Emergency Protest!

When: Tuesday, November 17th starting at 6pm
Where: Bozeman City Hall Commission Room, 121 N. Rouse Street
Regular Meeting Agenda – See item H.2.
Please submit your objections at the Commissioners meeting and on-line at bozemanmt.gov/departments/administration/city-clerk/public-comment 

What To Say to the Bozeman Commissioners:

• Your Bozeman constituents have been coming to you since January to say that they do not want local law enforcement working with ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. It does not matter if other cities have accepted these grants or not – we, your constituents, are asking you not to.
• If you accept these grants you must document your refusal to accept Articles 60 (collaborate with federal immigration enforcement) and 33 (change city policies to comply with all of Trump’s Executive Orders).
• Do not accept these grants with current provisions. All Bozemanites deserve to feel safe and you have not done your due diligence to ensure these provisions will not apply to Bozeman.

How Did We Get Here?

In July 2026, ICE came to Bozeman, tackled people and threw them in unmarked vans, waved guns in people’s faces, and drove through your town lawlessly with swapped license plates. Since then, you and your fellow Bozemanites have sent letters, made phone calls, and attended city commission meetings with demands that your local resources not go toward Bozeman law enforcement collaborating with ICE. In response to dozens of written testimony in July asking Mayor Joey Morrison to address your concerns, the Mayor said on record that he was committed to to “working constructively with state and federal agencies to make [ICE] operations safer, more effective, and more transparent” moving forward. On October 6th, a DHS grant appeared on the agenda — this grant would provide $80k for the Bozeman Fire Department, along with provisions that mandated the city act as an arm of federal civil immigration enforcement in a manner that goes beyond even a 287(g) agreement. Following several concerned constituents asking the commissioners to not accept this grant, Emma Bode, Joey Morrison, and Alison Sweeney decided to pull the agenda item from the October 6th agenda. Emma Bode promised a constituent that the three of them would never bring this grant back, unless the language requiring BPD to work with ICE was removed. Now here they are, one month later, breaking their promises.

More Information:

The grant in question requires the City (per Article 60):

• To honor DHS’s requests for cooperation, such as participating in joint operations, sharing of information, or requests for short term detention of an alien pursuant to a valid detainer.
• Provide access to detainees, such as when an immigration officer seeks to interview a person who might be a removable alien.
• Not leak or otherwise publicize the existence of an immigration enforcement operation.

In addition to Article 60, Article 33 is also concerning. That provision will require Bozeman to “comply with the requirements of Presidential Executive Orders related to grants.” The current administration has issued approximately 281 Executive Orders since January 2025. There is grant language in Executive Orders attacking gender equality (#14168), Diversity and environmental justice (#14151), and anti-discrimination (#14173). As one federal district court asked: “Could the President ‘attach’ a sentence at the end of every Executive Order discussing grant funding, thus requiring plaintiffs to adhere to every Order?” The City has no way of knowing what terms Article 33 is incorporating into this Grant. Unless the City reviews all Executive Orders and determines its obligations, it risks agreeing to comply with the current Administration’s positions on wholly unrelated and unknown matters, such as the environment, abortion, transgender rights, anti-discrimination, and others.

The Helena City Attorney wrote a memo before Helena accepted this same grant on November 9. The memo says DES told her that they will not require the certification to cooperate with ICE. This is a great first step. However, under contract law, verbal agreements cannot modify the contract. There are two options: 1) the certification must be stricken from Article 60 or 2) the motion accepting the grant must explicitly exclude the certification and any future request for certification must be brought to the City Commission for approval.

According to a local attorney, the Bozeman City Commission has an opportunity to accept these grants without accepting the provision that makes them collaborate with ICE. You should ask tonight that they choose one of the options above if they are determined to accept this grant tonight.

If they do not strike this language and accept this DHS grant with the Article 60 certification, it would mean the only way to not cooperate with ICE and CBP is if the city swears it doesn’t have the resources to do immigration enforcement. Seeing as the city just spent $2.4mil for BPD to have new technology including ALPR technology, that seems far fetched. For the city to not do immigration enforcement at that point would then likely subject city staff to a potential perjury charge. Additionally, the exception for lack of resources only applies to “cooperation” with immigration enforcement. The City cannot claim lack of resources for the other requirements that it “provide access to detainees” and “not publicize the existence of an immigration enforcement operation.” Essentially, if they sign this contract tonight with Article 60 intact, they are mandated to cooperate when ICE demands it of them.

UPDATE: The Bozeman City Attorney wrote a memo issued with the agenda published November 12, in which he says he THINKS that we wouldn’t have to follow the provisions outlined in the contract because other cities are bringing lawsuits against them. What he states he “believes” is just wrong. Articles 62 and 63 exempt some cities from complying with Article 60, but only if they are “plaintiffs” involved in two lawsuits where federal district courts have determined that Article 60 is likely illegal. Bozeman is not a “plaintiff” in these lawsuits. Article 60 applies to Bozeman.

Do not let them lie to you. Attached are several resources:

1. The memo written by the Helena city attorney, who all but told us directly that Bozeman’s city attorney will be bringing similar arguments on Tuesday.
2. Annotations of the Helena city attorney’s memo, kindly provided to us by a local lawyer, which point out the memo’s inaccuracies.
3. Letter from Andras Haladay of Upper 7 Law Group to the Helena City Commission providing justifications for voting against the DHS grant.
4. The grant itself.
5. The GAO report from September 17th of this year which shows that a) these are new provisions to DHS grants (so the City of Bozeman cannot claim that this a routine DHS grant), and b) that DHS grants ARE tying recipients to working with federal immigration enforcement (check pages 15-17). Feel free to use any of this information in your testimony, but be willing to adjust night-of as we hear from the Bozeman Commissioners directly about any new lies they’re willing to spew in order to sell their souls for $80k.
6. UPDATE: Bozeman County Attorney’s embarrassing ass memo where he can’t say anything for sure but rather says “I believe,” “I think”, “I can’t issue a definitive opinion,” etc. https://d2kbkoa27fdvtw.cloudfront.net/bozeman/958f1c0674fef65ba9e6ff5c0d9b67070.html