Source: Colorado Sun
Happy exhausted Wednesday, Colorado, especially to those of you trying to keep up with rapidly changing federal funding policy.
Yesterday’s explosion of chaos in Colorado around the Trump administration’s order freezing a bunch of federal grants and other funding was a good reminder for these next four years: As much as people may want to say it’s a marathon, not a sprint, there will still be times when we will all be running really hard.
But it’s also a reminder that, after the pace slows down, we still have to keep running.
(Literally just minutes ago, The New York Times reported that the order has been rescinded.)
Take a look at this 52-page supplemental memo the White House sent out with instructions for complying with the order, as obtained by Politico. Scroll past the first page to the spreadsheet of programs affected by the order. (That is 2.25-point font; we checked. And Helvetica, at that.)
Every single one of those programs has a person or a nonprofit or an industry that is (or perhaps would have been) affected by it. And, whatever you think about the order — whether you are for it or against it or blah on it or confused about it or undecided yet what you think — we can all agree that it is consequential. And that means, if the order returns or takes another form, it’s worth paying attention to what those consequences are, whatever they are.
We here at The Sun are long-attention-span people, so we are committed to doing just that. Thanks for your support to help us — and if you have insight into particular impacts, always feel free to email us at newsletters@coloradosun.com.
OK! It’s news time.
Colorado has expanded health insurance programs for immigrants. What happens now?
More than 24,000
The number of people who have signed up for health coverage through two Colorado programs for immigrants
During the administration of former President Joe Biden, Colorado took bold steps to expand health coverage to immigrants in the state, regardless of their legal status.
Tens of thousands of people took advantage of those programs to gain coverage for themselves or their children. The hope of supporters is that this will lower the uninsured rate in Colorado since immigration status can be a major barrier to obtaining health coverage. Providing access to coverage for primary and preventive care could also reduce the amount the state spends paying for emergency care for uninsured noncitizens who have a health crisis.
Now, as the administration of President Donald Trump vows an aggressive crackdown on people living in the country without documentation, the long-term fate of those programs is unclear — the programs rely at least to some extent on federal funding.
But, perhaps more urgently, Colorado has collected a lot of names and contact information for people the Trump administration may be looking for. So what’s the potential that the state could be forced to hand those over?
It’s a little unclear, though it’s also not certain how useful the information would be to federal immigration agents.
First, the basics: Colorado law generally prohibits state agencies from asking about immigration status or from sharing identifying information for the purposes of immigration enforcement.
“Federal law doesn’t require that state agencies or private companies share information with immigration officials,” César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University (previously at the University of Denver), who specializes in immigration enforcement law, wrote in an email.
“A federal law bars Colorado from refusing to share information about a person’s citizenship or immigration status with (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), but that law only applies to information that the state already possesses and Colorado law has barred state officials from asking for this information since 2022.”
The coverage expansions largely come through two programs.
One is called OmniSalud, and it gives people who are not eligible for federal subsidies state help to purchase private health insurance plans. The program works in conjunction with the state’s insurance exchange, Connect for Health Colorado, but it doesn’t use the exchange’s platform.
Instead, Colorado created an entirely new exchange called Colorado Connect to handle the sign-ups. This means that the data is stored separately and is not shared with the federal government. Colorado Connect does not ask about immigration status, said Kevin Patterson, the CEO of Connect for Health Colorado.
For 2025, more than 13,000 people signed up for coverage through Colorado Connect, including 12,000 who signed up to receive subsidized coverage through OmniSalud. (Because of funding limitations, OmniSalud enrollment is capped, but people can still buy unsubsidized coverage.)
The second program is called Cover All Coloradans, and it rolled out only at the start of the year. The program allows children and pregnant people to receive Medicaid coverage regardless of their immigration status.
That program has now enrolled more than 11,000 people.
The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing shares some information about these enrollees with the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is also known as CMS.
“Historically, CMS has used the information only for the purpose of determining eligibility,” Marc Williams, a state Medicaid spokesman, wrote in an email.
Patterson and Williams said the state is committed to safeguarding enrollees’ information. But where this gets murky is what would happen if the federal government obtained a court order directing Colorado to hand the information over.
Williams wrote that the state “will continue to comply with all subpoenas, warrants and court orders as required by the law.”
Patterson said, if a court order or subpoena arrived, “There’s a legal process we would have to go through.”
García Hernández said, while it’s possible that immigration authorities could obtain a court subpoena or search warrant for the information, it would be unusual.
“ICE rarely does that,” he wrote.
Watch ColoradoSun.com in the coming days for a full story on this issue. If you would like to follow more of García Hernández’s legal analysis on the Trump administration’s immigration actions, you can sign up for his newsletter.