Law Enforcement Must Never Be Turned Against Law Enforcement

There is something deeply wrong and deeply dangerous about a mayor using the machinery of city government to place law enforcement in tension with law enforcement.

That is exactly what is happening in Denver.

Let me be clear. I am 100 percent pro-law enforcement. I support the men and women who put on the badge, take the oath, and step into danger so the rest of us can live in peace. That includes local police. It includes deputies. It includes state officers. It includes federal officers. A civilized republic cannot survive without respect for lawful authority and the officers charged with carrying it out.

What it cannot survive is political leadership that deliberately pits one branch of law enforcement against another for ideological theater.

Mayor Mike Johnston has crossed into reckless territory. His Executive Order 152 does not read like the work of a mayor focused on public safety. It reads like the work of a politician determined to obstruct, posture, and inflame. It bars city property from being used in furtherance of civil immigration enforcement in many circumstances. It directs city employees to report attempted use of city property. It orders city agencies to position themselves around federal immigration activity in ways designed to monitor, constrain, and politically frame it. It further directs investigations of alleged criminal conduct by immigration personnel and coordination toward criminal charges where appropriate. Those are not minor administrative choices. Those are acts designed to put city power in direct friction with federal enforcement.

And the tone tells the story. The mayor publicly said of ICE, “Right now, they are the bad guys.” That statement is not the language of a mature executive trying to preserve order between jurisdictions. It is the language of escalation. It is the language of division. It is the language of someone trying to turn public servants into political villains because they enforce laws he does not like.

That is foolish. It is damaging. It is beneath the office.

The United States is not a patchwork of separate sovereigns free to nullify whatever federal law they dislike. We have one Constitution. We have one federal union. We have one national government vested with national powers, including the enforcement of federal immigration law. States and cities have important roles. They do not have the authority to operate as rival governments. They do not get to create a de facto veto over federal law by using municipal property, municipal procedure, and municipal intimidation to frustrate lawful enforcement.

That is why the Department of Justice sued Denver and Colorado, alleging that their policies interfere with federal immigration enforcement and violate the Supremacy Clause. Whether every claim in that lawsuit prevails is for the courts to decide. But the central warning is obvious. When local governments begin treating federal enforcement as an enemy operation to be contained, they are no longer simply governing. They are contesting the constitutional order itself.

Law enforcement officers swear oaths. In Denver, police officers swear to support the Constitution and laws of the United States, the State of Colorado, and the Charter and ordinances of the City and County of Denver, and to faithfully perform the duties of office. That oath matters. It means the badge does not belong to a mayor’s ideology. It does not belong to a political movement. It belongs to citizens and the rule of law.

No officer should ever be put in a position where political leadership pressures him to view fellow law enforcement officers as the adversary simply because those officers wear a different patch. Local police are not a mayor’s private guard. They are not an ideological shield. They are not there to help City Hall wage a constitutional standoff with the federal government.

This matters far beyond immigration.

Once you normalize one level of government using its institutions to hinder another level of government, you corrode the habits that keep a republic intact. You teach citizens that law is optional when filtered through local politics. You teach officers that their duty runs through the preferences of elected activists rather than through the Constitution. You teach communities that enforcement depends less on law than on who controls city hall.

That is how institutional trust collapses.

And make no mistake, the damage is not abstract. When a mayor casts federal officers as enemy actors, he increases the risk of confusion on the ground. He increases the risk of confrontation. He increases the risk that peaceful situations become volatile. Responsible leaders deconflict. They clarify. They preserve order. They do not pour accelerant on an already tense environment.

Colorado has already imposed legal limits on local cooperation with immigration enforcement. That is part of the broader policy debate. But what Denver’s mayor is doing now goes further in spirit and posture. It is one thing to argue that local law enforcement should not be commandeered into federal service. It is another thing entirely to use city power to politically isolate, impede, and publicly demonize federal officers carrying out federal law.

I will say this plainly. On the facts now available, this is not treason in the constitutional sense. Words matter, and serious charges require serious discipline. But it is a form of governmental usurpation. It is an abuse of public authority. It is an attack on coherent law enforcement. And it is a betrayal of the people’s right to live under one constitutional system, not competing political fiefdoms.

The people of Colorado did not consent to two governments. They did not consent to a Denver mayor deciding that federal law will be treated as suspect, federal officers will be treated as villains, and city institutions will be mobilized accordingly.

This must stop.

Denver’s mayor should rescind any policy that turns city government into an obstacle course for lawful federal enforcement. He should stop treating federal officers like political props. He should stop trying to place local officers in the middle of an ideological war they did not ask for. And he should remember that his first obligation is to preserve public order, not fracture it.

I stand with law enforcement.

I stand with the officers who honor their oath.

I stand with the Constitution.

And I reject, completely, the dangerous idea that one American government should weaponize itself against another for partisan gain.