The much-publicized detention of a University of Utah student by immigration authorities in western Colorado in June was part of a wave of allegedly warrantless and illegal arrests of immigrants across the state this year, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court.
The suit, the latest local challenge to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, asks a Denver-based federal judge to bar U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from summarily arresting people without first assessing whether an arrest is necessary because the person is likely to flee, as is required by federal law.
The immigrants serving as plaintiffs argue that ICE agents in Colorado have routinely violated that requirement, including during prominent raids this year in Aurora and Colorado Springs. The actions have come as authorities seek to make good on President Donald Trump’s pledge to mass-arrest and -deport immigrants who lack proper legal status.
The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and local attorneys. It challenges ICE arrest practices that have surged this year, and it asks a federal judge to rule that those practices are illegal and order ICE to stop.
“What we’re seeing across the state of Colorado is that ICE, at essentially the instruction of leadership and the administration, is violating the law willy-nilly and pulling people out of their cars, taking people from their apartments, taking people from the street, all in flagrant violation of federal law,” said Tim Macdonald, the legal director of the ACLU of Colorado.
The suit was filed on behalf of immigrants including Caroline Dias Goncalves, the Utah student detained by ICE after a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy — in violation of state law, state officials later said — alerted the agency to her immigration status after a traffic stop. She is from Brazil and has been in the country since she was 7, when she traveled with her family and overstayed a tourist visa. She has a pending asylum application, the Salt Lake Tribune has reported.
The other plaintiffs are Refugio Ramirez Ovando, a father of four U.S. citizen children who was arrested on his way to work in Grand Junction, and two other men identified by their initials who were arrested during raids at an Aurora apartment building and a Colorado Springs nightclub.
The suit was filed against Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE; Todd Lyons, ICE’s acting director; and Robert Guadian, the head of Denver’s ICE field office.
In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the agency “complies with all lawful court orders and is addressing this matter with the court.”
While ICE can arrest people without warrants, agents must first determine that a person is in the country illegally and is also a flight risk, said Denver attorney Hans Meyer. His law office and Olson Grimsley Kawanabe Hinchcliff & Murray, a Denver law firm, are taking part in the suit.
Meyer accused ICE of targeting “people with brown skin.”
“In 25 years of doing this work, I’ve never once seen ICE comply with the law’s requirement that they make a risk of flight determination before they make a warrantless arrest,” he said. “But what we’re seeing here, with the scope of the lawlessness and the brazenness of the lawlessness, is shocking.”
Meyer and the ACLU are also suing the federal government on allegations it has prohibited many immigrants detained by ICE from receiving bail hearings.
The new lawsuit’s four named plaintiffs were arrested without warrants or without a determination that they were likely to flee immigration proceedings, the suit alleges. They were then all held in Aurora’s detention center — where, the suit alleges, they endured “degrading” conditions, including inedible food, excessive heat or cold, and difficult sleeping conditions.
After Dias Goncalves was arrested, the suit alleges, an ICE agent told her that he preferred to arrest criminals but that “under this president and under this presidency, we have to arrest anyone who is not a citizen.”
In May, agents allegedly told Ramirez Ovando he wasn’t the man they were looking for but arrested him anyway, and the lawsuit says one agent laughed because Ovando had been arrested on the 20th anniversary of his arrival in the country.
At the Colorado Springs nightclub raid in April, the lawsuit says, the plaintiff who was detained was thrown to the ground and injured by an ICE agent during his arrest.
If the new lawsuit is successful, it would limit ICE’s ability to mass-arrest people in Colorado and Wyoming, either during individual interactions or in large-scale raids, Macdonald said.
ICE previously had agreed to stop similar arrests elsewhere in the United States as part of a settlement from a lawsuit filed in Illinois during Trump’s first term. That settlement expired in May, though the underlying federal law remains in place. A judge in Illinois later extended the settlement terms through February of next year, finding that ICE had violated the agreement.
In addition to the four immigrants serving as plaintiffs, the lawsuit includes declarations from several more people arrested by ICE this year, including during metro Denver apartment complex raids in February, as well as from attorneys who have advised clients arrested under similar circumstances.
Several of those people are still detained in Aurora months later, according to the suit.