State Senate Republican leaders Tuesday sent hot-button Colorado Joint Resolution 1013 to die quickly and quietly in a sparsely attended State Affairs committee hearing.

The resolution asked President Trump to lift his order banning refugees and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States – the controversial order presently stayed, its constitutionality and under judicial review.

Senate Democrats decried the committee assignment as a strategy designed to chill debate on the topic, pointing out that news of the assignment came less than 24 hours earlier – not enough time to notify witnesses who might want to testify and members of the public who might want to share in the debate, live or online.

In the Democratic-controlled House last week, floor debate on the resolution lasted hours, with mostly Democratic members taking turns recounting desperate and uplifting histories of refugee and immigrant resettlement in the United States.

“I know there are hundreds of thousands of Coloradans who feel strongly about this issue,” said committee member Lois Court, D-Denver. “Why are none of them here to testify?” she asked sponsors Sens. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, and Mike Merrifield, D-Colorado Springs.

“My assumption is that they just didn’t have the opportunity to get themselves prepared,” said Merrifield. “I was only told about [the committee assignment] yesterday morning.”

The Senate committee hosted only a smattering of reporters and one or two members of the public.

The sponsors and Democrats on the committee took turns voicing their opposition to the president’s order, which they characterizd as biased and unAmerican.

“This order has thrown the lives of thousands of people into chaos,” said Court. “The bottom line for me is that this is a country of immigrants and, frankly, we haven’t always treated our immigrants that well in the past, but we should rectify that now. We are a sophisticated modern nation, we should be able to recognize that immigrants are the life blood of our communities.”

Aurora, the ethnically diverse heart of Fields’s Senate district, has been called the “Ellis Island of the Plains.” She said the president’s order had created a grave sense of fear among constituents.

Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, one of the majority Republican members of the committee, echoed sentiments expressed by Republicans in the House. He thought the president’s order had been misconstrued in  public debate and that protest around it was based at least in part in partisan politics.

House Republicans also argued that the resolution was a distraction from the work of the state, not least because the nation’s immigration policy is made in Washington.

The resolution was defeated 3-1 along party lines.

– john@coloradostatesman.com