Gov. Jared Polis signed two bills into law Wednesday that aim to crack down on crime in the state, targeting human trafficking operations and missing Indigenous people.

The first bill, House Bill 1300, seeks to address human trafficking in illicit massage parlors by giving counties the power to require special business licenses for massage parlors, something cities can already do. The license applications, scheduled to go into effect in August, will require owners to pass a criminal background check and provide contact information, as well as other conditions.

Illicit massage parlors that offer sexual services while disguised as legitimate massage businesses are often staffed by sex trafficking victims who are brought to the U.S. under promises of a different work. The mostly foreign-born women are forced to work illegal hours and often live inside the businesses, local law enforcement officials said.

“This has always been a local government issue and a law enforcement issue that we’ve needed to address,” said bill sponsor Sen. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs. “The illegitimate massage business has been in Colorado and certainly in Colorado Springs since the time I came here in the 1970s. Since that time, human trafficking through these illegitimate sex businesses has increased.”

Several cities, such as Denver and Aurora, have already enacted special business license requirements for massage parlors, but counties couldn’t do this. Gardner said when his city of Colorado Springs began regulating massage parlors, all of the illicit businesses moved to unincorporated El Paso County instead, sometimes only having to move a few hundred feet away to continue their illegal practices without regulation.

While there aren’t any official state estimates, at least 34 illicit massage parlors were reported to be operating in the Colorado Springs area in 2021. Nationwide, an estimated 9,000 illicit massage businesses generate $2.5 billion annually, according to a Polaris report.

The second bill, Senate Bill 150, creates the Office of Liaison for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives to facilitate investigations into missing Indigenous people and provide other supports. The bill will also create an emergency alert system to report active crimes and a community advisory board to help lead the office.

More than four out of five Indigenous people in the U.S. have experienced violent crime, according to national data. Those are some of the highest rates of violence for any demographic, with Indigenous women nearly three times more likely to be murdered than white women.

Denver is rated 7th in the U.S. for most missing and murdered Indigenous women not included in law enforcement databases, according to the Urban Indian Health Institute. In 2016, the institute found that only 2% of 5,712 Indigenous women and girls who were missing were found in the Department of Justice’s federal missing persons’ database.

“Far too often, Native women and relatives are completely unseen and unheard,” said bill sponsor Rep. Leslie Herod, D-Denver. “Every single Indigenous family has been touched by this issue. They have gone missing, they have gone murdered and their families’ cries for help to solve the cases have gone unheard.”

Under the bill, the new office will assist on investigations involving Indigenous victims, review cases and develop best practices, data collection and training for law enforcement agencies. The office will also assist families and tribes in how to navigate the criminal justice system and would coordinate between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and organizations.

The bill also requires the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to publish a database on missing Indigenous people and notify tribes and media outlets when it gets a report of a missing or murdered Indigenous person.