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A federal judge ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Colorado violated a court order that limited when they can arrest people without a warrant. In a decision issued Tuesday, U.S. District Senior Judge R. Brooke Jackson said ICE agents have continued making warrantless arrests in ways that do not comply with his November order.
Jackson’s November order barred ICE from arresting anyone without a warrant unless the agency had probable cause to believe a person is in the country illegally and is likely to escape before officers can obtain a warrant. In Tuesday’s ruling, Jackson said ICE violated that order by continuing warrantless arrests “without individualized, pre-arrest probable cause determinations of flight risk.”
The judge also required changes aimed at how ICE carries out warrantless arrests and how it documents them. Jackson ordered immigration agents who are authorized to make warrantless arrests to undergo training on the court’s orders, and he ordered the government to turn over records of warrantless arrests made under the conditions permitted by the decision.
The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and challenged what the group described as so-called collateral arrests—cases involving people who were accidentally caught up in immigration enforcement actions while officers were looking for targeted individuals. The ACLU of Colorado said ICE’s practices show that legal restrictions on detention and arrest are not being followed consistently.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Jackson concluded ICE failed to adequately train deportation officers on the requirements set out in his November order, and he required such instruction within 45 days. The judge also found ICE “uniformly failed” to follow documentation requirements for warrantless arrests under his court order.
Jackson’s decision is part of a broader pattern of court scrutiny of warrantless enforcement practices in immigration cases. The AP reported that in the last year, federal judges in Oregon, California and Washington, D.C., also ordered immigration officers in their districts not to conduct arrests without a warrant unless there is a likelihood of escape.
Immigration officers generally obtain administrative warrants—documents issued by immigration authorities that authorize an arrest—before seeking a person targeted for arrest and deportation. The cases at issue in these court rulings address what happens when officers arrest other people without legal status that officers find during operations aimed at different targets.
ICE, which has appealed Jackson’s November decision, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday’s ruling. Tim Macdonald, the legal director for the ACLU of Colorado, said in a statement that the ruling was “a profoundly important decision for the rule of law and the people of Colorado,” and he said the court made clear ICE “is not above the law and cannot continue to violate the law.”