On Friday, attorneys trying to access Colorado’s court filing system were ambushed — by the state’s sanctuary policies for illegal immigrants.

Without warning, a popup “Disclaimer User Agreement” demanded lawyers pledge “under penalty of perjury” not to help ICE access personal identifying information from the system, unless required by law or court order.

It offered two choices: accept or decline. But declining locked them out of the only way to file with state courts. The prompt kept reappearing. Attorneys against a deadline had no choice — accept the pledge or fail their clients.

“I had a filing and literally couldn’t do it until I accepted,” said attorney Suzanne Taheri, who previously served as Colorado’s deputy secretary of state from 2012 through 2018. “I tried to decline, and it sent me back to the login.”

The sudden mandate sparked an uproar — for good reason. Most court records are considered public records, yet the state was telling officers of the court they can’t use public records to cooperate with the federal government.

After I posted a screenshot of the disclaimer online, my tweet went viral. Meanwhile, district attorneys like George Brauchler and Michael Allen pushed back behind the scenes.

By late Saturday, the disclaimer apparently had vanished — but Pandora’s box was open. How could the state prove perjury? Could they search lawyers’ search histories or even privileged files? Nobody knew.

“Perjury is about attesting to facts, not a pledge regarding future conduct,” tweeted Brauchler, DA for the 23rd District. “Good luck proving perjury here. Did lawyers actually draft this?”

The episode raises serious questions about how far Colorado will go to double-down on its sanctuary status and obstruct federal immigration enforcement — and who they’re commandeering to help in that obstruction.

In this case, private attorneys — not just employees of independently elected DAs — were being forced to impede ICE.

The disclaimer left no wiggle room. Lawyers were instructed to “certify under penalty of perjury” they wouldn’t use personal information from the database to help investigate for, participate in, cooperate with or assist ICE. It also barred them from sharing with anyone engaged in or assisting immigration enforcement. The only exceptions were if state or federal law or a court order expressly required it.

Taheri, a veteran attorney, told me she’d never seen anything like this outside of the original terms of service when she first accessed the filing system.

“I’m not a government official,” she said. “Why do I have to agree to this?”

By Saturday morning, the system’s announcements asserted it was a “one-time user agreement” meant to “comply with Colorado Senate Bill 25-276,” this year’s sanctuary law, because it restricts “how users may use or disclose personal identifying information obtained from state systems for immigration enforcement purposes.”

Except SB276 never mentions attorneys. The word “perjury” isn’t even in statute, either — let alone anything to do with an oath. There’s zero authority for this disclaimer.

The announcement even spelled out the coercive motives: Users had to “acknowledge the restriction before continuing” or lose access entirely. Responses were recorded, so they wouldn’t be prompted again. By Sunday, even that announcement was gone.

“I’m glad they took it down, but it leaves attorneys like me that had to get access for filings on Friday wondering if it will still be applied,” Taheri said. In other words: Does the agreement still bind attorneys who accepted it? “There has been no communication from the court,” she added.

Who authorized this charade? Who thought threatening lawyers with perjury was appropriate? Was it a rogue staffer or a judicial directive? Why walk it back so quickly and quietly, with no explanation? Will it return in another form?

We may never know these answers. The judiciary largely exempts itself from the Colorado Open Records Act and judicial discipline legislation — dodging transparency and accountability.

When lawmakers push for oversight, Colorado’s Supreme Court routinely cries separation of powers, insisting only they can regulate attorneys. Yet that principle only seems to matter when their branch would be held accountable — not when their liberal interests align with the Legislature.

Sanctuary policies like SB276 don’t just tie the hands of state officials. The policies with the federal government’s clear authority to enforce immigration law, which never even contemplated that a state might bind private citizens.

“This isn’t protection; it’s obstruction of justice, violating federal supremacy under 8 U.S.C. 1373 and inviting chaos, lawsuits and funding cuts from the DOJ,” said Scott Mechkowski, the former ICE deputy field director for New York who’s now with the National Center for Immigration Enforcement. He called for repealing SB276 to “empower our officers to cooperate with federal authorities.”

Much of Mechkowski’s service was in New York City, where he experienced first-hand sanctuary city policies that protected criminal illegal immigrants.

“Sanctuary policies don’t make us safer,” he stressed. “They make us sitting ducks!”

Let’s be real: This is simply the latest in a series of attempts to undermine federal immigration enforcement and cement Colorado as a sanctuary state — no matter how often Gov. Jared Polis denies it. After all, this is the same state whose attorney general is suing a sheriff’s deputy for sharing information that led to an ICE arrest.

From shackling sheriffs to handcuffing ICE — and even trying to bully lawyers with perjury pledges to serve their clients — Colorado keeps crossing the line.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.