ICE Re-Detention Directive Admitted Under Oath in Denver

An ICE re-detention directive in Colorado is now on the record from inside the agency. At a Nov. 4 hearing in Denver, an assistant field office director testified that she had received “a direct order” to re-arrest people freed on habeas petitions if they “had some kind of criminality,” and U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney responded by ordering the government to list every person in Colorado re-detained right after a court-ordered release, according to Colorado Politics. Sweeney also summoned the head of ICE’s Denver field office, Nathan Rasper, to explain the agency’s conduct at a hearing set for Monday morning, Nov. 9.

That shifts the fight. A day earlier, Judge S. Kato Crews of the same court barred ICE from re-arresting one petitioner without a hearing first, a remedy aimed at a single case. Sweeney’s inquiry targets the practice and the chain of command behind it. Testimony that re-arrests followed an instruction, not individual officer judgment, raises the questions that drive contempt findings: who gave the order, how many people it reached and whether officials knowingly worked around binding release orders.

What the ICE official told the court

The case involves Ramon Quintero Alvarez, a Wyoming man held at the privately run detention center in Aurora. Colorado Politics reported that the court gave the government seven days to respond to his habeas petition, with release due within 24 hours if it did not, and that ICE was told on Oct. 26 to free him by Oct. 28. Alvarez testified that he was released on Oct. 27 and taken back into custody almost at once.

Assistant Field Office Director Nichole Black testified that the instruction came from Deputy Field Office Director George Valdez, who in turn got it from Rasper. She said she had understood at the time that Alvarez had a domestic battery conviction and a domestic violence arrest, but when pressed she said, “I was told that charges were not filed.” Asked whether she still believed ICE was empowered to re-detain someone in those circumstances, she said she did, the outlet reported.

In a Nov. 3 filing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Soler said the government “will not be submitting a brief that argues that the current detention is lawful,” because “habeas relief has been effectuated,” and asked the court to close the case. Sweeney rejected that reading. “Releasing somebody momentarily is not releasing somebody at all,” she said, adding that the court’s orders were “being made a mockery of.” She ordered Alvarez freed by 2 p.m. that day and said ICE had released and immediately re-arrested 10 people in a week, a count Soler acknowledged by describing Alvarez’s case as at least the tenth. No public response from ICE or DHS was reported.

Why a sworn admission changes the stakes for ICE

Habeas corpus orders release from unlawful custody. The government’s view, reflected in Soler’s filing and Black’s testimony, is that once the person walks out, the order has been satisfied and a fresh arrest rests on a new basis. Judges in several districts have rejected that view when the new arrest happens at the exit. The Colorado testimony adds what earlier disputes mostly lacked: a stated selection rule (“some kind of criminality”) passed down by supervisors, applied here to a man whose record, by the officer’s own account, did not include filed charges.

The list Sweeney ordered matters most. If it shows a pattern across many cases and judges, the court has a factual basis to consider sanctions against officials rather than case-by-case relief. Judge Nina Y. Wang scheduled her own hearing for Thursday afternoon on similar conduct by ICE and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Colorado Politics reported.

Volume explains the frustration on the bench. “We are handling thousands of these cases,” Sweeney said. “And I assure you, we are not going to handle them twice.” Enforcement in the state has climbed: Newsweek, citing Freedom of Information Act data obtained by the Deportation Data Project, reported that ICE arrests in Colorado rose from 259 in March 2026 to 499 in July 2026. Colorado is not alone, either. Re-arrests after habeas wins have surfaced in at least 20 cases nationwide, a Pennsylvania judge held three officials in civil contempt, and an Oregon judge found that ICE kept making warrantless arrests in defiance of his order.

For people with pending habeas petitions in Colorado, the wording of a release order now does real work: orders like Crews’, which require a hearing before any new arrest and put the burden on the government, are harder to sidestep than a bare release. Whether the government may hold many of these detainees without bond at all is headed to the Supreme Court in a mandatory detention case from the Seventh Circuit. Until then, Rasper’s appearance on Nov. 9 and the government’s list are the next markers, and either could move the Colorado dispute toward contempt.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds an LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Diego and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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