Judge orders more training of Colorado immigration agents in case involving Utah immigrant

KEY TAKEAWAYS

A federal judge ordered Colorado immigration officials to better educate agents on making certain warrantless arrests.
The order follows the judge's determination that immigration officials violated a 2025 preliminary injunction in a pending lawsuit involving a Utah immigrant.
That Utah immigrant, a woman from Brazil, was detained last year by immigration agents as she drove through Colorado.

DENVER — A federal judge in Colorado says immigration officials in the state must take steps to educate their agents on carrying out arrests of immigrants after violating a preliminary injunction in a case involving a Brazilian immigrant living in Utah.

U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson of Denver issued the order Tuesday in the pending lawsuit filed against federal immigration officials by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado on behalf of several immigrants who say they faced unlawful arrests. Among the plaintiffs is Caroline Dias Goncalves, a Brazilian immigrant living in Utah who was arrested on June 5, 2025, by immigration agents while driving through Colorado, sparking an uproar.

Jackson's ruling found that federal immigration agents in Colorado "have materially violated" a Nov. 25, 2025, preliminary injunction in the case that prohibited them from making warrantless arrests of immigrants without first establishing that they pose a flight risk. It ordered additional training of agents on the terms of last November's order to remedy the situation.

Moreover, it ordered federal officials to develop a training program within two weeks and to train all officers authorized to make warrantless arrests within 45 days.

"The court made clear that ICE is not above the law and cannot continue to violate the law. The decision ensures that we can monitor ICE's behavior going forward and continue to work to prevent unlawful warrantless arrests across the state," Tim Macdonald, legal director for the ACLU of Colorado, said in a statement.

The statement said a hearing last March uncovered lapses in training among Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

"Agents often struggled to answer basic questions about the court order. Corroborating internal ICE documents provided to the ACLU of Colorado, ICE agents also admitted that they had continued to arrest people without determining if they posed a flight risk," it reads.

ICE representatives didn't immediately respond to a query Thursday seeking comment.

The ruling is the latest fallout stemming in part from the detention last year of Dias. Dias was the focus of widespread media attention last year after immigration officials pulled her over as she drove through Colorado and detained her, tipped off by a sheriff's deputy from Mesa County, Colorado.

Federal officials dubbed her "an illegal alien from Brazil" and said she had overstayed a visa to enter the United States. Following her June 5 arrest, she was held for 15 days in a detention facility in Aurora, Colorado, before authorities released her.

The ACLU lawsuit, filed Oct. 9 last year against top ICE leadership, charged that some immigration agents in Colorado were making warrantless arrests without required probable cause determinations on flight risk. It cited the cases of Dias and several other immigrants.

The complaint, more broadly, charged ICE agents with "indiscriminately stopping and arresting people with brown skin in their mission to meet the (Trump) administration's ramped-up enforcement demands." President Donald Trump has made detention of immigrants in the country illegally a priority.

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