Colorado county jails no longer holding immigrants for ICE

All of Colorado's county jails now have stopped holding immigrants while federal agents decide whether to take them into custody for possible immigration violations.

This policy change makes Colorado the first state in the country where all county jailers individually have decided to reject retainer requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"All sheriffs have agreed that they don't have the ability to deprive people of liberty, even for a few days, because they are suspected of being here illegally," said Mark Silverstein, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado ...

Between October 2011 and August 2013, ICE issued more than 8,700 detainer requests to Colorado jails.

The legality of the detainers came into question when the Colorado Legislature repealed a law last year that required local law enforcement to assist federal immigration authorities. SB-90 required police to report people suspected to be undocumented to ICE and to hold them in jail while ICE decided whether to arrest them ...

ICE did not respond to a request for comment on the detainer issue ...

Related article

Colorado Jails Statewide Succumb to ACLU Threats, Refuse to Honor ICE Detainers, FAIR, September 30, 2014...

All Colorado county jails have succumbed to threats by the American Civil Liberties Union ("ACLU") and have agreed to ignore detainer requests by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") in all circumstances. (Denver Post, Sept. 18, 2014) An ICE detainer is a request from ICE to a state or local law enforcement agency to maintain custody of a particular alien for no more than 48 hours so that federal officials may assume custody for the purpose of removal from the United States. Colorado is the first state in the country to have all of its county jails individually opt to reject compliance with ICE detainers. (Breitbart, Sept. 19, 2014)

Earlier this year, the ACLU sent letters to sheriffs' offices all over the country urging them to stop honoring ICE detainers, arguing that any detention of an alien on the basis of an ICE detainer is a violation of the 4th Amendment. (ACLU letter) The letters go on to conspicuously threaten, in bold letters, that any law enforcement agency that continues to do so "may be held liable for damages" under federal law. (Id.) The ACLU made these claims based on an erroneous reading from a single federal court decision handed down in April: Miranda-Olivares v. Clackamas County (Case No. 3:12-cv-021317-ST). In that case, the court held that an ICE detainer alone did not substantiate "probable cause" to allow a continued detention of the alien after they are eligible for release for the original crime. (Id.)...