{"id":22657,"date":"2025-04-17T12:16:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T18:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/hickenlooper-calls-on-supreme-court-to-hold-trump-officials-in-contempt\/"},"modified":"2025-04-17T18:16:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T18:16:03","slug":"hickenlooper-calls-on-supreme-court-to-hold-trump-officials-in-contempt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/hickenlooper-calls-on-supreme-court-to-hold-trump-officials-in-contempt\/","title":{"rendered":"Hickenlooper calls on Supreme Court to hold Trump officials in contempt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"U.S.
U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado speaks during an appearance in Eagle on Tuesday. (David O. Williams\/Colorado Newsline)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

EAGLE, Colorado \u2014 U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper on Tuesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to start holding Trump administration officials in contempt of court and \u201clock them up\u201d if they refuse to comply with the court\u2019s unanimous order to \u201cfacilitate\u201d the return<\/a> of a Maryland man wrongly deported<\/a> to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Supreme Court\u2019s got to step up and say, \u2018All right, we\u2019re going to start holding people in contempt of court.\u2019 They have the ability to sanction,\u201d Hickenlooper said in an interview with Colorado Newsline. \u201cThey can take the people, the officials who deny any culpability or any responsibility, they can bring them in and force them to testify, to come to the court. And if they don\u2019t come, they\u2019re in contempt, and then you lock them up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following a roundtable press event with local officials<\/a> worried about what massive cuts to the federal workforce will mean for mountain towns surrounded by federally owned forests<\/a>, Hickenlooper took questions from local and state media.<\/p>\n

Hickenlooper was asked about President Donald Trump\u2019s statements on Monday in a joint White House press conference<\/a> with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele at which Trump urged Bukele to build more prisons and told him \u201chomegrowns are next\u201d \u2014 an apparent reference to U.S. citizens. Bukele reportedly replied, \u201call right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not think he meant citizens. I disagree with you,\u201d Hickenlooper said in Eagle on Tuesday, but he was told by a reporter that Trump repeated the remarks on Fox News<\/a>, emphasizing he means \u201chomegrown criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, he wants to send U.S. citizens down to \u2026?\u201d Hickenlooper said. \u201cWell, again, if this doesn\u2019t get the Supreme Court in action, I don\u2019t know what will. But obviously at a certain point, and we\u2019re close to that point, the country\u2019s going to rise up because there are certain things \u2026\u201d He didn\u2019t complete the thought.<\/p>\n

\u2018You want me to get my pitch fork?\u2019<\/div>\n

A federal judge in Maryland on Tuesday<\/a> ordered the Trump administration to show evidence it has attempted to secure the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to a brutal mega-prison in El Salvador. District Judge Paula Xinis said the current record shows \u201cnothing has been done.\u201d<\/p>\n

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday launched proceedings<\/a> to determine if Trump administration officials should face criminal contempt charges over the deportations case in his court, and in Colorado on Monday, a federal judge in Denver ordered the Trump administration<\/a> not to deport any detainees held in Colorado under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.<\/p>\n

Abrego Garcia<\/a>, a Salvadoran citizen living in Maryland who is married to a U.S. citizen, has a valid U.S. work permit, and has children who are U.S. citizens, was deported last month with hundreds of others under the legally questionable Alien Enemies Act. Federal authorities have admitted<\/a> in court that his deportation was a mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cI agree that that\u2019s the most hideous, heinous act I\u2019ve seen, where you can take an innocent person, pick them up for the wrong reason \u2026 and they put him in one of the most dangerous, insect- and vermin-infested prisons in the Western Hemisphere,\u201d Hickenlooper, a former Democratic Denver mayor and Colorado governor, said. \u201cThat prison in El Salvador is notorious for how dangerous it is. And now they\u2019re saying that they can\u2019t get him out of there. I\u2019m fully aware, and that will not stand. I cannot believe the Supreme Court\u2019s going to allow that to stand.\u201d<\/p>\n

A reporter asked Hickenlooper what the U.S. Senate can do about the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want me to get my pitch fork?\u201d Hickenlooper said. \u201cThe Senate, we don\u2019t have a police force. Do you think we have a police force? We already have hearings planned and laid out on this stuff. We\u2019ll shine a bright light on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hickenlooper said he understands the growing anger in the country directed at both the Republican Party in power for its increasingly unpopular agenda<\/a> and Democrats, whom some blame for not putting up enough of a fight against administration policies. He said he felt that anger personally at a town hall in Grand Junction Monday, where people were \u201cpretty frustrated and pissed off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a battle. It\u2019s going to be a war,\u201d Hickenlooper said. \u201cAnd the only real leverage that we have as a Congress in a constitutional democracy is to have people rise up. What I said to the group last night is, \u2018You\u2019ve got to organize.\u2019 I said to the group here (in Eagle), \u2018You\u2019ve got to organize. You\u2019ve got to demonstrate, you\u2019ve got to march, you have to rise up.\u2019 No senator shows up and says, \u2018Hey, come watch me.\u2019 That\u2019s not going to change anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has been drawing massive crowds around the country for his \u201cFighting Oligarchy\u201d tour with Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, both last month in Denver<\/a> and more recently in deep-red Idaho<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hickenlooper is running for reelection in 2026.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. senator from Colorado says Abrego Garcia mistaken deportation case \u2018heinous\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,904,1566,22],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-immigration","tag-u-s-senate","tag-us-supreme-court"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22657"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}