American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado and immigrant advocates filed a lawsuit Three Trump administration officials were charged Thursday with violating federal immigration law. arresting migrants in the state,
lawsuit filed The U.S. District Court in Colorado has listed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Todd Lyons and Robert Guerion, director of ICE’s Denver Field Office, as defendants.
Citing the cases of four immigrants detained by ICE in Colorado this year, ACLU lawsuit testifies that ICE officers are ignoring Title 8, Section 1357 of the US CodeThe law requires federal immigration officials to have probable cause to believe that a person is in the country illegally and is likely to flee before a warrant can be obtained to arrest him.
The Hill has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE for comment on the lawsuit.
according to Latest ICE DataOfficers from the Denver Field Office have arrested 15,756 individuals in their jurisdiction in Wyoming and Colorado. According to the complaint, ICE arrested nearly 2,000 individuals in Colorado in the first half of the year.
The ACLU and attorneys filed the lawsuit on behalf of 43-year-old Refugio Ramirez Ovando, 19-year-old Caroline Dias Goncalves, 36-year-old JST and 32-year-old GRR. All four have been living in the US for more than a decade and were detained by ICE officials earlier this year.
Ramirez was detained without a warrant in May and held in an ICE detention facility in Aurora, Colo., for more than three months before an officer admitted mistaking him for someone else. Dias Goncalves, a University of Utah student, was arrested by ICE officers while driving in June and spent 15 days in the Aurora facility.
JST, who goes by the pseudonym JST, was arrested at his apartment complex in February and spent four weeks in the Aurora facility. GRR, also known by the pseudonym GRR, was detained by ICE during April A night club raid In Colorado Springs, Colo. He later spent six weeks in Aurora.
The lawsuit claims that instead of enforcing immigration law, ICE is “struggling to fill arbitrary citations set by the Administration, causing chaos and terror in neighborhoods throughout Colorado.” It said approximately 169,000 immigrants and other Latinos without legal status in the state “now live in fear and daily risk due to the indiscriminate practices of federal immigration agents.”
In May, Stephen Miller, deputy chief of the White House policy staff, said goal of administration ICE has to arrest 3,000 people a day.
“ICE’s arrest scheme is tearing families apart and terrorizing communities,” the lawsuit said.
