Colorado Judge Orders ICE Denver Chief to Court Today Over Re-Arrests of Released Detainees

A federal judge in Colorado wants answers from the man running ICE's Denver office, and she wants them in person.

U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney, a Biden appointee, ordered Nathan Rasper, the ICE Denver field office director, to appear at a hearing scheduled for today, Nov. 9. The subject is whether ICE is getting around judicial release orders by taking people back into custody almost as soon as they are freed.

What the Colorado filings show

Sweeney's Nov. 5 order followed an earlier ruling requiring the government to identify every Colorado case since Oct. 27 in which ICE detained someone within 12 hours of a court-ordered release.

Federal officials came back with 14 petitioners who were arrested again after release. The filing did not give the exact timing of the re-arrests.

Sweeney ordered the exact dates and times of each release and re-arrest. She also ordered officials to identify any other people detained right after a court-ordered release.

The inquiry grew in part out of the case of Ramon Quintero Alvarez, who was released from immigration detention on Oct. 27 and immediately taken back into custody, according to a government court filing.

In a Nov. 3 filing, government attorneys said they would not submit a brief defending the lawfulness of his continued detention. That prompted a Nov. 4 hearing. Assistant U.S. attorneys Andrew Soler and Kevin Traskos appeared, along with ICE Assistant Field Office Director Nichole Black. Sweeney questioned at that hearing whether ICE was releasing detainees briefly and then immediately re-arresting them. She ordered Rasper to appear at the follow-up.

DHS: release is not immunity

The Department of Homeland Security says ICE has followed the law.

"When an illegal alien is ordered released by a judge, that does not immunize the alien from immigration enforcement for all time," DHS said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "ICE may seek to rearrest the alien in a way that complies with the judicial decision. To suggest that ICE cannot do this is nothing short of sabotage."

That is a real legal position. A habeas ruling addresses the specific detention in front of the judge. Whether ICE can lawfully take someone back into custody afterward depends on the grounds and the timing, and that is the question Sweeney is now pressing.

The complaints from detainees and advocates

Tim Macdonald, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado, called the practice "an assault and an affront to any notion of due process and fair play." He said it "defies any common sense, any decency."

One former detainee identified only as Alex said agents were waiting outside the Aurora facility and that he was cuffed and struck. DHS has not been quoted responding to that account. Judge S. Kato Crews, in a separate case, wrote that "once again, the cruelty seems to be the point," according to court filings.

Not just Colorado

The Guardian counted at least 20 cases nationwide over the past year in which people freed on habeas petitions were detained again, based on court records, attorneys and media reports.

Habeas filings have exploded. ProPublica found more than 91,000 petitions since Jan. 25, more than during the past three presidential administrations combined, including Trump's first term.

"We've seen a very, very sharp increase in people who are released on habeas petitions, only to be very rapidly re-detained, often in violation of the federal court's order," said Bridget Pranzatelli, an attorney with the National Immigration Project.

The cases she and others describe include:

• Akram Mahmoud Omar, 77, a Palestinian man who suffered a heart attack in ICE custody at a Louisiana facility. He was arrested again within 10 days of release, according to reports by The Lens and The Intercept.
• Seven immigrants in Minnesota who were re-detained before leaving the Whipple federal building near Minneapolis, according to MPR News. "I don't think being taken out of a building and directly into the arms of four or more officers complies with the court's order," said attorney Daniel Suitor, who represents two of them.
• Yader Cortez of St. Cloud, Minnesota, who told MPR he was detained again about three minutes after a judge's order freed him. He said the arresting official told him, "The judge doesn't know what he's doing. He made a mistake in your case."

Courts are responding

In October, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Colorado rejected a government effort to dismiss a habeas petition on the ground that it had power to re-detain the petitioner. The court cited a "demonstrated pattern of re-detaining" non-citizens granted habeas relief.

In Louisiana, a federal judge held a senior immigration official in contempt and ordered the release of Ibrahim Mohammed, who had been re-arrested three times by ICE. Judges in Pennsylvania and Minnesota have also held federal immigration authorities in contempt or threatened to.

The ACLU of Washington separately says ICE has withheld government-issued identification documents from people after release.

None of the people at issue are US citizens, and immigration enforcement against people without legal status is lawful. But executive agencies do not get to pick which court orders to honor. The disagreement is over whether these re-arrests honor the orders or evade them.

The government's refusal to brief the legality of the Quintero Alvarez detention is the sharpest fact on the record so far. Sweeney has already demanded exact release and re-arrest times for all 14 cases. The hearing with Rasper today will show how ICE explains them. Whether she moves toward contempt, as other judges have, is the open question.