The Colorado Senate unanimously approved legislation Wednesday to allow immigrants who plead guilty to certain crimes a way to remedy resulting adverse consequences to their immigration status. 

If enacted, Senate Bill 103 would let criminal defendants challenge their guilty pleas for municipal offenses and class 1 or 2 misdemeanors if they had not been advised of the immigration consequences prior to making their plea.

Pleading guilty to a crime, even when minor, can cause devastating effects on an individual’s immigration status, officials said. This can include making someone with a green card deportable, triggering mandatory immigration detention without bond, barring a person from naturalization or revoking Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status.

“This is about constitutional advisements and constitutional protections,” said bill sponsor Sen. Julia Gonzales, D-Denver. “There’s a group of people here in Colorado for whom, because they were not adequately and properly advised, they’re subject to adverse immigration consequences. That’s really the heart of this bill, ensuring there is an avenue to vindicate those constitutional rights.”

In a surprising turn of events, all senators – Republican and Democrat alike – voted in support of the bill Wednesday. The unanimous vote came after Republican Sen. Bob Gardner of Colorado Springs gave a passionate plea for his fellow Republicans to pass the bill.

Gardner, a lawyer, said it is difficult to piece together the interrelationship between federal immigration law and state statutes, which can potentially harm immigrant defendants.

“Even a hardcore conservative, simple country lawyer believes – having represented a variety of people at the courthouse over my many decades – those people really need to be advised and to be advised properly,” Gardner said. “We have a category of people who were not properly advised and the implications were far beyond the case at the courthouse. This gives them an avenue to challenge it.”

Sen. Chris Holbert, R-Douglas County, said he intended to vote against the bill until he spoke with Gardner and realized that improper guilty pleas covered under the bill could also result in defendants losing their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

“I want to be tough on criminals … (and) I want to be a tenacious advocate for the Second Amendment,” Holbert said. “Voting against Senate Bill 103 would have a peculiar result that if someone were subject to an improperly entered guilty plea, that he or she could lose their Second Amendment rights over something that was done improperly.”

The bill would apply to people who unknowingly pleaded guilty to low-level crimes, including disorderly conduct, trespassing, shoplifting, theft or criminal mischief. Defendants who pleaded guilty to more serious crimes covered under the Victim Rights Act would not be able to challenge their pleas.

From 2017 to 2021, 64,036 criminal cases in Colorado resulted in guilty pleas for class 1 or 2 misdemeanors. Of those, approximately 630 people would be eligible to challenge the guilty plea under the bill, according to state estimates.

The bill will now be sent to the state House of Representatives for consideration in the coming weeks.