Douglas County’s top two law enforcement officials sued Gov. Jared Polis and other state officials this week over a 2021 state law aimed at streamlining the process for crime victims who are not U.S. citizens to apply for legal status within the country.
Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly joined with 23rd Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler to argue that the state law unduly limits law enforcement officers’ discretion to block applications for what’s known as a U visa, a visa set aside for non-citizen victims of crime who cooperate with law enforcement and meet other conditions.
Crime victims seeking U visas must have their applications certified by a law enforcement agency — that is, local officials must state that the applicants were victims of qualifying crimes and that they are helping in the investigation or prosecution of those crimes.
Federal immigration officials make the final decisions on whether or not visa applications are granted. Under federal law, victims seeking U visas must show that they have suffered physical or mental abuse due to a qualifying crime that happened in the U.S., they possess information about that crime, and they have been helpful or will be helpful to the prosecution.
No more than 10,000 U visas can be issued in any given year nationwide.
In 2021, Colorado legislators changed state law to require that state officials consider only a victim’s helpfulness and whether they were subject to a qualifying crime when deciding whether to certify a victim’s application for a U visa. The state law also requires that officials consider a victim to be helpful unless there is documentation that the victim refused to cooperate with the case.
The law notes that local officials are not responsible for determining whether victims meet all of the qualifications for a U visa, and instead are only responsible for certifying the applications.
Brauchler and Weekly claim in the lawsuit — filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Denver — that the state law conflicts with federal law and violates their First Amendment rights.
“I don’t think the state has the authority to order me to sign federal documents attesting to certain facts,” Brauchler said.
Brauchler declined to certify a U visa application in June because the victim’s claim of domestic violence fell outside the statute of limitations and could not be prosecuted, according to the lawsuit. Under state law, he should have passed that application on to federal immigration authorities, he claimed, because there was no documentation that the victim had not cooperated with authorities.
“What the state has done is to interpret for me what cooperation means,” he said. “So instead of me being able to suggest, ‘You can’t be helpful for me because you waited too long to bring this crime forward,’ they say, ‘You don’t get to consider this, George. You have to consider them helpful.'”
Brauchler argued that the law strips him of the discretion allowed under federal law and regulations.
“It has converted this very scarce, very valuable resource for fighting crime into a golden ticket to stay in America if you suggest you are a victim of crime,” he said.
He acknowledged that a law enforcement certification does not mean a victim’s visa application will be approved by federal authorities, but said the state law forces him to certify applications for people whom he believes should not receive U visas.
“We now flood ICE with a whole bunch of applications for them to sift through and to try to figure out how to prioritize, instead of calling our shot and saying, ‘This application actually matters to us,'” he said. referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Legislators also set deadlines in the 2021 law within which Colorado officials must act on certification requests and required agencies to report data on certifications and denials to the state.
Between 2019 and 2025, 55 Colorado law enforcement agencies and district attorneys’ offices reported receiving 1,368 requests for U-visa certifications, according to records kept by the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice. The agencies signed off on 1,118 of those requests — approving about 82%.
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Neither the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office nor the 23rd Judicial District has submitted data on their offices’ certifications and denials to the state, the records show.
The 23rd Judicial District, which includes Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties, was created in January 2025 and so could not have reported the prior year’s data, Brauchler noted. He said the office will meet this year’s March 1 deadline for doing so.
A spokeswoman with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the agency’s lack of data.
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