Colorado Gov. Jared Polis still pushing for releasing immigration records to ICE

Catch up quick: A federal immigration subpoena is seeking employment records for 10 businesses whose employees sponsored unaccompanied immigrant children, but state legislation that Polis signed in 2021 limits cooperation to criminal matters.

• A Denver judge ruled in April that administration staffers could not release the records.

State of play: Now Polis is using private legal counsel to seek the case's dismissal and allow the release of a limited batch of records to ICE, court documents show.

• The move is generating more controversy and blowback for the governor, who defended his actions when Axios Denver asked about the issue Wednesday.
• In response, Polis continued to suggest the subpoenas are connected to a criminal matter even though a judge rejected that premise.

The intrigue: The private attorneys working with Polis billed the state $104,000, the Post reported.

What he's saying: "We are deeply committed to finding human trafficking, and when the federal government, especially the criminal investigative unit of ICE, wants our help investigating human trafficking, we are happy to help — and that's whether Biden is president, whether Trump's president, it doesn't matter," Polis told us.

The other side: David Seligman, an attorney general candidate who is critical of Polis' move, argued that ICE only wants the information to deport the children's sponsors, who are typically family members.

• "It is absolutely absurd that this governor would be going out of his way to comply with and cooperate with ICE in light of everything that we're seeing right now," Seligman told the Post.