Court Cases

After learning about Claudia Valdez's detention on an ICE detainer, the ACLU of Colorado sent a draft complaint to Arapahoe County. Within a few weeks, the county agreed to an out-of-court settlement of $30,000 to compensate Valdez for her detention.

This lawsuit was originally filed on behalf of five persons, each of whom was unjustly arrested and imprisoned—up to 26 days in one case—in a “mistaken identity” arrest.

In this legal action, ACLU lawyers accuse officers of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of engaging in racial and ethnic stereotyping. They carried out an immigration roundup that violated the Fourth Amendment rights of dozens of Denver-area Spanish-speaking residents and resulted in the illegal arrest and illegal search of United States citizens and legal immigrants who had done absolutely nothing wrong.

In this case, the ACLU asserts that the Denver Police Department (DPD) violated the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act when it refused to disclose any documents from the file of its investigation of the African American clients’ complaints of racial profiling arising from a traffic stop in February 2009.