchers wrote.
But since most insurance programs don’t offer coverage for medical marijuana, even though it’s available in more than two dozen states, low-income and elderly Americans would be offsetting the cost to taxpayers with out-of-pocket costs.
The study estimated that Colorado saved around $14.4 million in 2014 in Medicaid prescription spending because of its medical marijuana program.
The researchers noted that there could be some instances in which replacing FDA-approved treatments with medical marijuana could be harmful, but also wrote that the research has begun to dispute the DEA’s Schedule I classification of the drug as having no medical uses.
A study published earlier this month in the Journal of Drug and Alcohol Dependence also said states with legalized medical marijuana programs have seen fewer opioid-induced hospitalizations per capita than states with no program.
New U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recently compared marijuana to opioids and suggested the idea that medical marijuana could help some addicts recover is “stupid.”
“Medical marijuana has been hyped, maybe too much,” Sessions said.
The Washington Post reports that Sessions also said that he was “dubious” of medical marijuana and research that points to it being an alternative painkiller and treatment option for opioid addicts.
“I’ve heard people say we could solve our heroin problem with marijuana. How stupid is that? Give me a break.”
Eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana sales, but medical marijuana is legal in 28 states and D.C.
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In ode to Trump, Colo. House passes bill requiring presidential candidates to release tax returns
DENVER – Colorado Democrats are trying to send a message to Donald Trump and any future presidential or vice presidential candidates: show us your tax returns or you won’t be on Colorado’s ballot.
House Bill 1328 passed the House Friday on a partisan vote – just as it did when it passed the House Finance Committee on Monday. It now heads to the Republican-controlled Senate, where it faces an uphill battle.
In the event the bill does make it through the Senate, which is unlikely, and signed by Gov. Hickenlooper, all U.S. presidential and vice presidential candidates would have to release their last five years of federal tax returns 90 days before the General Election.
The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office would have to post the returns on its website within seven days of receiving the filings.
If any candidate fails to release their tax returns, both they and their running mate would be disqualified from being on the official ballot.
The bill also modifies code for electors by requiring them to vote for a candidate whose name was on the ballot and complied with the tax return requirement.
Though Trump is technically not lawfully required to reveal his tax returns, his failure to do so breaks with decades of tradition of candidates releasing theirs to show the public how much they earn and what their tax rates are.
Trump and his camp have long maintained that he would release his returns once a supposed audit was finished, but IRS officials have said that audits do not bar people from releasing their returns.
More than half of Americans said in a recent poll they believed Trump should be forced to release his returns, and Colorado is one of among at least 24 states that have introduced similar legislation, though some legal experts are dubious about the bills’ legality.
Thousands of people rallied at Denver’s Civic Center Park last Saturday demanding Trump release his tax returns in a Tax Day march.
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Fight over Thompson Divide oil and gas leases heats up with Pitkin Co. lawsuit
PITKIN COUNTY, Colo. – A fight over oil and gas leases in the Thompson Divide area continues to heat up, as Pitkin County and an environmental nonprofit filed suit Wednesday to be sure that a November decision by the feds to cancel 25 leases in the area is upheld under the Trump administration.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court of Colorado by the Pitkin Board of County Commissioners and Carbondale nonprofit Wilderness Workshop, claims that the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Department of the Interior broke their own rules when they extended oil and gas leases for Houston-based SG Interests in the years following 2013. Continue reading
Bill awaiting governor’s signature would allow Colo. counties to levy special sales tax on pot
DENVER – A bill now awaiting Gov. John Hickenlooper’s signature would allow Colorado counties to impose and collect on a special marijuana sales tax – an ode to an ongoing spat between Adams County and three cities within the county over a tax there.
The House on Monday concurred with changes made by the Senate to House Bill 1203, which has undergone several changes since it was first heard in the House Local Government Committee in early March.
The bill sent to the governor’s desk would allow counties to levy the special sales tax in unincorporated parts of the county without voter approval, but an agreement between cities within the county on how pot would be taxed and what the money would go to would have to be signed off on.
If a local municipality gets voter approval to levy its own special sales tax, it would invalidate the county’s tax levy unless the municipality came to the aforementioned intergovernmental agreement.
Under the bill, said intergovernmental agreements would also allow the parties to decide what percentage of the special sales tax would go to the county, and how much would go to each municipality undersigned on the agreement.
Finally, under the bill, if voters approve the special sales tax, the county or municipality would be able to put the tax money toward the county or municipality’s general fund, or to any other special fund created by said county or municipality.
The bill comes in response to a yearslong battle between Adams County and the cities of Northglenn, Aurora and Commerce City, which sued the county over a 3 percent special sales tax in 2015 that the three cities argued hadn’t been approved by voters.
The Adams County District Court ruled in September 2015 that the tax would be allowed, but that decision was reversed by the Colorado Court of Appeals in December. It could now be taken up by the Colorado Supreme Court.
The special sales tax funds go to the Adams County Scholarship Fund and is matched by the Colorado Opportunity Scholarship Program. Both aim to give four-year scholarships to students who are part of free or reduced lunch programs.
Some sellers in the county argue that having a higher tax rate puts them at a competitive disadvantage.
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Aurora mother of 4 scheduled for deportation had been caught twice before, ICE says
DENVER – A new report shows immigration arrests rose by 32.6 percent in the first few weeks of the Trump administration as another Denver-area woman living in the country illegally faces deportation herself.
Last Friday, Denver7 reported that Maria de Jesus Jimenez-Sanchez, a mother of four living in Aurora, saw her request for a stay of deportation denied and was scheduled to be deported.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Carl Rusnok told Denver7 late Friday that Jimenez-Sanchez, whose real name is Karen Araujo-Jimenez, had indeed been denied her latest request for stay.
Rusnok said that Jimenez-Sanchez first entered the U.S. illegally in October 1999. ICE says that she was immediately confronted by federal agents and voluntarily returned to Mexico the same day.
She was then caught posing as another person while trying to enter the U.S. in Douglas, Arizona in May 2001, according to Rusnok, and was again deported immediately.
Jimenez-Sanchez’s lawyer, Jennifer Kain-Rios, said that her client had lived in Aurora since 1999.
ICE confirmed that Jimenez-Sanchez was taken into ICE custody again in December 2012. That lines up with the timeline Kain-Rios gave, in which she said Jimenez-Sanchez was pulled over and cited for driving without a license.
She spent six months in ICE custody. In May 2013, according to ICE, an immigration judge upheld a previous removal order for her and ordered her to be deported by the Department of Homeland Security.
But she had been granted a one-year stay of deportation a month earlier. The stays were extended for another year in May 2014, March 2015 and March 2016, Rusnok said, but her latest stay request was denied March 14 of this year.
She was picked up in Centennial Wednesday when she showed up for her routine immigration check-in despite knowing her stay had been denied, her lawyer says.
Her case is the third high-profile case involving women scheduled to be deported out of the Denver area. Jeanette Vizguerra and Ingrid LaTorre are both in sanctuary at Denver-area churches to stave off their deportations.
The cases come amid an increased effort by immigration officials under the Trump administration to deport people living in the country illegally no matter if they’ve been convicted of a violent crime or not.
In a story published by The Washington Post Sunday, the Post found that ICE arrested 21,362 undocumented immigrants from January through mid-March, compared to 16,104 during the same time period in 2016 – an increase of 32.6 percent.
The Post also found that the number of people arrested with no criminal records doubled, though almost three quarters of those arrested did have criminal records (an increase of 15 percent year-over-year).
And Rusnok noted Friday that anyone in violation of immigration laws is subject to arrest and possible deportation. He also noted that from FY 2012-16, between 41 and 45 percent of undocumented immigrants removed from the U.S. had no prior criminal convictions.
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Lawyer: ‘New evidence’ shows Aurora botched 2014 marijuana license lottery
AURORA, Colo. – A Denver-area marijuana company says it has new evidence the city of Aurora and the city’s marijuana enforcement division didn’t give it fair treatment when it tried to get one of the city’s marijuana licenses in August 2014.
The suit by Visaj Unity, LLC, which operates as Metro Cannabis, was first filed in late 2014 after the company was denied one of the Aurora Ward 2 licenses to operate a cannabis shop. Metro Cannabis now operates at least three other dispensaries in the Denver area, which operate under the name Silver Stem Fine Cannabis.
At the time, Aurora was using a lottery process to determine which bids would get the four shops in the ward.
The lawsuit has maintained that Metro Cannabis had actually tied with another applicant, Mountain States Group I LLC (MSG), but that the city’s code and the Aurora Marijuana Enforcement Division (AMED) wouldn’t allow for a tiebreaker despite the tie.
And Metro Cannabis maintains in a new filing that it has proof that AMED created the tie in the first place by rounding up the other company’s score, which accounted for various proposals made by each company as to how they would operate their shop should they be granted a license.
That new evidence, attorney Bob Hoban claims, shows that one of three reviewers who was tasked with deciding businesses’ scores in the lottery was actually an Aurora employee and thus not an “independent reviewer.” Hoban claims that the Aurora employee’s involvement in the process means Metro Cannabis did not receive due process in its application being evaluated.
Hoban also says that the city of Aurora has admitted it made a mistake in rounding up MSG’s score, and that it has “steadfastly refused to correct its error.”
“It is not plausible to believe that each of these…data entry errors randomly happened to be outcome-determinative in the absence of any intentional manipulation of scores by the AMED,” Hoban wrote in his latest court filing.
He also claims that AMED showed bias toward the owners of Metro Cannabis, whom were investigated in 2009 by Greenwood Village police for possible discrepancies involving a medical caregiver operation, despite no charges ever being filed.
“It appears that the AMED decided that Visaj should not be granted a license even though the AMED’s rules did not allow the AMED to take away points or otherwise deny an application based on criminal charges that were dropped by the prosecuting agency,” the filing says.
It also says that instead of hiring an independent attorney to act as a hearing officer in license appeals, the city instead hired Jason Batchelor, who oversees AMED, to be the hearing officer in Metro Cannabis’s case.
“Aurora’s reticence to provide pertinent information before, during and after the Oct. 13, 2014 administrative hearing demonstrates a calculated effort to deny Visaj a meaningful opportunity to challenge denial of the license,” Hoban wrote.
And still, Hoban argues, the city is breaking its own rules that put a two-year limit on how long a license winner can sit on a license before it has to start building its new facility. The filing says 3LP, one of the companies that received a license at the time, still has not broken ground on the facility it proposed back then.
The filing claims that Aurora city code has no remedies to allay the problem, and claims violations of the Colorado Constitution in that the company was depraved of its due process.
“The city of Aurora admits it made a mistake, but because the Aurora code doesn’t say what to do in cases of such mistakes, they don’t have to fix it,” co-owner Stan Zislis said.
A jury trial in the case is set for next Monday, April 24 in Adams County District Court. A spokesperson for the city of Aurora says the city does not comment on pending litigation.
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