Immigrant justice sided with Trump in Colorado

Aweighty dose of irony accompanied the Colorado Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision to disqualify Donald Trump from holding public office.

Trump, an orator of limited range, often makes immigrants scapegoats for America’s ills.

“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” he said at a recent rally in New Hampshire.

Yet an immigrant, Carlos Samour, was one of the three Supreme Court justices who voted against barring the former president from Colorado’s ballot in 2024.

“Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past — dare I say, engaged in insurrection — there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office,” Samour wrote in his dissenting opinion.

Samour, 57, disregarded all of Trump’s David Duke impersonations to reach a conclusion the justice believes is grounded in law and reason.

Samour’s stand didn’t sway a majority of his colleagues on Colorado’s highest court. They said Trump supported an insurrection that saw rioters storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Of all the fallout from the ruling, Samour’s strong words are what Trump’s campaign crew prefers to emphasize. Republican operatives are highlighting Samour’s dissent while denouncing the Colorado court.

If Trump were as principled as Samour, he also would praise the justice for overcoming adversity in his rise to legal prominence. But doing so would require Trump to salute someone who came from a group the former president prefers to vilify.

Then-Gov. John Hickenlooper appointed Samour to the Colorado Supreme Court in 2018. A Democrat, Hickenlooper highlighted Samour’s immigration to America, saying the journey shaped his commitment to justice.

Samour was 13 in 1979 when he, his 11 siblings and their parents fled El Salvador. Hickenlooper said Samour’s father, also a judge, convicted a military official in a volatile time. The elder Samour believed that ruling put his family in danger.

The Samours resettled in the Denver suburb of Littleton, strangers in a strange land.

Carlos Samour graduated from Columbine High School, which later was the target of one of Colorado’s horrendous crimes. Two Columbine students shot and killed 13 people in the school. Discussion of that case would crop up during a mass-murder trial in which Samour was the presiding judge.

After graduating from college and law school, Samour clerked for a federal judge, worked as an attorney in private practice and then became a prosecutor in Denver.

After Samour was appointed as a Colorado District Court judge in 2007, he received a splash of national media coverage for his handling of a trial that drew comparisons to the Columbine massacre.

James Holmes was charged with murdering 12 people and wounding 58 more in a movie theater in Aurora in 2012. A jury convicted him on all counts but spared his life.

The Colorado Office of Judicial Performance Evaluation lauded Samour for his handling of the case. “He was highly

noted for his professionalism, efficiency, and trial management during the over two-year process,” evaluators wrote.

Others have criticized Samour for what Trump might call judicial activism.

One such case involved a young woman in Arapahoe County, Colo., who said she was raped by two classmates after drinking heavily at a graduation party.

The woman initially did not want to pursue charges. Her father was dying, and she didn’t want to be in a courtroom.

She changed her mind several years later, saying she wanted to testify.

At that point, the district attorney declined to prosecute the two suspects, though DNA evidence was in hand.

Samour intervened, saying prosecutors were arbitrary in ignoring the strength and sufficiency of the woman’s charges. He used an obscure 19th century state law to order charges to be filed.

Prosecutors countered that Samour had overstepped his bounds, prompting him to retreat a bit.

Instead of ordering criminal charges, Samour revised his directive.

He ordered a district attorney from another county to determine if charges should be filed. The Colorado Court of Appeals overturned his order.

That setback didn’t stall Samour’s career. His body of work convinced Hickenlooper to elevate Samour to the state Supreme Court, where he crossed legal pathways with Trump.

Demonizing immigrants does more than fit Trump’s view of white might setting the tone in America. It motivates members of his base, such as the lawless followers who stormed the U.S. Capitol after Trump told them he’d been robbed in the 2020 election.

Standard operating procedure for Trump is to portray himself as the aggrieved party. He’s a victim of the media, various Republicans and countless Democrats who opposed his expensive, ineffective wall on America’s southern border.

Samour knows a thing or two about the border. He escaped the violence of the Salvadoran Civil War and reached the top of the legal profession in Colorado.

Aside from the dissenting opinion, Samour is the kind of immigrant Trump never talks about.

American success stories involving immigrants are always out of bounds in Trump’s world.