Shannon Bird’s ICE Problem

In a Latino-heavy swing district in Colorado, the Democrat’s vow to “hold ICE accountable” collides with a record of siding with Republicans to shield immigration enforcement from state limits.

WASHINGTON — Former Colorado state Rep. Shannon Bird is running for Congress on a promise to “hold ICE accountable” and protect immigrant communities, but her voting record in Denver shows a pattern of siding with Republicans to weaken limits on immigration enforcement and block civil-rights protections for immigrants.

Running on ICE accountability

Bird, a Westminster Democrat who resigned her state House seat in January to run in Colorado’s ultra-competitive 8th Congressional District, is pitching herself as a champion for immigrant families in a district with the highest share of Hispanic voters in the state, around 40 percent. On her campaign website and social media, she highlights stories of families living in fear of immigration raids and promotes a new “plan on holding ICE accountable and keeping our communities safe,” directing voters to a dedicated ICE accountability page.

In that messaging, Bird criticizes Republican Rep. Gabe Evans for, in her telling, standing by while ICE “sweeps up” law‑abiding residents, and she frames herself as the candidate who will rein in abusive enforcement tactics. Her campaign materials stress that “everyone deserves to feel safe” and call for an immigration system that lets people work and contribute without fear, while stopping those who wish harm from entering the country.

Vote against ending ICE jail contracts

Bird’s voting record tells a different story on some of the most consequential efforts Colorado has undertaken to distance itself from ICE. In February 2023, she was one of just four Democrats to join every House Republican in voting against House Bill 23‑1100, a bill to block state and local governments from entering or renewing contracts with ICE to detain immigrants in county jails.

HB 23‑1100’s backers — including immigrant-rights advocates and Democratic sponsors — argued that letting local jails rent bed space to ICE destroyed community trust, profited off civil immigration detention, and tore families apart through forced separation. The bill ultimately passed 41–22, went on to clear the Senate, and was signed by Gov. Jared Polis; it made Colorado the seventh state to prohibit jailing immigrants for ICE and ensured local law enforcement could no longer hold people for civil immigration violations or rent out jail beds to ICE.

Bird’s “no” vote aligned her with Republican opponents who framed the measure as too protective of undocumented residents and too costly for local governments, even as immigrant-rights organizers celebrated the new law as a “huge step” toward making people feel safe reporting crimes and interacting with police without fear of deportation. Her stance put her on the opposite side of groups like the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, which had spent years campaigning to end local ICE jail agreements.

Lone Democrat against immigrant civil‑rights bill

Two years later, Bird again broke with her party’s mainstream on immigration enforcement — this time as the only Democrat to vote with Republicans in a key committee fight over Senate Bill 25‑276, a sweeping civil‑rights bill responding directly to aggressive ICE tactics. SB 25‑276, later signed into law by Polis, was designed to prevent violations of the civil rights of people in Colorado based on immigration status by limiting how public entities collect and share immigration-related information and by curbing state and local participation in federal immigration enforcement.

According to committee records summarized in the opposition research file, Bird joined all Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee in an unsuccessful attempt to block SB 25‑276 from advancing, making her the only Democrat to vote against the immigrant-protections bill at that stage. When the bill reached the House floor days later, no Democrat voted against it — and Bird was absent, skipping the final vote on legislation immigrant advocates described as “landmark” protections for families facing ICE raids at schools, hospitals, and homes.

The law that emerged from SB 25‑276 now bars a wide array of public institutions — including schools, libraries, health clinics and other publicly funded facilities — from collecting immigration or citizenship information unless it is legally required, and it restricts how that information can be shared with immigration authorities. It also reinforces Fourth Amendment protections by requiring immigration agents to present a judicial warrant to enter non‑public areas of places like schools and public health facilities, and it clarifies that civil ICE detainers are not valid warrants for local jails to continue holding people who would otherwise be released.

Advocates’ goals versus Bird’s votes

For immigrant-rights groups, both HB 23‑1100 and SB 25‑276 were central to a multi‑year strategy to push ICE out of local jails and public institutions and to ensure residents could access schools, libraries and health care without worrying their information would be funneled to federal immigration agents. Supporters said limiting local collaboration with ICE was essential to rebuilding trust, encouraging crime reporting, and keeping families together in the face of increasingly hard‑line federal enforcement.

Bird’s votes cut against those goals at pivotal moments. On HB 23‑1100, she opposed ending ICE jail contracts that advocates argued had long enabled local law enforcement to act as an extension of federal immigration authorities; on SB 25‑276, she tried to stop a bill that immigrant organizers hailed as crucial to protecting privacy and civil rights in schools, clinics and other public spaces. In both cases, she sided with Republicans and against immigrant-rights organizations that would later celebrate the very policies she tried to block.

New “ICE accountability” pitch, old record

Bird’s current campaign rhetoric mirrors broader efforts by Colorado Democrats to respond to abuses by federal immigration agents, including a new proposal at the Capitol to allow people whose constitutional rights are violated during immigration enforcement to sue federal officers in state court. That bill — championed by Democratic legislators who also backed earlier sanctuary and privacy laws — is framed as a way to create real accountability for agents involved in shootings or unlawful detentions, without changing underlying federal immigration policy.

In that context, Bird’s promise to “hold ICE accountable” and keep communities safe from overreach lands awkwardly against her previous opposition to bills that sought to limit ICE’s reach in jails and public institutions. While she now emphasizes the harm caused when ICE sweeps up citizens and long‑time residents, she voted against measures that immigrant advocates say were designed precisely to prevent that kind of dragnet enforcement — by ending local detention contracts, closing loopholes that allowed data‑sharing with ICE, and requiring warrants before agents could access sensitive spaces.

High‑stakes test in a Latino-heavy district

The tension between Bird’s record and her rhetoric could have real electoral consequences in CO‑8, where Latino voters make up roughly two out of every five constituents and immigration is a defining issue. The district, created after the 2020 census, has become one of the nation’s most competitive House seats, with recent races decided by less than a percentage point and national parties pouring in money and attention.

Bird’s challenge will be convincing those voters — many of whom have personal or family experiences with detention, deportation or ICE raids — that her late‑breaking promise to rein in federal immigration enforcement outweighs a legislative record that put her repeatedly at odds with immigrant‑rights groups on core questions of ICE’s reach in Colorado. As the primary unfolds and her ICE accountability plan faces scrutiny, the contrast between what Bird did at the statehouse and what she is saying on the campaign trail is likely to become a central line of attack from both immigrant advocates and political rivals.