{"id":29078,"date":"2024-02-23T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mesa-county-passes-resolution-declaring-itself-a-non-sanctuary-county\/"},"modified":"2024-02-23T16:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T16:30:00","slug":"mesa-county-passes-resolution-declaring-itself-a-non-sanctuary-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mesa-county-passes-resolution-declaring-itself-a-non-sanctuary-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Mesa County passes resolution declaring itself a \u2018non-sanctuary county\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"U.S.
U.S. 50 leads south away from Grand Junction, with Whitewater in the distance, Nov. 10, 2022.<\/span>Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Mesa County\u2019s Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to pass a resolution declaring itself a \u201cnon-sanctuary county.\u201d<\/p>\n

The resolution does not contain any actionable items \u2013 instead, it declares the county \u201cwill not open shelters or provide services, other than emergency services, to uninvited migrants and\/or illegal immigrants that may arrive in unincorporated Mesa County.\u201d County commissioners said their resources are already overstrained, and they will not offer additional assistance specifically for immigrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to point out this is not intended to be cruel to immigrants,\u201d said District 3 County Commissioner Janet Rowland. \u201cOur country was built on immigrants and we have a process for that. And the process is what protects our citizens and ensures the well-being of the migrants themselves. To invite people to freely come without going through the process and have no provisions for shelter, food, health care \u2013 that is cruel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The resolution notes that the Mesa County Sheriff\u2019s Office established a policy in 2014 prohibiting the use of county jail cells to hold U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees who have not been criminally charged.<\/p>\n

Nothing is stopping immigrants from traveling to Grand Junction, and nothing is stopping local nonprofits from aiding them. Deputy County Administrator Todd Hollenbeck said the county is working with nonprofit organizations in the area to plan for potential arrivals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the ability to stand up medical screening, to be able to make sure that people coming into our community are not infectious in some way,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can give them resource information and packets. We will not be providing shelter or any further services beyond that, but we will have guides and resources to those local nonprofits that are capable of providing those services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commissioners also passed a resolution to send a letter to Denver Mayor Mike Johnston outrightly telling him the county does not plan to aid the city with its ongoing challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are hearing that your office is having conversations with one or more of our dedicated nonprofits who help the vulnerable in our county,\u201d the letter said. \u201cIf that is the case, please know that while they are certainly well-intentioned organizations that can give out tangible supplies such as food, clothing, or bedding, they can\u2019t cover the additional costs of education, healthcare, or shelter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The commissioners said in the letter that the county\u2019s two major hospitals operated at a multimillion-dollar loss in 2022 for unreimbursed care and that School District 51 is one of the lowest-funded schools in the state.<\/p>\n

Immigration experts say there\u2019s not a consistent legal definition for \u201csanctuary cities\u201d or counties.<\/p>\n

While Denver and state lawmakers have passed laws making it harder for local law enforcement officials to cooperate with federal immigration officials, ICE is still free to conduct its own operations and detain undocumented immigrants in its own facilities. That includes the agency\u2019s detainment center in Aurora, which currently houses roughly 900 people.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018I want to point out this is not intended to be cruel to immigrants,\u2019 commissioner says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,28,2194,904],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-headlines","tag-illegal-immigrants","tag-immigration"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29078","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=29078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29078"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}