Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser asked a federal appeals court on Sept. 8 to keep in place a rule that limits how US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can arrest people without a warrant. Weiser co-led a coalition of 21 states and Washington, DC, in filing the brief with the Denver-based 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
The case at the center of it
The brief defends a November 2025 court order that found ICE officers in Colorado had “routinely” made warrantless arrests without first checking whether the person was likely to flee before agents could obtain a warrant. Senior US District Judge R. Brooke Jackson issued the order after four people, represented by the ACLU of Colorado and two Denver law firms, sued Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials.
The plaintiffs include a University of Utah nursing student held 15 days after a Mesa County traffic stop and a Grand Junction man arrested in a case of mistaken identity.
Under federal law, ICE cannot arrest someone without a warrant unless agents have probable cause that the person is in the country unlawfully and likely to flee before a warrant can be obtained. The Trump administration appealed the decision in January, and DHS pushed back on the findings. Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin called the November order an “activist ruling” and said the department follows the law.
It didn’t end there. On May 12, Jackson ruled that ICE had “materially violated” his own order — not one of the 36 arrest reports the agency had turned over documented the flight-risk finding the injunction requires. He gave ICE 14 days to build a new training program and 45 days to run every officer who makes warrantless arrests through it; anyone who misses that window loses the authority to make one.
Jackson said the most blatant violations happened in the greater Denver metro area, though he declined to find that the noncompliance extended statewide. The court record doesn’t break the violations out by congressional district.
Right now the order is the only thing making ICE prove it followed the law. If the appeals court throws it out, no one is checking.
Why it matters in CO-8
Jackson’s order is statewide and covers everyone ICE might arrest without a warrant in Colorado, including in the 8th District. None of the four named plaintiffs live there, but the rule does — and so does the question underneath it: how much proof ICE needs before taking someone into custody.
CO-8 has the largest Hispanic population of any congressional district in Colorado, nearly 40%, and its Adams County communities, including Commerce City, Thornton and Brighton, sit in the same metro corridor as the Aurora ICE Processing Center, one of the region’s largest immigration detention centers.
That tension shows up in the numbers. A Colorado Latino Policy Agenda poll of CO-8 voters, released Sept. 1 by BSP Research and reported by The Colorado Sun, found Evans underwater with Latino voters in his own district — 34% approve of him, 42% disapprove.
That hasn’t translated into an automatic advantage for Rutinel, though: just 51% of Latino voters in the district said they’d vote for the Democratic candidate this fall, compared with 29% for the Republican. Statewide, the same survey found immigration reform has become Latino voters’ top non-economic priority, with 4 in 10 saying they personally know someone who’s been deported.
Tim Macdonald, legal director for the ACLU of Colorado, which represents the plaintiffs, has been more direct about what his office says it’s found: “ICE has continued to thumb their nose both at the law and court orders,” he told CPR News in February. “It appears to be an agency that has gone rogue, completely off the rails.”
Where Evans and Rutinel stand
For Rep. Gabe Evans, the Fort Lupton Republican seeking a second term, immigration enforcement has been a defining focus of his first term. A former Arvada police officer and the grandson of a Mexican immigrant, Evans has repeatedly argued ICE should prioritize deporting “gangsters, not grandmas.” He voted for the Laken Riley Act, which requires ICE to detain people accused of certain theft-related crimes, and has voted multiple times to keep ICE and Customs and Border Protection highly-funded during recent government funding fights.
Evans hasn’t backed every ICE tactic. He told Axios in 2025 that he was pushing the agency to deprioritize arresting immigrants without criminal records. In February, he told CBS Colorado he had “a lot of heartburn” over ICE claiming it can enter homes on an administrative warrant rather than one signed by a judge.
Home entries are a narrower question than the one before the 10th Circuit, which turns on street arrests.
Congressman Evans hasn’t addressed the Ramirez Ovando case or the flight risk standard it turns on in any public statement we found.
Manny Rutinel, the Commerce City Democrat and state representative who won the June primary with 60.9% of the vote, has no congressional voting record on ICE. Asked by The Colorado Sun in May whether he supports dismantling the agency, he called for “immediate, quick action to curb the brutality of Trump’s ICE” and “common sense measures” like requiring agents to use judicial warrants rather than administrative ones and mandating that ICE officials wear identification.
Courier Colorado spoke with Rutinel, who said:
“ICE agents should be required to use judicial orders and held accountable when they break the law. Americans deserve strong standards for all law enforcement. If Trump and Evans spent as much time worrying about lowering costs as they do tormenting immigrants, things would be a lot less expensive.”
Courier Colorado reached out to Rep. Evans’ campaign for comment but did not receive a response.
As of the docket’s last update, the government and plaintiffs have both filed their main briefs — the last on Aug. 31 — and both have asked for oral argument, but the 10th Circuit hasn’t yet scheduled one. Mail ballots go out to Colorado voters in October, and the two candidates still answer the question differently.
