Hundreds protest, attend Mobile Consulate - Articles - CAIR - Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform

Hundreds of people spoke out on opposing sides of the immigration issue this weekend in Glenwood Springs.

But while opponents of illegal immigration raised a clamor by using the telephone lines, Mexicans answered by standing in lines - long ones.

Between 600 and 700 people had shown up by early afternoon Saturday in hopes of taking advantage of the Mobile Consulate services of the Consulate General of Mexico's Denver office.

A day earlier, the Glenwood Springs Police Department was deluged by calls objecting to the department, and city's, role in helping put on an event that was held to issue matricula consular identification cards. In 2003, the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform successfully lobbied the state legislature to ban state agencies and political subdivisions from accepting the card as valid ID in most circumstances.

Police Chief Terry Wilson estimated his department took about 100 calls just Friday morning....

Aspen resident Mike McGarry, Western Slope coordinator for CAIR, said immigration activists became involved at the request of Glenwood Springs residents who asked not to be identified....

McGarry accused Wilson of being a "rogue cop" for helping the Mexican government use the community center for the event, and at taxpayer expense because the city didn't charge for the center's use.

CAIR is asking Gov. Bill Owens, state Attorney General John Suthers and state lawmakers to investigate Wilson. Spokespeople for Owens and Suthers could not be reached for comment Saturday.

McGarry said in a statement, "It is unimaginable that Chief Wilson would provide his city's facilities at taxpayers' expense to the (Mexican) government to sell its outlawed ID card, a card the FBI and the Justice Department have said is risky, unreliable and poses major criminal threats."

Wilson called the criticism "a bunch of blather." Neither the police department nor the city as a whole helped sponsor the Mobile Consulate, he said. Rather, the Consulate's office contacted the city in search of a place to hold the event, and Wilson offered to show the center to office representatives.

"They could have had it in any location in the valley as far as I was concerned," he said. "We merely accommodated a request for some space for a program."

He said he didn't know, and didn't care, if the city waived the fee for using facility space. City parks and recreation director Leon Kuhn said the city didn't charge for the use of the center....

Critics of the matricula consular card say it makes it easier for illegal immigrants to lived in the United States, by facilitating things such as obtaining bank loans....