A federal judge in Denver is deciding whether to open contempt proceedings against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the acting director of its Denver field office testified that he ordered agents to re-arrest immigrants whom federal judges had ordered released.
Nathan Rasper, the acting director of ICE's Denver field office, told U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney on Monday, November 9, that from October 27 he verbally ordered agents to re-arrest immigrants who had been freed under court orders, and that he told officers to halt the practice on November 4. At least 18 people were re-arrested in about a week, the government told the court.
Sweeney called the practice "not a technical violation. It's a due process violation," and said: "Releasing somebody momentarily is not releasing somebody at all." She ordered the government to produce a list of everyone released under habeas orders and subsequently re-arrested, and said she would decide in a written order whether to begin contempt proceedings. No written order has yet been issued and no new hearing has been set.
Rasper testified that he gave the instruction after hearing from colleagues in Minnesota that courts there allowed agents to immediately re-arrest people who had been released, and that he was not aware of an October 8 agreement between the federal court and the U.S. Attorney's Office providing for automatic release when the government declines to defend a detention. He also told the court he believed some people had been detained without properly executed arrest warrants and that those warrants could later be executed to re-arrest them.
The hearing was held in the case of Quintero Alvarez v. Baltazar, No. 1:26-cv-04891, a habeas case arising from the privately run Aurora detention centre. Immigration lawyers identified at least 17 cases in Colorado in which ICE held people in detention whom courts had ordered released, and said the true number is likely higher because many immigrants represent themselves.
The re-arrests have stopped for now, Rasper told the court. The episode is part of a wider confrontation between federal judges and ICE over court-ordered releases: on the same day, a federal judge in Minnesota was also weighing contempt sanctions after ICE re-arrested a man a second time following two separate judicial release orders.