Sometime in the next few days, Donald Trump will sign the first bill of his second term as U.S. president into law. That bill, the Laken Riley Act, will forever be recognized as one of the most consequential, vindictive, anti-immigrant laws passed by this administration.
Combined with the executive orders and directives already enacted by the Trump administration, this shortsighted legislation will be the catalyst of a civil rights catastrophe. There will be far-reaching impacts on our Colorado communities as Trump begins his assault on more than 11 million undocumented, but otherwise law-abiding, people commonly embraced as friends, neighbors, co-workers and relatives. This travesty will take place in our schools, churches, health care facilities and anywhere else authorities seek to search and seize immigrants with so much as an accusation of theft — with the order to also arrest any undocumented people nearby.
The Riley Act is designed to bypass due process, undermine constitutional protections, risk harm to families and promote toxic anti-immigrant narratives creating divisions in our communities. Deporting undocumented immigrants who are working, raising families and have built stable lives does nothing but destabilize those communities, while eroding civil rights for all.
Undeniably, Laken Riley’s death was an unnecessary tragedy. The person responsible for that horrific crime should be held accountable. But the legislation named in her honor will do nothing to prevent murders or crimes against women, much less the reason why her accused murderer was even in the country. Immigration offenses are civil violations, not crimes, and implementing illegal draconian policies that put people in jail for such offenses only does more harm.
This first step in “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” should make us all uncomfortable. Plans are already underway to use the U.S. military “to find and detain undocumented immigrants.” This will surely result in the separation of families and mistaken identities as rapid deportations become the norm. And the impacts to Colorado’s central-mountain communities will resonate far longer than the four years Trump will be in office.
Whether we’re willing to admit it or not, the resort towns and bedroom communities of Summit, Lake, Eagle, Pitkin and Garfield counties are all dependent upon immigrants — documented or otherwise — to exist as they do today. Deporting thousands of service-industry workers in mountain resort communities like Aspen, Vail, Breckenridge, Steamboat and Telluride will impact major corporations like Vail Resorts, Alterra and Aspen Skiing Co. through the ripple effect of layoffs due to loss in sales and bankrupt small businesses that cannot operate without workers.
Deporting thousands of construction workers will worsen the local housing crisis, halting new construction projects and bankrupting construction companies unable to fulfill contracts. Without cooks and other workers, an unprecedented number of restaurants will shut down while others drastically raise prices to retain employees. The cost of food will increase dramatically after farm and meat processing workers are deported. And health care costs will be driven even higher after hospital and nursing home workers are kicked out of the country.
School districts are already on the decline statewide, hitting the lowest enrollment number in a decade this year. Deporting thousands of local families will mean the Roaring Fork School District, Eagle County School District, Garfield RE-2 and other local school districts would lose between 30-50% of state funding, forcing layoffs of teachers and administrators — likely shutting down half-empty schools as Latino families keep their children at home out of fear, whether they are documented or not.
Although local district student populations are currently more than 50% Latino, the impact will extend much further. The resulting lack of resources and education will linger for a generation. And for what reason?
The American population is aging nationwide, and the U.S. has become increasingly dependent upon immigrant labor to fill labor shortages and help propel economic growth in recent years. According to census data, an outsized share of those immigrants are working in low-paying jobs as construction laborers, housekeepers and cooks. These are jobs that American-born workers don’t want to do — although with a lack of education and lack of immigrant labor to fall back on, they soon may have to.
Or we could consider the alternatives.
We can all agree that we need the federal government to fix our broken immigration system, but we need realistic remedies. Like everyone in America, Latinos desire an orderly border with Mexico. More specifically, we want systems and policies that are effective and rational — not the inhumane and extremist solutions posed by the Trump administration. We’re looking to solve the problem, not create new ones.
Instead of mass detention and family separation at the border, deportation of long-term immigrant contributors, using the armed forces to raid schools, hospitals, and churches, or any of the other extremist policies Trump and our current Congress are proposing, we need to consider humane and commonsense immigration policy reforms.
Rather than decimating our local economy and education systems, we need to create pathways to legal status and citizenship; prioritize policies that keep families together; fully staff the immigration system to process cases in a timely manner and approve border policies that respect human rights.
Most of all, we need to learn to treat immigrants like people, not political pawns or commodities to be exported when there is a perceived glut in the market.
Authoritarian approaches to immigration enforcement are not the answer. Latino voters reject such policies, and if America ever hopes to resolve its immigration issues, others must too.
Alex Sánchez is the founder and CEO of Voces Unidas de las Montañas and Voces Unidas Action Fund.