Federal judge who ordered no warrantless ICE arrests in Colorado asserts DOJ not complying

A federal judge in Colorado has questioned whether the Trump administration is complying with his order barring warrantless ICE arrests in the state, according to Colorado Public Radio.

Senior U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, said during a hearing Wednesday that the Department of Justice appeared to be falling short of his November injunction requiring flight-risk assessments and warrants before detaining people, CPR News reported.

Under the order, ICE officers may not make warrantless arrests unless they have probable cause to believe a person is in violation of immigration law and likely to escape before a warrant can be secured. In granting relief, Jackson wrote that while ICE has authority to enforce immigration laws, "in carrying out these responsibilities, [ICE agents] must follow the law," according to the ACLU.

During Wednesday's hearing, ACLU attorneys argued that arrest records turned over to them show continuing violations of the injunction, CPR reported.

"They are in fact detaining and arresting people before they call headquarters. The arrests are being effectuated without a warrant," Tim Macdonald, legal director for the ACLU of Colorado, said, according to CPR. "All of the I-213s we submitted show ongoing violations of your order."

Macdonald added that the reports reviewed so far do not reflect documented flight-risk assessments or judicial warrants. 

"We are seeing uniform non-compliance," he said, according to CPR.

"Looking at these I-213s, it doesn't give the description of the arrest that is required by the court's order," Leneis said, according to CPR.

"We started with zero, we had a lot of things to get in place," he said, according to CPR. "We think the numbers now are better than they were in December."