Colorado state Sen. Jordan Carter on Monday accused Texas Gov. David Acton of misrepresenting four amendments Carter filed to a Florida immigration bill, intensifying a public dispute that unfolded through competing press releases. In a statement issued from Denver, Carter said Acton “described amendments he plainly hadn't read” and argued the governor’s criticism did not match the text of the proposals. The exchange comes as immigration remains one of the most politically charged issues in the game’s national climate, where border policy, executive power and public order are high-salience topics. According to Carter’s press release, one of the central disagreements concerns when a transfer under the Florida bill should be triggered. Carter said Acton claimed the amendment would require an immigrant to be convicted of “an additional crime” before transfer. Carter rejected that characterization, saying the amendment instead changes the legal threshold from arrest to conviction. “There is no ‘additional crime’ anywhere in it,” Carter said in the release. “The amendment says the trigger should be a conviction, not a bare arrest. Charged is not the same as guilty.” Carter also pushed back on Acton’s criticism of what the governor described as a “sanctuary cities” amendment. Carter said the proposal would not bar cooperation between local and other authorities. Instead, he said, it would remove a state mandate and leave those decisions to local law enforcement. “That amendment doesn't ban anyone from cooperating with anybody,” Carter said. “It removes a state mandate and lets local law enforcement make local decisions.” A third point of dispute involved a separate Missouri bill. Carter said Acton had claimed he would not “crack down on criminals in Missouri,” an assertion Carter called inaccurate. Carter said his amendment to the Missouri measure did not cut any enforcement funding. Rather, he said, it reserved existing state spending for prevention and re-entry programs while keeping enforcement dollars intact. “On the Missouri bill I cut zero enforcement dollars — not one,” Carter said in the release. He described the approach as combining accountability with prevention, arguing that the two are not in conflict. Carter, identified in the release as a former labor and tenant-rights attorney, said he applies the same standard to legislation from other states that he would to bills in Colorado: whether the text accomplishes what sponsors say it does. He said his amendments preserved language about prosecuting serious crime while also protecting constitutional standards. “I kept every word about prosecuting serious crime,” Carter said. “Firm on serious crime, firm on the Fourth Amendment.” The dispute follows two earlier statements issued the same day: one announcing that Carter had filed four amendments to the Florida immigration bill and would oppose the bill if it remained unchanged, and another from Acton condemning those Democratic amendments. Details of Acton’s full argument were not included in Carter’s latest release beyond the excerpts and descriptions Carter cited. Under DynamicSim’s rules, state legislation is debated in a combined legislature even when bills apply to only one state. Members from all states can vote, with the final outcome weighted through a proportional calculator based on the affected state’s party composition. That structure can turn out-of-state interventions into broader political flashpoints, especially on issues such as immigration that carry national resonance. The clash also reflects the wider political environment, where conservative messaging tends to perform strongly on border enforcement and anti-elite themes, while liberal arguments often emphasize due process, rights and rule-of-law concerns. Carter’s response framed his amendments in procedural and constitutional terms rather than as a broader challenge to immigration enforcement. No resolution to the dispute was announced Monday, and it was not immediately clear whether Acton would issue a further response. For now, the disagreement centers on a narrow but politically significant question: whether Carter’s amendments would weaken immigration enforcement, as Acton has argued, or tighten legal standards without removing enforcement tools, as Carter contends.