A federal judge in Denver found Tuesday that federal immigration authorities have routinely carried out illegal arrests in Colorado and ordered them to better document detentions so their legality can be monitored.
The 66-page decision from U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson came three weeks after four immigrants testified that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had arrested them without warrants and without first checking to see whether they were likely to flee court proceedings — a check that’s required by law.
Jackson ordered Tuesday that ICE remove the ankle monitors on three of those people, one of whom is a Univerity of Utah student arrested in Mesa County in June, and refund the bail that each paid to leave detention earlier this year. (The fourth immigrant has received legal status and was not being monitored.)
Jackson ordered ICE agents to follow the law and check — as well as document — that each person they arrest without a warrant poses a flight risk. He also ordered the agency to regularly turn over a random selection of arrest forms to the attorneys who filed the suit, including some with the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.
During the late-October hearing, the four immigrants’ attorneys pointed to The Denver Post’s reporting about the surge in recent immigration arrests in Colorado, as well as to statements from senior federal officials indicating that they planned to arrest any person they encountered who lacked proper legal status.
In his order, Jackson noted that, without a court’s intervention, ICE’s pattern of illegal arrests was likely to increase.
“ICE has almost doubled its headcount in Colorado this year alone, is actively recruiting and hiring many more officers, and plans to open three additional detention centers in Colorado, nearly tripling its current capacity,” Jackson wrote. “On this record, plaintiffs have shown that, without the requested injunction, there is likely to be a substantial increase in the number of warrantless arrests made without probable cause of flight risk.”
He pointed to the recent arrests of a Durango father and his two children as evidence. ICE arrested the father after initially mistaking him for someone else, but still kept him and his adolescent children detained. The family agreed to voluntarily return to Colombia earlier this month, though they remain in ICE detention, according to an agency database.
Representatives for ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
In a brief initial statement, one of the attorneys who filed the suit hailed the decision.
“ICE’s hubris and lawlessness have been on national display for months,” Hans Meyer wrote in a text message to The Post. “But as Judge Jackson’s decision makes clear, no one — including ICE — is above the law.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.