A few years ago, Alamosa was awarded a modest grant from the federal government that the city used to create a program that keeps kids out of jail for petty crimes.
When a teenager steals from the local grocery store, the program conducts a victim-offender dialogue, sitting them across from the shop owner, who explains the hurt they’ve caused. If they were charged for fighting, they meet face-to-face with the victim and repair the relationship.
“If they’re not coming back to court, we know it’s working,” said Holly Martinez, the city’s clerk and court administrator.
The program diverts as many as 75 young first-time offenders away from the criminal justice system each year, the city says. But now the program itself is at risk.
“If the 2018 Byrne JAG grant funds do not arrive, Alamosa will either shut down the program or be compelled to find other funding sources — which are not likely to be found,” said Heather Brooks, city manager for the southern Colorado town, under oath earlier this month.
Byrne JAG is a federal grant program that helps state and local law enforcement agencies buy equipment and provide programs. The justice assistance grants (JAG) are named after Edward Byrne, a New York City police officer murdered in 1988 while protecting a Guyanese immigrant from firebombings.
The state of Colorado asked a federal judge last week to quickly rule in its favor and force the Justice Department to hand over millions of Byrne JAG dollars that have been held up by an immigration policy dispute between the state and the administration of President Donald Trump.
In its court filing Monday, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office asked U.S. District Judge John Kane to side with Colorado, attaching exhibits and affidavits that detail, for the first time, effects the dispute is having, or will soon have, on Colorado law enforcement.
The dispute
Between 2005 and 2017, Colorado received nearly $40 million in Byrne JAG money, according to the state. In October 2018, the Justice Department sent Colorado a congratulatory letter and said it would be awarded about $2.8 million in Byrne JAG grants for fiscal year 2018.
But there was a catch. States must comply with Justice Department conditions to receive the grants, and the Trump administration added several related to immigration. Colorado would need to ensure all police agencies receiving money share information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and allow ICE officers into their local jails.
“The state of Colorado … has no authority to force local and municipal agencies or government entities to meet these special conditions, and no means of enforcing repercussions against those that do not,” said Joe Thome, director of Colorado’s Division of Criminal Justice, in an affidavit Oct. 18. “DCJ has neither the funding nor the personnel to monitor local entities, some of whom may be located up to 300 miles from DCJ’s Denver office.”
Thome considered compliance with the Trump administration’s rules to be both “impossible” and detrimental to the relationship between immigrants and local police. “Colorado communities would be less safe, crime would increase, and the rate of unsolved cases would rise,” he said under oath earlier this month.
So, Thome told the Justice Department last October that he was accepting the grant funding but could not comply with the new conditions. In January 2019, the Justice Department wrote back to say Colorado could not receive the money without complying. The state responded with a lawsuit in March, claiming the conditions are unconstitutional.
The Justice Department is asking Kane, the judge, to dismiss Colorado’s lawsuit. It claims to have broad authority to impose conditions on law enforcement agencies receiving its grants.
“In other words, (Colorado) effectively argues that it should be permitted to reap the benefit of federal grant funds while ignoring the modest and lawful conditions that accompany them,” wrote Daniel Mauler, a Justice Department trial attorney, in a court filing this summer.
Both sides claim to be standing up for public safety. Mauler attached a written declaration from Caridad Cephas-Kimbrough, a deputy assistant director at ICE, who said under oath that when local governments don’t cooperate with ICE, it puts the public at greater risk “from criminal illegal aliens.”
The effects
The state’s court filing lists what equipment purchases and programs are on hold while the case makes its way through the legal system.
Thirty cities and counties from across the state would be helped, from Durango ($21,938 for police radios at Fort Lewis College) on the Western Slope to Leadville ($42,896 for officer safety) in the mountains, to Fort Morgan ($18,615 for crime scene investigation equipment) on the Eastern Plains.
Montezuma County needs a $100,000 grant to hire three deputies at the county courthouse, where “assaults by criminal defendants resulting in serious bodily injury” have occurred more than once in the past year, the sheriff said under oath last week. That courthouse’s four current deputies are stretched too thin, leaving courtrooms unsecured.
“Employees and the public are not safe as the situation currently exists,” Sheriff Steve Nowlin wrote in a sworn affidavit Tuesday, “and with a growing population resulting in a higher number of cases and visitors coming through the courtroom, this problem is only worsening.”
In Granby — population 2,000 — the police department had planned to buy a patrol car with the money. Police in the tiny town of Granada, near the Kansas border, need a $30,823 grant if they are to keep paying their clerk, who works with the city’s one full-time officer. In Bayfield — population 2,600 — the police department needs the grant to hire a deputy.
Joseph McIntyre, the marshal of Bayfield, says the new officer would spearhead community outreach programs: a citizen’s police academy and a junior police academy. Instead, the officer has not been hired, likely weakening public safety and security, McIntyre said in a sworn affidavit.
“If we are required to provide information on individuals’ immigration status, immigrants will not feel comfortable communicating or sharing valuable information with Bayfield officers, and this will be a detriment to the police work Bayfield does,” McIntyre added, referring to the Trump administration’s conditions for acquiring Byrne JAG money.
Denver has lost out on six grants worth about $310,000. At the Denver Sheriff Department, a grant would pay for an employee who helps jail inmates get treatment and re-entry assistance. Many of the other grants are to help at-risk teens in the city’s poorest neighborhoods and public housing. Several employees will be laid off if the grant money is not received, city officials have warned under oath.
If Colorado loses its case in federal court, it could go years without Byrne JAG dollars, depending on the outcome of the 2020 election. The Trump administration has shown no sign of backing down on its immigration policies, and Colorado created a law this year that further restricts local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE.
In Alamosa, that could mean an end to a program that has kept young, one-time offenders out of the criminal justice system. In Bayfield, it could mean one fewer officer patrolling small town streets. In inner-city Denver, fewer after-school options for wayward teenagers.
“Withholding the funds,” Thome said under oath, “has had an overall negative impact on the welfare, safety, and security of Coloradans.”
