The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado filed a federal lawsuit Thursday accusing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents of violating U.S. law by detaining people based on their skin color, accent, or perceived nationality to fulfill alleged arrest quotas set by Trump administration officials.
Filed in U.S. District Court in Colorado, the lawsuit names Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem; acting ICE Director Todd Lyons; and Robert Guadian, director of ICE’s Denver field office, as defendants.
It cites four Colorado residents detained by ICE this year and seeks class-action status to halt what the ACLU called unlawful “warrantless arrests.”
“People are terrified that masked agents will snatch their loved ones or neighbors from the street because an ICE agent believes they look different or speak with an accent,” Tim Macdonald, the ACLU of Colorado’s legal director, said in a news release.
“This is unacceptable. The courts must see ICE’s actions for what they are: an unlawful abuse of power that must be stopped.”
The lawsuit alleged that ICE agents are ignoring 8 U.S.C. §1357, which requires immigration officers to have probable cause to believe a person is in the country illegally and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.
“The true illegality here is ICE’s flagrant disregard of federal law,” said Hans Meyer, an immigration attorney for the plaintiffs, in the news release.
“The courts must act to halt this widespread and egregious ICE practice of arresting people without warrants based on how they look, how they speak, or simply because of who they are with.
“This practice is a frontal assault on our communities to advance [President Donald] Trump’s mass deportation agenda,” he said.
Newsmax reached out to the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and the Department of Justice for comment.
Trump administration officials have previously defended ICE operations as vital to national security and public safety.
Lyons told CBS News in July that agents “will arrest anyone found in the U.S. illegally” but prioritize “the worst of the worst” — those with serious criminal records — while acknowledging that “collateral arrests” of noncriminals sometimes occur in sanctuary jurisdictions.
Lyons dismissed allegations of routine racial profiling as “falsehoods,” saying factors such as location, behavior, and prior tips — not ethnicity alone — guide stops.
He said that approach aligns with Supreme Court precedents allowing such considerations when paired with reasonable suspicion.
Last month, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s injunction restricting ICE “roving patrols,” calling the limits overly broad and affirming the agency’s authority to conduct brief investigative stops based on articulable suspicion.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion that although “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion,” it can factor into holistic assessments, a point federal judges in Chicago recently cited while scrutinizing — but not banning — warrantless arrests under a 2022 consent decree.
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