A federal judge in Denver on Tuesday ordered federal immigration officers to stop making arrests in Colorado without a warrant, unless the detainee posed a flight risk, the latest in a string of lower-court decisions rebuking President Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics.
The ruling by Judge R. Brooke Jackson could be put on hold once the administration appeals, just as earlier rulings in Los Angeles and Illinois limiting immigration agents’ powers were quickly blocked by higher courts.
In Colorado, Judge Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama, found that immigration agents had acted unlawfully by arresting and detaining immigrants — some for as long as 100 days — without showing the required probable cause that they posed a threat of fleeing.
Lawyers who challenged the Trump administration said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have detained people who are not flight risks as they ramp up immigration arrests at traffic stops, apartment complexes and Latino nightclubs.
“ICE has been acting in a lawless fashion across the state of Colorado,” Tim Macdonald, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, said in an interview.
The Department of Homeland Security did not offer a response immediately.
Lawyers for the immigrants said their clients could have received a notice to appear in immigration court before being released. Instead, they languished for weeks or months in immigration detention, lost their jobs and apartments and went into debt.
In one case, immigration agents arrested a University of Utah student named Caroline Goncalves as she drove through rural western Colorado to see a friend.
Her lawyers said Ms. Goncalves had deep roots in the United States and posed no flight risk. She had arrived with her family from Brazil when she was 7 years old, worked as a hostess and was studying nursing. She had overstayed a visa but had an active asylum application when she was pulled over by Homeland Security Investigations officers last June, according to one of her lawyers, Hans Meyer.
In his ruling, Judge Jackson wrote that the only argument immigration agents offered to support Ms. Goncalves’s arrest was that she was a Utah resident driving through neighboring Colorado.
In another case, immigration authorities justified detaining a construction worker in Grand Junction, Colo., last May because he seemed “very nervous” and stopped answering agents’ questions about his immigration status. The man, Refugio Ramirez Ovando, had spent 20 years in Colorado, worked the same job for 19 years and had four children who are U.S. citizens.
“They’re the quintessential examples of people who do not present any flight risk,” Mr. Meyer said.
Mr. Ramirez Ovando spent almost 100 days in immigration detention, and his family had to sell his truck and racked up $20,000 of debt. Judge Jackson said the unlawful arrests had done clear harm.
“If instead of being arrested immediately by ICE, plaintiffs were allowed to go home until summoned into immigration court or arrested on an administrative warrant, they would have had the opportunity to speak to their families, pay their rent, put their items in storage and try to obtain representation by an immigration lawyer,” Judge Jackson wrote.
The four immigrants in Colorado who sued over their warrantless arrests have since been released. An immigration judge granted Mr. Ramirez Ovando permanent residency. Judge Jackson ordered the government to remove the ankle monitors from the other three.
Even if Tuesday’s ruling stands, it may not change the fates of other immigrant families in Colorado, including the high-profile case of a Colombian asylum seeker and his 12-year-old and 15-year-old children who have been detained for the past month after a warrantless arrest in the mountain town of Durango, Colo.
Although ICE officials acknowledged the father’s arrest had been a case of mistaken identity, Colorado officials have not been able to get the family released. A few days ago, the father agreed to allow him and his children to be deported to Colombia.
Jack Healy is based in Colorado and covers the west and southwest.
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