A federal judge in Denver has ordered ICE to list every person in Colorado the agency re-arrested right after a court ordered their release, after an ICE official testified under oath that she had been given a direct order to re-arrest people freed on habeas petitions who had "some kind of criminality."
At the hearing on Wednesday, November 4, U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney took up the case of Ramon Quintero Alvarez, a Wyoming man held at the privately run detention center in Aurora. Assistant Field Office Director Nichole Black testified that the instruction came from Deputy Field Office Director George Valdez, who had in turn received it from Nathan Rasper, the head of ICE's Denver field office.
Sweeney said that releasing somebody momentarily is not releasing somebody at all, and that the court's orders were "being made a mockery of." She ordered Alvarez freed by 2 p.m. that day. ICE had released and immediately re-arrested 10 people in a single week, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Soler acknowledged that Alvarez's case was at least the tenth, telling the court the government "will not be submitting a brief that argues that the current detention is lawful."
By the ICE official's own account, Alvarez's record did not include filed charges. Sweeney has summoned Rasper, the Denver field office director, to appear in her courtroom and explain the agency's conduct at a hearing set for Monday morning, November 9.
A day earlier, Judge S. Kato Crews of the same court barred ICE from re-arresting another petitioner, Edgardo Garcia Vargas, without a hearing first. Garcia Vargas had been released under the court's order and was then arrested again by ICE officers before he had even left the detention facility grounds.
For families in Colorado, the judge's order means a court's release order now has to be answered for in the open: ICE must produce the full list of everyone it took straight back into custody after a judge said to let them go, and its Denver chief must explain the practice under questioning. Beyond its lawyer's statements at the hearing, the agency has issued no separate public response.
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