The Aurora City Council moved forward Monday with two items meant to address immigration enforcement operations in the city through contract approval and inspection rules.

In Monday night’s study session, a majority of the city’s councilmembers approved moving forward with an ordinance that would add a section to the city code enforcing periodic detention facility inspections.

The council also moved forward with a resolution directing the city manager to require City Council approval for contracts and agreements between the city and immigration enforcement agencies.

Both the resolution and the ordinance, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Gianina Horton and Alli Jackson, would have to pass at a future regular meeting to go into effect.

Currently, the council is required to approve contracts and agreements over $50,000. If passed, the resolution would require council approval for all contracts and agreements, including those under that amount.

City Attorney Pete Schulte told the council Monday that there haven’t been any such contracts, but it would go into place for any future ones that come forward. It could be for things like trash pickup or snow removal, he said, adding that those are just examples and not agreements actually in the works.

Horton said the council should have authority over any contract or agreement in the immigration realm.

“This is demonstratively a booming industry for immigration, detainment and deportation,” Horton said. “Authority should move to City Council so there are diverse voices and perspectives in the decision-making.”

Other councilmembers including Francoise Bergan and Stephanie Hancock disagreed with the resolution, saying it is unnecessary because there are no such contracts.

Bergan and Hancock also disagreed with the need for and applicability of the ordinance about inspections, saying it would add an unknown cost to the city budget without having any significant impact.

Even if the ordinance passed, the facility could still deny a council request to do an inspection, Schulte said. However, it would allow them to at least make the request.

“We could show up to the door and say ‘hey we’re here to do an inspection’ and they could still say ‘bug off, kick rocks’,” Schulte said. “But at least we would have some sort of an actual decision by the group telling us that we’re not able to do that and we could re-group and figure out our next steps … because we’ve been hearing there are some issues with health and safety inside the facility that we don’t know about.”

The city is in a budget deficit, so enacting ordinances that can’t really be enforced upon contractors is a waste of money, Hancock said.

“Of all the things we could be doing, why are we spending our time and energy on this in light of the fact that we’re in a budget deficit and we’re going to add more potential cost to operation to something we don’t really even have any business being involved in,” Hancock said.

Councilmember Alison Coombs countered that the council is responsible for ensuring living conditions in detention facilities are up to code.

“The idea that we have no business in protecting our constituents and our community is absurd,” Coombs said.

Since GEO is a contractor with the federal government and not the government itself, the council needs to do some digging into whether or not they can take recourse if GEO denies an inspection.

“It’s a lot of unknown right now, but the first step is to actually have the requirement in place if that’s something the city wants to do,” Schulte said.

Both the resolution and ordinance were approved by the majority of the council, with conservative councilmembers Bergan, Hancock, Angela Lawson and Curtis Gardner voting against moving them forward.

Both items went to the study session after councilmembers killed an agreement between police and the GEO Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in an April meeting.

After more than an hour of public comment and discussion, the council rejected a memorandum of understanding that outlined guidelines for Aurora police officers responding to the GEO Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.