If only the political progressives who turned up in Hudson on Wednesday to protest a planned detention center for illegal immigrants would admit they simply don’t believe in borders. 

They and the two or three political notables who joined them could have issued a news release saying as much and spared us all their usual theatrics. It would be more honest.

Of course, that’s unlikely to make headlines — and if it did, most Coloradans would think the protesters had taken leave of their senses.

So, they instead proceeded with their tedious ritual of orchestrated angst over imagined injustices. As reported by The Gazette, they toted placards with slogans like, “No ICE Concentration Camps,” “Immigrants Are Us” and “Democracy Dies in Silence.” 

None of it has much to do with the facility or its mission — humanely housing illegal immigrants pending their deportation hearings and eventual repatriation to their countries of origin. But ginning up myths about mistreatment of immigrants in custody makes for a more sympathetic cause than does calling for an end to immigration laws and their enforcement.

The federal government has signed a $528.6 million contract with a private prison company to reopen the state’s shuttered Hudson Correctional Facility as an immigration detention center in the Weld County community. Hence, the publicity stunt by a couple of hundred regulars on the protest circuit, who converged on Wednesday’s Hudson Town Council meeting because it seemed as good a stage as any. 

Never mind they were disrupting the work of city officials who couldn’t help them. As the officials politely pointed out to anyone willing to listen, the city government has no connection to the incoming federal facility and no control over it. But the protesters in the council chamber wouldn’t hear it, insisting the council could unilaterally change the zoning of the facility even if it already was zoned for a prison. And the protesters outdoors banged on the windows of the chamber, shouting obscenities, as noted in The Gazette’s report.

Enough already. The new detention center could be a five-star hotel — with a spa and mints on the pillows — and it wouldn’t really matter to the demonstrators. They don’t care about conditions in the center; they don’t want the law enforced.

It’s that same mindset on the political fringe that holds sway in Colorado’s legislature, where ruling Democrats have passed law after law in recent years to prevent state and local law enforcement and other public agencies in the state from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. It’s the mindset that has branded Colorado a sanctuary state, drawing the scrutiny of Congress and the White House. And it is that same mindset that has driven some protesters to actively interfere with enforcement actions by federal ICE agents.

Our nation needs secure borders. Toward that end, it must enforce its immigration laws. That means securely housing illegal immigrants taken into custody while they pursue their right to due process in the U.S. court system. It’s a safe bet most Coloradans would agree. 

In deference to the radical fringe, the state’s elected Democratic leadership has made it abundantly clear it wants no part of federal immigration law enforcement. The least they can do, then, is let the feds do their job. It’s a job rank-and-file Coloradans outside politics assuredly want done.