Judge issues preliminary injunction in favor of Caroline Dias Goncalves, Brazilian immigrant detained last June in Colorado

DENVER — Caroline Dias Goncalves can remove the ankle monitor she’s been required to wear since her release in June from a federal immigration detention facility in Colorado.

Moreover, federal officials must refund the bond money the Brazilian transplant to Utah posted per the terms of release from the facility, and she’s no longer subject to reporting requirements imposed by immigration officials after her arrest. More significantly, perhaps, a preliminary injunction in the federal suit she and three other immigrants filed against the federal government says immigration agents in Colorado may no longer carry out the sort of warrantless arrests they faced, at least for now.

Tim Macdonald, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, called last week’s ruling by U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson a “major step forward” in the case. The civil rights organization filed the suit on behalf of Dias Goncalves and three other plaintiffs who separately faced abrupt arrests by federal immigration agents in Colorado.

“The federal court found that ICE has a policy, pattern and practice of making these aggressive and unlawful arrests and has now declared that ICE must immediately stop,” Macdonald said in a message Tuesday to KSL.com. “Instead, the federal court ordered that ICE must now consider a person’s ties to the community, including their family circumstances, residence or employment, in evaluating whether the person is a flight risk.”

On the flip side, Tricia McLaughlin, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, blasted the Nov. 25 decision as an “activist ruling” and rejected any suggestion that immigration agents act inappropriately. She didn’t outline the next steps of the defendants in the case — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons and Robert Guadian, head of the Denver field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“This activist ruling is a brazen effort to hamstring the Trump administration from fulfilling the president’s mandate to deport the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “There are no ‘indiscriminate’ stops being made. DHS conducts enforcement operations in line with the U.S. Constitution and all applicable federal laws without fear, favor or prejudice.”

Dias Goncalves, now 20, was the focus of widespread media attention in June 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.

In his decision, Jackson noted that Dias Goncalves, who came to the United States when she was 7, has a pending asylum application with U.S. Customs and Immigration Services and authorization to work in the country. The judge also cited what he termed immigration officials’ “unlawful conduct” in the arrests of Dias Goncalves and the three other immigrant plaintiffs in not establishing probable cause that they posed flight risks before jailing them.

mmigration enforcement agents “shall not effect warrantless arrests” of immigrants in Colorado unless they first establish that targeted individuals are in the country illegally and pose a flight risk, Jackson wrote.

In Dias Goncalves’ case, the judge noted that she had cooperated with the Mesa County deputy who first pulled her over as she was driving on I-70 for allegedly traveling too close to another vehicle. The deputy simultaneously communicated with federal immigration agents, precipitating their subsequent arrest of her.

“Furthermore, she was not avoiding the immigration authorities; she had applied for asylum and recently obtained work authorization through USCIS. Under these circumstances, the mere fact that she was driving a car in a neighboring state was insufficient to conclude that she posed a flight risk,” Jackson wrote.

In calling for an end in Colorado to the sort of arrest Dias Goncalves faced, Jackson said the plaintiffs’ cases “are not isolated incidents, but part of a larger policy, pattern or practice by ICE in this state.” As with Dias Goncalves, the judge ordered that two other plaintiffs who were required to wear ankle monitors may remove them and get a refund of the bond money they posted to be released from detention.

Macdonald, the ACLU attorney, said the end goal in the case is a permanent injunction stopping immigration officials from making warrantless arrests of immigrants without establishing probable cause that they pose a flight risk and are in the country illegally.

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