Editorial: Congresswoman’s accusation that Denver mayor violated federal law is “bull”

In a heartless show of cruelty, U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida, said Wednesday she will push for a criminal investigation into the humanitarian aid four U.S. mayors provided to refugees and other immigrants who were bussed to their cities beginning in 2022.

Luna said during the congressional hearing on sanctuary cities that she wasn’t trying to “bully” the mayors, but her actions will give every person in this country pause before they offer charity and care for the downtrodden and poor with questionable legal immigration status.

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called in the mayors of Denver, Boston, Chicago and New York to answer questions about sanctuary policies intended to prevent local law enforcement from participating in immigration enforcement.

The more than five-hour-long hearing highlighted all the absurdities of America’s broken immigration system from threatening to prosecute mayors who kept people from freezing to death to forcing ICE agents to chase someone just released from jail around a parking lot when local officers could have just handed the individual over.

Luna wants to criminalize the care Denver provided to refugees from Venezuela and immigrants from other parts of Central and South America by defining it as “harboring.”

The law – Title 8 Section 1324 – defines harboring as someone who knowingly “conceals harbors or shields from detection” someone who is in the U.S. in violation of immigration law.

The intent of that law is not to prevent people such as Denver Mayor Mike Johnston from opening cold-weather shelters for those who arrived in the city beginning in the winter of 2022. Furthermore, Johnston’s administration believed so strongly that the immigrants it assisted came here legally after making contact with border patrol, it helped thousands of them file for asylum and get legal work permits.

Did some of those who stayed in shelters cross the southern border with no intent of claiming asylum? Of course, and tragically, some of those individuals went on to commit crimes as members of the Tren de Aragua gang. But Denver did not knowingly shelter those individuals. The city merely offered life-saving space on the floors of recreation centers to anyone who was in need. Later, city officials helped people find apartments or other short-term housing solutions. The intent of finding people housing was never to shield them from deportation. The immigrant camps that were forming were unsafe and unsanitary and were harming our communities.

Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury, a Democrat from New Mexico, summed up Luna’s accusations well. “It’s total bull(expletive),” she said after thanking the mayors for their service.

Amid all the silly theater on display at Wednesday’s congressional hearing on sanctuary cities, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, brought substance and nuance to the conversation, which was supposed to focus on municipal policies around deportation and detention.

Jordan asked Denver Mayor Mike Johnston about an incident a few days ago when Denver Sheriff’s deputies released Abraham Gonzalez, who had been in jail for almost a year, to immigration officials waiting in the parking lot for him. Jordan wanted to know why Denver didn’t just hand the criminal – arrested in Denver for aggravated assault – directly over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, given that ICE had a lawful warrant.

According to a news release from city officials, Gonzalez ran from the ICE agents, forcing them to wrestle him to the ground. Jordan said one agent was assaulted, and one deployed a Taser.

Jordan wanted to know why ICE officers couldn’t have just entered the jail to get Gonzalez in a safe and secure transfer.

“That’s how stupid your policy is,” Jordan said.

He has a point.

Johnston said he has reached out to ICE to see if there is a better way to hand over people for whom ICE has a lawful detainer or deportation order.

This is the true debate about sanctuary cities. The question is to what degree city and state officials should assist federal officers in enforcing immigration laws.

Some of the answers to these questions are easy – police officers should not be asking residents if they are U.S. citizens as part of their work to keep Coloradans safe. Police officers have a hard enough job enforcing Colorado’s criminal statute without also having to be up-to-date with what immigrants from what countries who arrived on what dates have been granted Temporary Protected Status. Also, Denver should allow ICE agents into their facilities when handing over a person for deportation to avoid a wild chase through the parking lot where someone could get hurt.

But some sticky questions remain. Should Denver hold suspects past their release date based on an ICE request that isn’t backed by a warrant or lawful deportation order? Some judges have ruled that is unconstitutional.

Sanctuary cities – like Denver, Chicago, Boston and New York – have said they will not hold individuals for ICE beyond the court-ordered release date. The name “sanctuary” is a misnomer. Police and sheriffs aren’t offering illegal immigrants sanctuary from federal law enforcement, but they are refusing to violate the rights of individuals. Once ICE has a lawful order to deport or detain someone, then Johnston made it clear Denver officials will notify ICE of the date and time of release and have done so successfully more than 1,200 times since he was in office.

U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Republican from Wisconsin, asked the mayors testifying whether they supported the U.S. having and enforcing immigration laws and whether everyone who violates those immigration laws should be deported.

Johnston didn’t answer the question, but he should have.

U.S. immigration law has been failing for so long as to have been rendered unenforceable. Deporting the more than 10 million individuals whose only crime is a misdemeanor immigration offense would tear apart families and upend peaceful communities.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu gave a succinct answer: “I do not support mass deportations.”

Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight, quickly responded: “I don’t think anyone is calling for mass deportations.”

President Donald Trump promised Americans the night before the hearings that he is requesting funding from Congress to “complete the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than current record holder President Dwight D. Eisenhower.”

That threat is why Colorado and Johnston are right to keep an arms-length distance between ICE operations and city and state law enforcement efforts. Trump may have the power to round up and deport people who have lived in America for decades and contributed to our communities with no legal problems other than their immigration violations, but Coloradans don’t have to support him.

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Editorial: Reckless federal cuts will hurt Colorado — layoffs and empty offices — lawmakers need a plan

No one knows for sure how America’s economy will react to a drastic pullback on spending and employment because it hasn’t been done for two generations.

We urge caution as the White House rapidly cuts jobs and programs, but such prudence likely must come from Congress. After decades of being unable to cut the deficit and begin paying down the debt, now is the moment for Congress to rise to the occasion and replace the sledgehammer being wielded by the White House with something more artful, such as a ball pein.

U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper – two long-time fiscal moderates with bipartisan credentials — should lead a charge. The likelihood of two Democrats succeeding when Republicans have the House and Senate is low, but it’s better than the alternative of crying about Elon Musk being unelected.

Shutting down the U.S. government in protest of the cuts, will only make matters worse for federal employees and anyone in need of services from the U.S. government. Democrats who agree that the U.S. can’t sustain this level of spending and Republicans with concerns about the president’s approach can unite around legislation that begins the slow retraction of money from the U.S. economy.

Bold, meaningful cuts are needed. But indiscriminate slashing that harms more Americans than it helps is a blatantly cruel and vengeful act by the Trump administration. Congress, which holds the purse strings, is at fault for not wielding its power.

There are reasons to worry that President Donald Trump’s rescission plans could hit Colorado hard in the coming months. There are about 57,000 federal workers in Colorado. Let’s assume the state’s strong job market could easily absorb 10% to 15% of those employees losing their jobs as long as things remain stable in other parts of our economy. Gov. Jared Polis issued a press release of support for laid-off workers, outlining how they could file for the state’s unemployment insurance to cover some of their lost wages while they look for another job. He also noted that the state has 60,000 job openings at the moment.

That won’t work, however, if federal funding to states is also drastically slashed and the state finds itself cutting jobs and freezing hiring as well, or if tariffs impact businesses in the private sector and cause layoffs.

Far less easy to absorb will be the commercial real estate that could be vacated. The Denver Post reported last week that the federal government rents 4.1 million square feet of commercial real estate in this state and that 90% of that is in Denver, Larimer, Jefferson, Arapahoe, El Paso, Boulder and Adams counties.

Terminated leases will add empty commercial real estate space to a market already struggling to rebound from the change to work from home.

Our military bases employ thousands of civilians alongside thousands of enlisted members. Colorado is also home to significant military contractors, meaning cuts to the Department of Defense spending are likely to ripple through our private sector as well.

Colorado is also home to a base of scientists who work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden and the Geologic Hazards Science Center in Golden.

Bennet and Hickenlooper should lead Colorado’s House members in a thoughtful response to the cuts. If Democrats don’t come forward with their own proposal for eliminating the deficit over time, then Republicans will only be emboldened to continue with this executive branch power-grab.

For example, Congress can easily push back on the 7,000 Internal Revenue Service employees laid off last Thursday across the nation. Cutting staff from the IRS likely will not save money as the IRS is one department that largely pays its own way by recovering unpaid taxes from people who either accidentally or intentionally underpay. If layoffs aren’t going to actually net the federal government money, there is no way to justify them.

Congress could pass legislation requiring the White House to restore the IRS to full funding and the full employment levels necessary to enforce our tax laws. Whether or not Republicans would ever agree to such a pushback on policy from the White House is another question. The GOP has also spent the last 10 years unfairly vilifying IRS employees.

Americans expect Congress to exercise its constitutional duty to check the powers of the White House. The last time Congress attempted to put its foot down on Trump’s actions was over funding for the border wall, and in a show of weakness, lawmakers backed down.

America didn’t rack up $36 trillion in debt in a year, and we shouldn’t try to pay it all off in a single president’s administration. Eliminating the $1.83 trillion deficit (which has only grown since last fiscal year) may not even be possible without tax increases. Trump has said he plans to use tariffs to that effect, which will only work if Americans are still spending money on discretionary goods.

We need a long-term plan to stabilize our finances without tanking our economy. Colorado’s elected leaders need to step up now with a plan of their own that pushes back on this reckless approach to cutting spending.

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Editorial: Stuck behind crashes and spin outs in I-70 ski traffic? There is a better way for Colorado

Coloradans — and our many lovely visitors — expect and grudgingly tolerate stop-and-go traffic in the mountains on ski weekends. But every time it snows those jams turn into blockages that snarl not just the interstate but nearby mountain towns as on-ramps back up to street lights, block business entrances and cause headaches for locals.

One small change — allowing vendors to sell and install chains along Interstate 70 — could help reduce the number of crashes.

Dangerous winter driving conditions take our mountain corridors from tolerable to intolerable, from three hours in heavy traffic to a six-hour odyssey. Even four-wheel drive and all-wheel drive cars, trucks, and tractor-trailers can’t get traction if the road is pure ice unless they have chains or studded snow tires. That risk of losing control is why Colorado passed the vehicle traction law requiring a minimum tire condition and requiring commercial vehicles to use chains in slick conditions.

Clearly, those laws are not enough. Over Presidents Day weekend, Interstate 70 and Vail Pass were, at times parking lots, at times completely closed and frequently unsafe due to slick roads and a lack of traction.

Senate Bill 69 would add to our existing laws and make everyone safer and less miserable during ski season.

There are three major obstacles for drivers — whether they are in passenger cars or are licensed commercial drivers — to put chains on to give vehicles better traction in slick conditions.

The first is worrying about safety while stopped on the side of the road in hazardous conditions. Even a simple fender bender becomes a fatal crash if a pedestrian is involved.

The second is not having the right equipment (even though the law requires trucks and two-wheel drive vehicles to carry chains from Sept. 1 through May 31).

The third is a lack of knowledge about how to put on chains or even a reluctance to get out in the cold and mess with snow and ice-packed tires.

Senate Bill 69 eliminates all three of those barriers to safer driving conditions and fewer winter-weather-related accidents.

Colorado would allow private companies to sell, install, and remove tire chains along mountain highways. The third-party vendors would have permits for specific locations that are deemed safe for pulling over and putting on or taking off chains.

Washington has allowed this practice for 20 years and The Colorado Sun reported that it generally costs $25 to install chains on a passenger vehicle and $10 to remove, while large trucks are $25 per tire installation and $5 per tire for removal.

If you’ve ever put chains on your own car in freezing temperatures and blowing snow, that sounds like a pretty good deal. The hard part about chains, too, is not knowing how long you will need them. Sometimes, on the west side of the Eisenhower–Johnson Memorial Tunnel, drivers need chains, but the east side is perfectly clear. Most chain manufacturers say it is unsafe to drive more than 30 miles per hour with chains on tires, and driving on dry roads can cause the chains to break and damage the car or cause an accident.

Having knowledgeable vendors on the side of the road to advise where they are set up to remove chains can alleviate that concern.

This legislation is a huge win for Colorado. We only wish it had been in place for this winter season where epic powder days have been marred by monstrous traffic jams.

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Editorial: The legacy of Columbine survivor Anne Marie Hochhalter — hope for an America divided over gun violence

Nearly 26 years after the world watched teens escape from windows at Columbine High School covered in blood, the toll of that mass shooting continues the incalculable ripple of devastation that flows from gun violence in America.

Anne Marie Hochhalter, a 17-year-old senior at Columbine when she was shot in the spine by two deranged classmates, died this week at 43 possibly from complications with the injuriesshe sustained that tragic day. She outlived 12 of her schoolmates and a teacher who died April 20, 1999. Austin Eubanks, who was shot twice, died at 37 following a long battle with an opioid addiction that was a result of the shooting. Both are survived by Richard Castaldo, Patrick Ireland and Sean Graves who also were severely wounded and have continued to honor the legacy of those who died at Columbine.

After Columbine, there was a mass movement for change. Hope was palpable that this would never happen again. Police reviewed mistakes they made in delaying their entry into the building. Laws were changed so that the shooters would not have been able to get their guns in Colorado legally. A hotline was established for students, parents and teachers to report threats, which has prevented some plotted attacks. And Coloradans united around the survivors and their families.

Columbine High School shooting survivor dies decades after tragedy. Her tenacious spirit is remembered.

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But then the mass shootings continued – at schools, at concerts, at offices, and at parades. The pace began to pick up sometime in the last decade. Some shootings were orchestrated by foreign entities as terrorist attacks, but most were home-grown Americans slaughtering their friends, neighbors, and sometimes complete strangers with a bloodthirst that is unimaginable to anyone who hasn’t seen armed combat in war.

Also, this week, street signs on C-470 were finally updated to reflect the change of Lucent Boulevard to honor Kendrick Castillo. Kendrick was killed during the 2019 Highlands Ranch school shooting. He threw himself on one of the gunmen, saving the lives of his classmates, but suffering a fatal wound in the process. Now Kendrick Castillo Way reminds us all of a teenager who shouldn’t have had to be a hero in his high school classroom but sacrificed himself to save others.

His parents visited his grave every day for five years.

Sadly, these tragedies have divided the nation, and little hope remains that there will be an end to the violence.

Some survivors have dedicated their lives to preventing more ripples from forming, only to be accused of being un-American because of the politics and rights that envelop guns. In Colorado, Sen. Tom Sullivan’s son was killed in the Aurora Theater shooting. He sponsored a bill that passed the Colorado Senate that will make it harder for people to buy semi-automatic weapons with detachable magazines, like the one used to kill Sullivan’s son, Alex Sullivan, and 11 others at a midnight screening of Dark Knight Rises in 2012.

Perhaps instead of derision, Sullivan should be met with compassion as he seeks to protect others from gun violence.

Families who have lost their children at school shootings now support one another through an informal network, but part of the toll taken by these mass shootings has been the suicides that follow — Anne Marie Hochhalter’s mother shot herself just as the family was moving into a new house that would be accessible for Anne Marie, Jeremy Richman killed himself after his son was killed at Newtown Elementary School, and two teen survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting killed themselves in 2019.

The trauma and loss was insurmountable for some.

But somehow Anne Marie Hochhalter endured. She thrived and lived her life well. She loved her animals, her friends and the ocean, which she only got to visit once.

“She was fiercely independent,” Sue Townsend told The Denver Post. “She was a fighter. She’d get knocked down — she struggled a lot with health issues that stemmed from the shooting — but I’d watch her pull herself back up. She was her best advocate and an advocate for others who weren’t as strong in the disability community.”

Townsend’s stepdaughter Lauren Townsend was killed at Columbine and said she “acquired” Anne Marie as a daughter in the aftermath of the shooting and Anne Marie’s mother’s suicide.

Anne Marie sets a high bar for Coloradans just as Castillo does. She sent the mother of one of the Columbine shooters a note of forgiveness, saying “Bitterness is like swallowing a poison pill and expecting the other person to die.’ It only harms yourself. I have forgiven you and only wish you the best.”

Perhaps there is still hope that Americans can unite and stop new ripples of trauma and loss from consuming so much that is good in this world.

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Editorial: An easy answer for Lakewood’s fight over housing near Belmar Park

Just how messy has the fight over a vacant office building near Belmar Park become? Well, no one has been able to get any construction projects – not single-family homes, duplexes, or large condos — approved since Dec. 7, thanks to an absolute catastrophe of public policy developed by citizens opposed to the development.

The Denver Post’s John Aguilar reported on the disaster and how the new policy, as it’s written and interpreted, harms families who are just trying to build a home on their own personal lot.

The good news is the solution should be simple: repeal the ordinance and instead enact something that actually makes sense. Lakewood City Council approved the ordinance at the behest of the group Save Open Space Lakewood and Save Belmar Park which had gathered 6,000 signatures to put it on the ballot in a special election. Rather than holding a special election, Lakewood City Council enacted it immediately with the hope the issue would be resolved quickly in the courts.

The reason the city is now applying the requirements for open space to single-family lots has to do with the wording in the new ordinance applying the open space requirement to everyone seeking a building permit — not just projects with large site plans.

Of course, a very small project on a single or double lot should not be required to set aside public land or even to pay a fee instead of setting aside public land. However, master-planned communities developing a hundred acres should be required to set aside land for public use, and a major condominium development should be rewarded for density but required to have reasonable setbacks and sidewalks. The difference is between a subdivision of a hundred families not having access to a park, and a single family not having a park in their backyard.

The real fight is over an important urban infill project proposed at 777 S. Yarrow St. The project would demolish the existing office building and replace it with a five-story condo or apartment building with 412 units and 542 parking spaces.

It sounds like good news, except the proposed building is adjacent to Belmar Park and there are legitimate concerns about how close the new building (and a stamped concrete access road) will be to the park. Those concerns do not mean the city should or can force the developer to give them land for a park, but it does mean the city should be offering concessions and incentives to get the builder to do the right thing.

Save Open Space Lakewood was able to change the city ordinance so that no one could pay a fee to get out of the city’s requirement that large projects set aside land for parks. Instead of complying with the new law, the developer of 777 S Yarrow Street filed a lawsuit claiming the city could not force them to hand over some of their land for a park.

The city had already revised the parkland dedication rules and increased the fee in lieu of dedicated parkland to $432,727 per acre (a 70% increase). That is still short of what an acre of land is worth in Lakewood, meaning it does not give the city enough money to buy an acre of land to dedicate to park space.

The proposed site plan from Kairoi Properties shows a proposal to put a stamped concrete driveway just a few feet from their lot line adjacent to the park. The documents claim that the development will provide 66,207 square feet of open space (permeable land), but the building design has most of that square footage in internal courtyards and a private pool area rather than abutting the city’s open space and heavily used park. The existing office building is set far back from the park with a large parking lot adjacent to the walking trail.

None of this is good or courteous design.

The developer should go back to the drawing board and come up with a way to create a larger buffer of trees and permeable surfaces between the park and their development. We aren’t saying that buffer needs to become public land. The developer can decide whether or not they would rather pay the fee or open up that land for public use. But one thing is certain, paving the surface right up to a few feet from the lot line is not being a good neighbor to the thousands of people who enjoy the park.

This is a cautionary tale about two mistakes — the first is the unintended consequences of citizen initiatives and the second is city ordinances that fail to demand good design. Both can be rectified by Lakewood City Council.

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Editorial: Musk’s bid for OpenAI exposed the non-profit’s hypocritical theft of copyrighted work

Editor’s note: This was written by The Chicago Tribune’s editorial board.

In a court filing Wednesday, lawyers for Elon Musk said that he would withdraw his consortium’s eye-popping bid of $94.7 billion for Sam Altman’s OpenAI if its board of directors would agree to retain its status as a charity, rather than go ahead with a planned, potentially lucrative conversion to for-profit status.

Musk, who along with Altman was one of OpenAI’s founders in 2019, says his bid was an effort to ensure that OpenAI does not become subsumed by Microsoft rather than remaining, in Musk’s words, an “open-source, safety-focused force for good.”

While we are not taking sides in who should control the company, Musk’s gambit highlights the hypocrisy of OpenAI’s business model in which it masquerades as a nonprofit despite being founded on the theft of many decades of work by artists, academics and journalists, including many who work for this and other newspapers and media companies.

In creating its premiere product, ChatGPT, OpenAI gathered and scraped copyrighted content from across the Web to create an app that smoothly repackages that content as its own. As it becomes increasingly popular, it threatens to replace the very sources of the content used to train it in the first place.

Altman has acknowledged ChatGPT could not have been made without copyrighted content, but the company has yet to fairly compensate those creators for the use of their work. Consequently, the owners of the Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, the New York Times, and others, have thus sued OpenAI, claiming it illegally used this data to “train” its systems.

In a slice of rich irony, OpenAI itself began to whine a couple of weeks ago when a Chinese rival, DeepSeek, garnered sudden attention. Altman’s operation subsequently claimed that DeepSeek may have used data generated by OpenAI technologies to teach similar skills to its own rival systems, a process known in this field as “distillation.’

We know all too well about distillation, which the dictionary defines as the “extraction of the essential meaning or most important aspects of something.”

Open AI has copied our content, created by generations of human labor and made up of dogged reporting, cogent analyses and critical thinking. It completely forgoes the reality that much of this work could not have been done without reporters showing up in real life to ask powerful people the right questions even as they ran for the hills.

We call that journalism and that’s the true societal force for good. If you want to “deep seek” for something, turn to a newsroom.

Our work was never “open-sourced” and for good reasons. We’re professionals and many of us have mouths to feed. Moreover, we believe our content had and continues to have value, and since you are reading this, so must you.

So whichever billionaire prevails in the battle for OpenAI, don’t be fooled by all this talk of altruism.

The purveyors of artificial intelligence are far more than distillers.

They are stealing the whole barrel.

We’re the brewers and we deserve to be compensated.

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Editorial: ICE walks a thin line in Aurora and Denver as it searches for 100 “gang members” but knocks on everyone’s door

An unidentified federal employee said a lot of the right things outside of apartments in east Denver Wednesday morning – they were looking for criminals and didn’t want to go door to door harassing residents but were left no choice by jail officials who refused to release criminals to their custody.

But a video and reports from inside the apartments, and another complex in west Aurora, tell a different story.

Rather than showing residents lawful warrants to search for known criminals, reports from residents were that officials were knocking randomly on doors and asking if anyone knew anyone undocumented. Officials may have had arrest warrants for specific people or search warrants for certain apartments — they said they did — but their actions went far beyond that scope.

That is not normal behavior for officials who are carrying out the long-stated purpose of Immigration and Customs Enforcement – “protect the homeland by enforcing immigration law against those who present a danger to our national security or are a threat to public safety.”

Colorado’s Enforcement and Removal Operations have long made it clear – as currently stated on their website – that they are working to remove those “who undermine the safety of our nation’s communities and the integrity of the U.S. immigration laws.”

The family who shared a FaceTime video with Denver7 of an official with a covered face standing at their door met neither of those standards. And yet they were targeted by ICE for questioning — in their own home at the Edge of Lowry.

The unnamed official in the video outside what looked like the Cedar Run apartment complex near George Washington High School in Denver explained why such activities were occurring: “Unfortunately we have to come to the communities because we don’t get the cooperation we need from the jails. It would be so much easier and so much safer for our officers and agents if we could take these people into custody from a safe environment, but if we have to come out in the community to do this, that’s what we’re going to do.”

There is some truth to that.

Colorado’s law enforcement officials do not send ICE a list of people in their custody, although if ICE has a valid deportation order or a detainer for an individual in custody, local officials will share details about when that person is going to be released. Miscommunication and mistiming – sometimes with tragic results – have been documented. A Colorado law in 2019 makes it even harder for local officials to cooperate with immigration officials.

We’ve long called for better communication and collaboration between local officials and ICE about dangerous individuals who are eligible for deportation.

The pendulum has swung too far, however.

President Donald Trump’s pledge to deport millions of people who are living and working in the United States without legal status will tear apart hard-working families. Now is not the time for Colorado to lessen its support for immigrants without legal status who have proven themselves to be good members of the community even though their arrival was unlawful.

Yes, deport dangerous criminals who are selling drugs and terrorizing Coloradans with gun violence and assault.

But don’t go door to door randomly asking people for their papers to prove they are in this country legally. We fully support federal operations to crack down on gun violence in our communities, whether the perpetrators have legal U.S. status or not.

We do not support harassing families, including recent asylum seekers, who are just trying to live their lives and stay out of trouble.

ICE said it was searching for more than 100 known members of Tren de Aragua in Aurora. The operation was in conjunction with the FBI, DEA, Customs and Border Protection, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Marshals Service.

We wish officials luck in apprehending and charging those 100 individuals with crimes and then getting lawful deportation orders. We hope they remain safe in their pursuit of these criminals.

However, they can do that without striking fear into the hearts of Colorado’s immigrant community, who are now wondering if they need to carry their visas, parole documents, asylum papers or other paperwork with them everywhere they go.

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Blinded by Showbiz: The Stanley Hotel and the Sundance Film Festival shouldn’t get millions in state investments

We can follow the misguided path that has led state officials to purchase the Stanley Hotel for a cool $475 million plus interest, and we want to put up some serious roadblocks to make sure future public officials don’t follow.

Colorado’s government should not be in the hotel and hospitality business.

Just like how our government shouldn’t be in the business of underwriting film festivals with millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

But here we are, in need of a drastic course correction.

The Stanley Hotel is uniquely Coloradan. Separate plans are underway to use state-tax dollars to build a Stanley Film Center to honor horror films like The Shining, which made the Estes Park Hotel far more than a historic lodging option for those headed to Rocky Mountain National Park.

The Sundance Film Festival will bring millions of dollars in revenue to the Boulder area as 60,000 affluent tourists descend on the town for one of the world’s pre-eminent independent film screenings.

And yet, we can confidently say that these two deals – purchasing The Stanley and giving tax credits to Sundance – stretch the state’s mission of economic development and historic preservation too far.

We can see the writing on the wall with The Stanley Hotel. Originally the deal was slightly different but still concerning.

Arizona’s Community Finance Corporation was to act as a middleman – a pass-through if you will — that would oversee the purchase and updating of the facility. According to the nonprofit’s website it exists solely to facilitate these types of government projects: “The governmental entity typically takes possession of the completed facility when construction is complete and begins paying base rent equivalent to the debt service. In most cases, the project financing is paid back over time through lease payments and ownership of the project transfers to the governmental entity for a nominal cost when the debt is retired.”

But the middleman was cut out of the deal – perhaps for the better — and now Colorado will purchase the hotel through its own subsidiary. Our eyebrows are raised.

The executive director of the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority was optimistic that not only could they pay off the debt but that there would be a share of profits remaining after the fact to help fund CEFCA’s main mission of helping other Colorado cultural and educational facilities with needed bonds and loans.

We see a vast difference between CECFA taking on the risk of issuing bonds to private schools and charter schools to build or upgrade their campuses, and taking on the risk of operating a hospitality business through a subsidiary. And where does this slippery slope end. Will the authority now rescue the Brown Palace in downtown Denver from its financial turmoil? And what if the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs suffers a devastating loss of business due to some unforeseen event?

Colorado should be investing in our history, heritage, and culture. But passing legislation specifically so CECFA can overstep its original intent of helping to finance independent projects feels like a risky precedent to set.

As does the precedent that would be set by House Bill 1005, a narrowly written tax credit that would only ever be available to the owners of the Sundance Film Festival should they decide to bring their 11 day event to someplace in Colorado. The tax credit would be fully refundable – meaning Sundance wouldn’t have to actually have any Colorado tax liability to get the cash – and would be worth $34 million over 10 years. In tax year 2027, the festival operators would get a $4 million check as long as they had 100,000 in-person ticket sales.

The bill is exactly the kind of economic development arms race that Utah and Colorado should not engage in. If Utah is able to keep Sundance, Colorado should be happy for our neighbors. If Sundance comes to Colorado, we should be thrilled at the opportunity, not wondering for a decade whether they would have come without the bag of cash.

It’s not too late for Colorado lawmakers to correct course and kill House Bill 1005, and we’ll just have to wait and see if getting into the hospitality business in Estes Park is as bad of an idea as we suspect it is.

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Editorial: The one thing in the West that Trump actually can take credit for this week

Look, folks, we generally don’t care who gets the credit for good things around the West, so long as progress is made and people’s lives are improving (or heck, just plodding along about the same.)

But it irks us a bit when a New Yorker comes to town claiming credit for all sorts of things he didn’t actually do, so we’d like to take a quick moment to set the record straight about what President Donald Trump has and has not accomplished in his first week back in office.

Trump did not orchestrate the months-long investigation that led to the arrest of 41 undocumented immigrants in Adams County, several of whom are tied to the international crime ring Tren de Aragua, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, which carried out the raid after a months-long investigation in partnership with immigration agents. We celebrate the arrest of these individuals who had terrorized people in Aurora with their guns, armed robberies and assaults.

But The Colorado Springs Gazette trumpeted it as a victory for the Trump administration, reporting that the raid came as part of the president’s order to increase ICE raids. Do we know for sure that Trump didn’t order the DEA to execute their warrant earlier than intended? No, but we do know that government officials have been working on shutting down the gang long before Trump came to Aurora to draw attention to the problem.

Colorado’s new congressman, Gabe Evans, also attempted to give credit to Trump, writing: “We’re only one week into the Trump Admin and already seeing how strong immigration policies make #CO08 a safer place to raise a family and pursue the American Dream.”

The DEA made it abundantly clear that this investigation has been ongoing for months and an opportunity arose to capture many of the wanted suspects in the drug ring because of a party advertised on social media.

Less than a day later, Trump claimed credit for turning back on a water source in California, claiming he used “emergency powers” to send in U.S. troops to turn the water on and get it “flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest and beyond.” Hilariously Trump claimed this water had been shut off as part of a conspiracy to create a false shortage of water and fake drought conditions in California.

In reality, the water pumps had been turned off for three days as part of a maintenance issue. Water supplies in California are actually pretty good at the moment thanks to a wet year and careful water planning.

Were mistakes made during the catastrophic wildfires surrounding Los Angeles? Absolutely, and we hope the state investigates why some fire hydrants lost water pressure during the firestorm. It is critical information that every city facing the risk of urban wildfires needs to know and prepare for.

But Trump’s tweet claiming officials deliberately are withholding water from southern California is so far-fetched as to warrant a response, setting the record straight. Water allocation is not something we take lightly in the West, and Trump can posture all he wants but Coloradans know how hard a drought can be and that we must prepare. We also know our water officials don’t conspire against us to create false scarcity.

But there is one thing Trump can take full credit for, and that is dozens of Coloradans (and perhaps hundreds in the next month) who have lost their jobs because he cut federal grants to critical organizations across the state. This move came arbitrarily and with no review or debate from Congress. Many of these programs were both authorized and funded by Congress, and Trump is abusing his power.

We know that many Coloradans live paycheck to paycheck and this decision will harm families across the state as they try to get by.

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Editorial: Denver’s fight to preserve the Park Hill conservation easement rewarded with 155-acre park

Denverites knew inherently that a conservation easement shouldn’t be lifted on one of our last chances to create a large park in this city. So community members rallied against plans to lift the easement to allow development of the old golf course in northeast Denver.

As a result, Denver will get a new 155 acre park.

To put that in perspective, nearby City Park – the crown jewel of metro-Denver — is about 320 acres and includes the Denver Zoo, The Museum of Nature and Science and the City Park Pavilion and boat dock. And just in case anyone is bereft of the Park Hill Golf Club, City Park Golf Course was recently renovated and is open for business offering unparalleled views of the downtown skyline framed by Front Range mountains.

This new park – yet to be named – will transform northeast Denver.

Residents should dream big. We know that the Clayton community west of Colorado Boulevard needs easy access to a recreation center, especially one with an outdoor pool and a library too. But perhaps residents crave open spaces with long trails and natural features.

The possibilities are endless – dog parks, skate parks, basketball, tennis, and pickle ball courts, Nordic trails in the winter and an epic cross-country race course in the summer, flower gardens, and community gardens for fresh produce.

Mayor Mike Johnston deserves credit for the shift he has made on this issue. While running for office he supported the development of the land – as a way to bring much-needed housing to the area and a grocery store to a food desert.

But after voters upheld the conservation easement blocking development Johnston got to work to acquire the land from Westside Development. The land swap he orchestrated is a good deal for taxpayers who will get 155 acres of prime real estate in exchange for a slightly smaller amount of land out by the Denver airport.

We could not have asked for more, and we also extend our gratitude to the ownership of Westside for working with the city for an amicable solution to what was a difficult position. We hope they find success as they seek to develop the land in Adams County.

Colorado is a place that prides itself on recreation and access to the great outdoors. Our urban core needs more places for kids to explore and for adults to unwind. This park could be the legacy of both Johnston who saw it across the finish line and former Mayor Wellington Webb who was in charge of buying the conservation easement long before it was clear how valuable this land would become.

If we could transport this land to another part of Denver – one where there is a dearth of parks and an abundance of concrete we would, but that is not how land conservation works. City and state parks often are located simply by who is willing to donate the land or where the state happened to already own a parcel.

All of Denver should engage with the city to plan for this new park. It is located just off of Interstate 70 and there is access to light rail and bus transit. So while the park is known for now as Park Hill Golf Club, eventually it will be a regional draw for the entire city and the entire state.

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