Colorado county jails no longer holding immigrants for ICE

By Nancy Lofholm
The Denver Post POSTED: 09/18/2014 03:46:29 PM MDT UPDATED: 100 MIN. AGO


An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent walks down the aisle among shackled Mexican immigrants a boarded a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter jet for deportation in 2010. (LM Otero, AP file photo)


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.

The ACLU had been pressuring county jails for six months to reject ICE holds because Colorado sheriffs don't have the authority under state law to keep suspected illegal immigrants in jail past the time they normally would be released on other charges.

ICE routinely had been asking county sheriffs to hold people in jail for up to five days beyond their usual release time. 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The legality of the detainers came into question when the Colorado Legislature repealed a law last year that required local law enforcement to assist federal immigration authorities.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.

County jails saw the liability potential of this practice when the ACLU in June negotiated a $30,000 settlement with Arapahoe County on behalf of a woman who sought help during a domestic violence incident. She was arrested and held in jail for three days under an ICE detainer request.

Silverstein said the detainer system has been particularly damaging in domestic violence cases because victims perceived local law enforcement as an arm of federal immigration authorities and were afraid to report abuse.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment on the detainer issue.
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957, nlofholm@denverpost.com or twitter.com/nlofholm

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