COLORADO — U.S. District Senior Judge R. Brooke Jackson ruled Tuesday that immigration officers in Colorado violated his order limiting when they can arrest people without a warrant. The judge ordered immigration agents authorized to make warrantless arrests to undergo training on the court's orders and required the government to turn over records of such warrantless arrests.

Jackson issued a November order barring immigration officers from arresting anyone without a warrant unless they had probable cause to believe the person is in the country illegally and likely to escape before officers could obtain a warrant. Immigration and Customs Enforcement appealed that November decision.

Jackson said ICE agents have continued to make warrantless arrests without individualized, pre-arrest probable cause determinations of flight risk. He found that the agency had uniformly failed to follow documentation requirements for warrantless arrests under his court order. The judge also concluded that ICE had failed to adequately train its deportation officers on the November order and directed that such training be provided within 45 days.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado brought the lawsuit over collateral arrests of people accidentally caught up in immigration enforcement actions. The organization accused ICE of arresting Latinos to meet enforcement goals and ignoring legal restrictions on who should be detained.

"This is a profoundly important decision for the rule of law and the people of Colorado. The court made clear that ICE is not above the law and cannot continue to violate the law." said Tim Macdonald, legal director for the ACLU of Colorado.

Federal judges in Oregon, California and Washington, D.C., have ordered immigration officers in their districts not to conduct arrests without a warrant unless there is a likelihood of escape. Immigration officers generally obtain administrative warrants, which are documents issued by immigration authorities that authorize an arrest, before looking for someone targeted for arrest and deportation. Collateral arrests of people without legal status encountered during enforcement actions were banned during former President Joe Biden's administration.