Colorado immigrants' rights groups sue Trump Administration, ICE over alleged warrantless arrests
The ACLU of Colorado and several law firms are suing the Trump Administration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a new federal lawsuit filed on Thursday. They allege ICE is arresting people across Colorado without warrants and without determining if the people they're arresting are citizens or not.
The groups, which also include the Meyer Law Office and Olson Grimsley Kawanabe Hinchcliff & Murray, LLC, filed the suit on behalf of Refugio Ramirez Ovando, Caroline Dias Goncalves, two other plaintiffs who are only identified by their initials, and "all those similarly situated."
"People are terrified that masked agents will snatch their loved ones or neighbors from the street because an ICE agent believes they look different or speak with an accent. This is unacceptable," Tim Macdonald, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado, said in a statement. "The courts must see ICE's actions for what they are: an unlawful abuse of power that must be stopped."
The ICE Denver field office responded Thursday that it does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation. After publication of this story, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an email to CBS News Colorado through a department spokesperson, "DHS complies with all lawful court orders and is addressing this matter with the court."
The suit names Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, ICE acting director Todd Lyons, and ICE Denver Field Office director Robert Guadian as defendants. It alleges "militarized" ICE agents, "often with masks, body armor, and long guns," are "indiscriminately stopping and arresting people with brown skin in their mission to meet the Administration's ramped-up enforcement demands."
The organizations that filed the suit are asking a judge to make this a class-action lawsuit, determine whether these arrests violated federal law, and, if deemed illegal, order ICE to stop future warrantless arrests.
One of the plaintiffs, Dias Goncalves, is a 19-year-old nursing student living in Utah who was stopped by a Mesa County sheriff's deputy in May and then reported to ICE, which state officials and the ACLU say violated state law. According to a previous lawsuit against ICE filed by the Colorado Attorney General's Office, she was detained at the ICE Detention Center in Aurora for two weeks. She has lived in the U.S. since she was brought here from Brazil as a Dreamer at 7.
Ramirez Ovando is a 43-year-old father who's lived in Colorado for 20 years, according to the lawsuit, which claims that ICE mistakenly arrested him in May without a warrant and while looking for someone else. Ovando says he was held at the Aurora ICE facility for three months, the suit alleges.
One plaintiff, identified by his initials, J.S.T., is a 36-year-old asylum seeker who was arrested without a warrant during a large operation across Denver and Aurora in February, according to the lawsuit. He was held at the detention center for four weeks.
And the other plaintiff, identified by the initials "G.R.R.," alleges he was arrested without a warrant during a large federal operation in Colorado Springs in April. The lawsuit says the 32-year-old father and business owner was held at the detention center for over six weeks.
The four plaintiffs named in the suit serve as representatives of an unknown number of people arrested in Colorado, as well as those who may be arrested in the future. They include "All persons since January 20, 2025, who have been arrested or will be arrested in this District by ICE without a warrant and without a pre-arrest, individualized assessment of probable cause that the person poses a flight risk," according to the suit.
"The true illegality here is ICE's flagrant disregard of federal law," said Hans Meyer, immigration attorney for the plaintiffs and owner of the Meyer Law Office. "The courts must act to halt this widespread and egregious ICE practice of arresting people without warrants based on how they look, how they speak, or simply because of who they are with. This practice is a frontal assault on our communities to advance Trump's mass deportation agenda."
The suit says ICE is violating certain provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which prohibits warrantless arrests unless agents have "reason to believe" that a person is both unlawfully in the U.S. and that the person "is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest." The suit goes on to say that ICE explicitly changed its policies to comply with those decades-old requirements in 2022.
It also says that former ICE director and current "Border czar" for the Trump Administration, Tom Homan, has "repeatedly" said ICE would rely on "indiscriminate warrantless arrests."
You can read the full 48-page lawsuit here:
