Colorado's Office of the Alternate Defense Counsel has directed its contract lawyers to sign declarations, under penalty of perjury, pledging they will not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The directive landed just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the state in a separate immigration enforcement dispute, a sequence that has drawn sharp criticism from federal officials and conservative lawmakers who see the move as open defiance of federal law.
The order requires attorneys who represent indigent defendants through the state-funded office to sign sworn statements affirming they will refuse to share client information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Lawyers who decline to sign risk losing their state contracts, according to a report from Just the News. The practical effect: attorneys paid with public money must choose between their state contracts and any cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
The timing is hard to ignore. The Supreme Court recently ruled against Colorado in a case involving the state's attempts to limit federal immigration enforcement within its borders. That loss underscored the constitutional limits on state efforts to obstruct federal agencies carrying out congressionally authorized duties.
Rather than recalibrate, Colorado's alternate defense office moved in the opposite direction. The perjury-backed declarations represent an escalation, not a retreat. Critics argue the state is now using the attorney-client relationship as a shield to institutionalize noncooperation with ICE, effectively embedding resistance to federal law into the structure of its public defense system.
The pattern is not unique to Colorado. Minnesota officials have faced FBI subpoenas over allegations of ICE obstruction, and the broader clash between blue-state governments and the Trump administration's immigration enforcement priorities has become one of the defining legal battles of the current political moment.
The sworn statements go beyond a general policy memo. By requiring the declarations under penalty of perjury, the Office of the Alternate Defense Counsel attached legal consequences to any deviation. Attorneys who sign are not simply acknowledging a workplace policy. They are making a sworn legal commitment that they will refuse to assist ICE, even in circumstances where federal law might otherwise compel or permit cooperation.
The office has framed the requirement as a protection of attorney-client privilege and the constitutional rights of indigent defendants. That framing rests on the argument that sharing information with ICE could chill undocumented individuals from seeking legal representation, undermining the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
But critics counter that the declarations go well beyond privilege protections already embedded in legal ethics rules. Standard attorney-client privilege already bars lawyers from disclosing confidential communications without consent. The new declarations, opponents say, are designed to prevent cooperation even in situations where privilege would not apply, such as sharing publicly available case information or responding to lawful federal warrants.
Federal officials have signaled increasing impatience with state-level resistance to immigration enforcement. The Trump administration has treated obstruction of ICE operations as a serious legal and political matter, and the Department of Justice has explored whether certain state and local policies cross the line from noncooperation into active obstruction of federal operations.
Colorado's perjury-backed declarations could test that boundary. If a federal court or grand jury issues a lawful subpoena for information held by a state-contracted defense attorney, the attorney would face a direct conflict: comply with the federal order or honor the sworn declaration and risk perjury exposure from the state. That kind of legal vise is precisely the scenario that federal supremacy doctrine is designed to resolve, and it rarely resolves in the state's favor.
The situation echoes calls from lawmakers like Senator Josh Hawley for federal accountability measures against state officials who allegedly use their offices to frustrate immigration enforcement.
Colorado's move fits within a widening campaign by Democratic-led states to insulate their institutions from federal immigration enforcement. Sanctuary city and sanctuary state policies have existed for years, but the current generation of resistance measures is more aggressive and more legally formalized than earlier iterations.
Previous sanctuary policies typically instructed local police not to honor ICE detainer requests, a posture that courts have sometimes upheld on Tenth Amendment grounds. The Colorado declarations go further by conscripting an entire class of state-funded professionals into a sworn refusal to cooperate, backed by the threat of perjury prosecution and contract termination.
That escalation has not gone unnoticed at the federal level. The administration has pursued funding leverage against states and localities that resist immigration enforcement, and federal judges have weighed in on disputes over funding suspensions tied to state governance controversies.
The legal question at the center of all these fights is the same: how far can a state go in directing its employees and contractors to refuse cooperation with federal authorities before that direction becomes obstruction? The Supreme Court's recent ruling against Colorado suggested the answer is "not as far as Colorado thinks." The new declarations suggest Colorado disagrees.
Defenders of the policy argue it is rooted in bedrock legal ethics. The duty of confidentiality is among the most fundamental obligations a lawyer owes a client, and defense attorneys have long resisted government efforts to turn them into informants. From that perspective, the declarations simply formalize what good defense lawyers should already be doing.
The counterargument is equally straightforward. Attorney-client privilege has well-established exceptions, including the crime-fraud exception and compliance with lawful court orders. A blanket, preemptive refusal to cooperate with any federal immigration inquiry, regardless of the legal basis for the inquiry, sweeps far beyond what privilege requires. It converts an ethical obligation into a political weapon.
The perjury component sharpens the conflict. An attorney who later determines that cooperation with ICE is legally required in a specific case would face the sworn declaration as an obstacle. The declaration does not appear to include carve-outs for lawful federal process, which means attorneys may find themselves caught between two competing legal obligations with no clean exit.
The Office of the Alternate Defense Counsel operates with public funds appropriated by the Colorado legislature. Its contract attorneys are paid by taxpayers to represent indigent defendants. The decision to require those attorneys to sign perjury-backed anti-cooperation declarations was made by the office's leadership, not by the legislature and not by voters.
That raises a governance question separate from the legal merits. State agencies that embed political resistance into their operational requirements are making policy choices that typically belong to elected officials. Whether Colorado's legislature endorses this approach, or whether it was implemented unilaterally by agency leadership, matters for accountability purposes.
The broader pattern of federal scrutiny of state-level governance decisions shows no signs of slowing. Congressional oversight committees and federal prosecutors have shown increasing willingness to examine whether state officials are using their authority to frustrate lawful federal operations.
Colorado now sits at the sharpest edge of that conflict. The Supreme Court told the state it went too far. The state's response, within days, was to go further.
The instinct to use administrative machinery to override democratic accountability and legal boundaries is not confined to immigration. In Michigan, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by state Rep. Angela Rigas has pressed Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to stop the state Department of Natural Resources from euthanizing two rescued animals at a no-kill sanctuary over what critics call a technical permit dispute. Fox News reported that Rigas urged Whitmer to intervene, saying the animals should be allowed permanent sanctuary or educational placement rather than destroyed over a missed deadline.
"These animals are not threats, they are survivors."
Rigas delivered that assessment of a rescued fawn named Peanut and a coyote named Kota, both housed at the Detroit Animal Welfare Group sanctuary. The Michigan DNR maintains that euthanasia was ordered because the sanctuary missed an educational permit deadline. The sanctuary disputes that account and says the animals have been safely housed and inspected for years.
The Michigan case and the Colorado directive share a common thread. In both, unelected agency officials used administrative authority to impose outcomes that provoked broad public opposition and raised serious questions about proportionality, transparency, and the proper limits of bureaucratic power.
Colorado's declarations will almost certainly face legal challenge. Federal attorneys, immigration enforcement officials, or affected lawyers themselves could bring suit arguing that the perjury-backed requirement conflicts with federal supremacy, obstructs lawful federal operations, or imposes unconstitutional conditions on state contracts.
The Supreme Court has already signaled where it stands on Colorado's resistance posture. The state's decision to double down after that signal transforms this from a policy dispute into a constitutional confrontation.
Investigators and federal officials will need to determine whether the declarations have already affected cooperation in active cases, whether any attorneys have been penalized for refusing to sign, and whether the office consulted with the state attorney general before imposing the requirement.
A state that forces its lawyers to swear, under penalty of perjury, that they will defy federal law is not protecting the Constitution. It is daring the federal government to enforce it.
