As a member of the Judiciary Committee, which is likely to lead on immigration legislation, Polis is reflecting sentiment that now is exactly the right time for immigration reform, as state lawmakers feel increasing pressure to take up local legislative solutions, as did Arizona famously last week. Analysts across the country see the new Arizona law as unduly harsh and sweeping, an overreaction to borderland crime that puts the onus on local police to enforce immigration laws and seems bound to strain community relations, exacerbate racial profiling and violate constitutional rights.

“I rise today to encourage my colleagues to live up to a challenge that has been put before us by the people of our country, by the people of Arizona, by the people of my state, and that is the challenge to replace our broken immigration system with one that works,” said the 2nd District Democrat.

As I travel across my district, I haven’t found a single constituent on the left or right that’s happy with the state of immigration today in this country. There are over 10 million immigrants in this country who are working illegally, frequently undermining wages from working families, taking jobs away from Americans. We need to pass comprehensive immigration reform to ensure that this number doesn’t grow to 15 million or 20 million, [to ensure that] we have no one that resides in this country illegally, requiring registration and making sure that people follow the law and restore the rule of law.

I’m a proud cosponsor of the House comprehensive immigration reform bill , which will accomplish that, and I call upon my colleagues in the Senate to introduce a bill, based on the 25-page outline they released last week, that would ensure once and for all that we hear the voice of the American people, come together, and solve our immigration system. Thank you.

Polis has argued for immigration reform since he was elected to the House in 2008. He has visited Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities in the state and decried their lack of transparency and cost effectiveness. He underlined the fact that people held in the facilities are often treated like criminals even though their only crime may be not having their working or residency papers in order or readily available. Often immigration applications are being reviewed when people are apprehended. fathers and mothers, family breadwinners, are then locked up, effectively disappearing and leaving dependents without resources.

It would be cheaper and maybe better to put these people up in hotels, Polis said on a visit to the state’s main detention center in Aurora last year.

In October, he railed against a federal program known as 287(g), which granted broad immigration enforcement powers to local law enforcement agencies. He said the program had resulted in “sweeps of terror” and he effectively previewed much of the complaints about the law passed this month in Arizona.

“287(g) scares victims and witnesses of crimes to avoid contacting police for fear of being mistreated. It invites exploitation by [criminals] who know that they won’t be reported [by Latino victims] to police, because the law combines contradictory duties into the same police force,” he said.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

287(g) scares victims and witnesses of crimes to avoid contacting police for fear of being mistreated.  287(g) invites exploitation by those who know that they won’t be reported to police, because it combines the contradictory duties into the same police force.

What is the result? A sweep of terror that has frightened legal and undocumented immigrants into hiding, undermining both law enforcement efforts across our country.  287(g) programs undermine the spirit and text of the U.S. Constitution, and I encourage Congress to repeal 287 (g).

Polis was speaking in reaction to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) announcement last Friday that it had signed, or was in the process of signing, 67 287(g) agreements. Two of those are with Colorado agencies:  the Colorado Department of Public Safety and the El Paso Sheriff’s Office

The controversial program had previously been suspended by ICE. Critics say the program is abused by many local law enforcement agencies, and promotes racial profiling. The poster child for misuse of the program has been Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, famous for his sweeps of Latino neighborhoods and his penchant for requiring detainees to wear pink underwear (and who is, incidentally, said to be miffed about earning a modified 287(g) agreement this time around, in a nod toward his alleged abuses).

Watch the one-minute speech:

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

The controversial program had previously been suspended by the department. Critics say the program is abused by many local law enforcement agencies, and promotes racial profiling. The poster child for misuse of the program has been Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, famous for his sweeps of Latino neighborhoods and his penchant for requiring detainees to wear pink underwear (and who is, incidentally, said to be miffed about earning a modified 287(g) agreement this time around, in a nod toward his alleged abuses).

According to ICE data, 55 jurisdictions have signed the new, standardized agreements, including Colorado’s El Paso Sheriff’s Office. It also said 12 other agreements await signatures, including one with the Colorado Department of Public Safety.

What’s different about the new agreements? Here’s the ICE spiel:

To address concerns that individuals may be arrested for minor offenses as a guise to initiate removal proceedings, the new agreement requires participating local law enforcement agencies to pursue all criminal charges that originally caused the offender to be taken into custody.

But an ACLU report released last week, documenting abuses of the 287(g) program in Cobb, Georgia, argued that minor changes like this are not enough to eliminate racial profiling.

Late Friday afternoon, Julien Ross, executive director of theColorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, released a statement arguing that the new 287(g) program “does nothing to bring us closer to fixing our broken immigration system.”

Any program that has local police acting as immigration enforcement creates widespread fear- victims and witnesses avoid the police, making all of us less safe. Moreover, racial profiling abounds, with people targeted for the way they look or speak.

At the end of his statement, Ross made a pitch for immigration reform instead of detention. “The way we strengthen the rights of American-born workers,” he wrote, “is to make sure there is not a pool of workers with few, if any, rights living within our midst.”

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.