Court Cases

An investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado (ACLU) revealed that the Garfield County Sheriff’s Department (GCSD) has referred several victims of domestic violence to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, resulting in those individuals being placed in deportation proceedings because they chose to report acts of domestic violence to law enforcement.

In a letter dated October 17, 2011, the ACLU of Colorado urged the Roaring Fork School Board to adopt a policy prohibiting the current practice of School Resource Officers (SROs) collaborating with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This suit, filed on behalf of Colorado resident Luis Quezada, asserts that Jefferson County Sheriff Ted Mink illegally imprisoned the ACLU’s client for 47 days in 2009 simply because federal immigration authorities suspected that Mr. Quezada was here in violation of federal immigration laws.

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.

A U.S. citizen improperly held in a county jail for months was finally released after the ACLU of Colorado contacted the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE).

This case, which names the Weld County sheriff and district attorney as defendants, challenges the validity of the search warrant and the subsequent search of tax records and asserts that Weld County officials violated the right of privacy of thousands of innocent taxpayers who were not suspected of any wrongdoing.