Latest news with #TimMacdonald
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What's known about detainees from Colorado who were sent to El Salvador
Tim Macdonald, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado, speaks to reporters outside the Alfred A. Arraj United States Courthouse in Denver on April 21, 2025. Macdonald represents plaintiffs who are suing the Trump administration over their potential deportation under the Alien Enemies Act. (Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline) Immigration advocates in Colorado say they have identified about 12 immigrants in Colorado whom they believe federal authorities have removed to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. Some details of their cases are uncertain, because immigration authorities, both in court proceedings and through public communication, have largely refused to release information about enforcement activities. But lawyers and community groups working on behalf of the immigrants — through contact with family members, media coverage, videos from CECOT, and scant clues from federal sources — have constructed the best available profile of people who vanished from Colorado. As Colorado Newsline previously reported, Tim Macdonald, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado, in April first revealed in federal court in Denver that at least 11 people had been removed from Colorado to the brutal prison in El Salvador. The ACLU represents two Venezuelan nationals, as well as a larger class of immigrants, who are being held at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Aurora and fear deportation under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime law invoked by President Donald Trump to hasten deportations. The Colorado case is one of several throughout the country that challenges the Trump administration's hyper-aggressive pursuit of mass deportations as unconstitutional, affording detainees little to no due process. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Attorney Laura Lunn, director of advocacy and litigation at Westminster-based Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, which has worked on the federal case of the Venezuelan detainees and others in Colorado, told Newsline this week that immigration advocates think there are 'about a dozen' people the U.S. removed from Colorado to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act. 'In some instances, we were in touch with their loved ones, who said, 'We saw our loved one on the news, and he is in CECOT,'' Lunn said. Numerous images and videos have emerged from the prison since March 15, when American officials, in possible violation of a court order, flew 238 migrants from the U.S. to be incarcerated in El Salvador. The roughly dozen immigrants transferred from Colorado to CECOT are believed to have been on one of three March 15 flights, Lunn said. Newsline requested responses to a set of specific questions for this story from a spokesperson for ICE Denver. The spokesperson referred questions to a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, who did not respond. The Western region branch of the American Friends Service Committee helped to confirm, largely through interaction with family members, about six of the Colorado-to-CECOT detainees, Jennifer Piper, the region's program director, said. They are Venezuelan men roughly between 19 and 25 years old. There is no indication any of the roughly 12 individuals from Colorado were legal residents or citizens of the U.S., but they were removed from the country before they could present facts on their own behalf, Lunn noted. For some family members, the first indication a loved one had been transported to El Salvador was the release by CBS News of a list of detainees who were on the March 15 flights. So, you know, you're talking two months, more than 60 days that you have no idea if your loved one is alive, dead, in El Salvador, disappeared into the immigration system in Guantanamo. No idea. – Jennifer Piper, Western region director of the American Friends Service Committee One Colorado detainee's mother whom Piper works with spotted her son in a video from CECOT just this month. 'She finally was able to see her kid's face, when they went walking down the halls,' Piper said. 'So, you know, you're talking two months, more than 60 days that you have no idea if your loved one is alive, dead, in El Salvador, disappeared into the immigration system in Guantanamo. No idea.' Some details on at least three Colorado-to-El Salvador detainees have been reported through government and media sources. They include Jose Eduardo Moran-Garcia, Yohendry Jerez-Hernandez and Nixon Perez. Jerez-Hernandez and Perez appear on the CBS list. Sources for this story declined to give the names of other individuals they're working with. Colorado and Aurora became a focus of Trump's plan for mass deportations as he campaigned for reelection last year, including during a rally in Aurora in October. Local and federal authorities in recent months have undertaken several operations against immigrants on the Front Range. They include the September arrests of four men in connection with a shooting at an apartment on Nome Street in Aurora, a raid on a 'makeshift nightclub' in Adams County in January, a coordinated set of operations at residences in Denver and Aurora in February, and a raid on a 'makeshift nightclub' in Colorado Springs last month. At least some of the detainees sent from Colorado to CECOT were rounded up during these actions, Piper said, adding, 'Not a single person was convicted of a crime.' Trump administration officials often allege that some detainees in Colorado and elsewhere have ties to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. 'It's really important to understand that those ties have not been proven in any way,' Piper said. 'They haven't been able to provide any proof of that in any of the court documents where they're being sued.' Some of the removed immigrants faced criminal charges, but they were local, not federal, charges, often filed well after the individuals were initially detained, Piper said. 'No one gets to go to their final court date to argue their case' before removal, Piper said. Some detainees didn't even face local charges and were removed to El Salvador because federal officials said, 'Oh, we didn't like your tattoo,' she said. Lunn has appeared as a 'friend of the court' during hearings for some of the Colorado detainees believed to be at CECOT. Government attorneys have never acknowledged the detainees were sent to El Salvador, she said. 'I've been doing detained work for people in immigration proceedings now for about 15 years. It is unprecedented for somebody's case to be docketed and for ICE to show up to court and say, 'We don't know where this person is, and we're not at liberty to tell you where they might be,'' Lunn said. The cases are devoid of typical due process and documentation. 'It would be one thing if there was like a legal basis that the government could point to as to why somebody was placed on one of those planes, but because they provided them no prior notice, because people were taken without the opportunity to review any allegations against them, that means that there really is no paper trail of what allegations existed,' Lunn said. 'We don't even know what the government supposedly alleged in order to invoke the (Alien Enemies Act) against people.' She rejects the term 'deportation' to describe these cases. 'It's not a deportation, because they don't have a deportation order,' Lunn said. 'It's lawlessness … People were disappeared.' Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Denver issued a preliminary injunction that indefinitely blocks the Trump administration from removing detainees in Colorado under the Alien Enemies Act while the case is pending. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
ACLU sues ICE to obtain expanded immigration detention plans in Colorado, Wyoming
DENVER (KDVR) — The American Civil Liberties Union is making Colorado a battleground state against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it sues to access what the nonprofit says should be publicly requestable documents. According to the ACLU and the ACLU of Colorado, it all stems from attempts by ICE to expand immigration detention in Colorado and Wyoming. FOX31 learned during an exclusive ride-along with ICE Denver agents earlier this week that there are plans to double the number of available beds for immigration arrests in the Denver area. ICE plans to double the number of jail beds in Denver due to increased arrests in Colorado FOX31 was told the new facility will have at least as many beds as the more than 1,500 beds in the existing Aurora ICE Contract Facility, and said the new facility would likely be located in Hudson and open by the end of the year to handle a planned increase in arrests. However, the ACLU has not been given such information, according to its lawsuit. The lawsuit states that on Feb. 14, ICE issued a request for information on searching for possible immigration detention facilities, including in areas covered by ICE's Denver Enforcement and Removal Operations Field Office. Responses were needed for the RFI by Feb. 21, and on March 7, the ACLU submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about those plans and potential contract proposals. The advocacy group said in its lawsuit that this should have been enough time for ICE to have received the responses and be able to release the responses as requested. 'We refuse to allow ICE and other federal agencies to hide their work from the public,' said Tim Macdonald, ACLU of Colorado Legal Director. 'ICE cannot continue to withhold basic information about its operations and plans for expanded immigration detention from journalists, advocacy organizations, and our communities.' Under U.S. law, agencies must respond to FOIA requests within 20 working days. The ACLU says that ICE acknowledged it had received the FOIA request on March 12 and noted in its lawsuit, filed on April 21, that more than 30 working days have passed since the request was filed. Some documents requested by the ACLU from ICE through FOIA requests have been returned, although redacted — the ACLU shows on its website documents from ICE that detail plans to expand ICE detention facilities in 10 states, including California, Michigan, Kansas, New Mexico, Nevada, Washington and Texas. However, details in Wyoming and Colorado have not been made available. 'ICE has taken aggressive steps to expand immigration detention at an unprecedented rate in service of President Trump's campaign promise to tear apart families and deport immigrants who contribute to our communities and our economy,' said Eunice Cho, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project, in a release on Monday. 'Already, we are seeing the consequences of the administration's immigration policies – and the public has the right to know how their taxpayer dollars are being misused in service of this dystopian agenda.' Location unknown: 18th District Attorney, ICE spar over undocumented suspect The ACLU said it filed the lawsuit after reports in April that the Trump Administration had sought proposals for up to $45 billion to expand immigrant detention in America. The civil rights advocacy group also said that private prison companies like the GEO Group, which runs the Aurora ICE Detention Facility, have celebrated the president's plan for mass detention and deportations, saying the prison company's chairman called it an 'unprecedented opportunity.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CBS News
22-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Judge bars removal of migrants in Colorado under Alien Enemies Act
A federal judge in Denver has granted a temporary restraining order barring the removal of migrants from the district of Colorado under the Alien Enemies Act. Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network argued during a hearing on Monday that two men from Venezuela were in imminent danger of being deported to a prison in El Salvador. Further, the lawyers for the migrants said that 11 men from Colorado have already been sent to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT — among the hundreds of migrants sent to the supermax prison by the Trump administration. "We are thankful that the Court put a stop to the Trump administration's unlawful attempt to disappear Colorado residents to a Salvadoran mega-prison," said Tim Macdonald, ACLU of Colorado Legal Director. "Due process is fundamental to the rule of law in this country, and the government has shown a rampant disregard for this essential civil right. The Trump administration's desire to evade due process is a threat to all of us. We will continue to fight to permanently stop the government from disappearing people to foreign prisons without due process and in violation of the law. Not one more person should face this nightmare scenario." CBS News Colorado has reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment. The terms of the Colorado restraining order expire on May 6. In a ruling on April 7, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that "AEA detainees must receive notice... that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in proper venue before such removal occurs." The high court's order did not indicate the terms of "reasonable" notice, so it was debated in court on Monday. In her order, Judge Charlotte Sweeney wrote that individuals subject to deportation under the AEA must receive 21 days' notice, be informed of the right to judicial review, and consult with an attorney. Such notice must also be written in a language the individual understands. In March, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, allowing the executive branch to detain or deport noncitizens it deems "dangerous," particularly those administration officials allege are part of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua . Last month, the administration used the law to send more than 200 people to a prison in El Salvador . The last time the Act was invoked was during World War II, when Japanese Americans were interned at Camp Amache in Colorado.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Undocumented immigrants ask for temporary halt of Alien Enemies Act in Colorado
DENVER (KDVR) — Attorneys for two groups filed a request in federal court on Monday for a temporary restraining order on the Alien Enemies Act. The organizations told FOX31 it is trying to prevent undocumented immigrants wrongfully accused of crimes from being illegally deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Nearly a dozen undocumented immigrants from Colorado have been sent to CECOT in El Salvador, according to the Rocky Mountain Immigration Action Network. Location unknown: 18th District Attorney, ICE spar over undocumented suspect The 25- and 32-year-old men are being held at the contract Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Facility in Aurora. 'They have been working, living with their families and doing all the right things. All of a sudden, because they have a tattoo, or because they were hanging out with friends at a certain apartment complex, the government is now alleging that they are members of a gang,' said Rocky Mountain Immigration Action Network Director of Advocacy Laura Lunn. Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rocky Mountain Immigration Action Network are representing the two men named in the suit. The organizations say more immigrants from Colorado are falsely being accused of being Tren de Aragua gang members. The advocacy network says it believes at least 11 undocumented immigrants were flown to prisons in El Salvador in March. The ACLU says it's hoping the temporary restraining order will stop that from happening again. 'So, what we are trying to do is make sure that the federal government follows the constitution, follows the law and doesn't deprive people of their liberty or perhaps their life without an opportunity to challenge the allegations,' said ACLU Legal Director Tim Macdonald. ICE says driver sentenced in deadly 2024 US 285 crash has been deported FOX31 has asked ICE Denver if any undocumented immigrants have been deported using the Alien Enemies Act. We have not received an answer. The ACLU says that while two men are named in the suit, the judge's order would have an impact on any other similar cases here in Colorado. A decision is expected Tuesday morning. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CBS News
21-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Trump's use of Alien Enemies Act deportations face legal test in Colorado federal court
A showdown in federal court in Denver could help shape the legal landscape surrounding deportations. A high-stakes hearing in Denver in a case filed by immigrants' rights groups against the Trump administration concluded Monday morning. Attorneys for the Trump administration argued that people facing deportation should be allotted 24 hours' notice to be able to fight their deportation order in court, but attorneys for the ACLU and Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network argued that 24 hours isn't "reasonable," as ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court. "The government wants to give as little notice as possible so they can pull people out of the country without a judge reviewing it," Tim Macdonald, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado, told CBS News Colorado outside the courthouse on Monday. "The idea that 24 hours is sufficient for someone who's detained at the Aurora detention facility, who likely doesn't speak English, who may not have a high level of education, who doesn't have a lawyer, who doesn't have access to a phone -- the idea that that person can file a, quote, 'write of habeas corpus' in 24 hours is preposterous." Macdonald went on to say that alleged Nazis were afforded more rights in court after World War II than Venezuelans facing deportation under the Trump administration, echoing what a U.S. Appeals Court judge said in Washington, D.C. last month. Charlotte Sweeney, U.S. District judge for the District of Colorado, said on Monday she wouldn't rule on the case for 24 hours. During that hearing, attorneys for the ACLU and Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network said 11 people have been deported from Colorado to El Salvador and about 85% of people being held in the Aurora ICE Processing Center have not yet been able to retain legal counsel, which those groups argue is a violation of their due process rights. Court records show the hearing lasted just over an hour. In addition to President Trump, the defendants named in the case include U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, ICE Director Todd Lyons, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, ICE Denver Field Office Director Robert Gaudian, and Dawn Ceja, warden of the ICE Processing Center in Aurora. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a rare weekend ruling temporarily halting the Trump administration's plan to deport more Venezuelan migrants under a seldom-used wartime law passed in 1798, the Alien Enemies Act . The decision came as mass protests continued across the country denouncing the Trump administration's immigration policies. The administration is urging the court to reconsider its decision blocking the deportations. The president has invoked the Alien Enemies Act, allowing the executive branch to detain or deport noncitizens it deems "dangerous." Last month, the administration used the law to send more than 200 migrants to a prison in El Salvador . Now, El Salvador's president has proposed exchanging the deported migrants for political prisoners held in Venezuela. In Denver, a federal court recently barred the removal of any noncitizens within Colorado who are or will be subject to the Alien Enemies Act. Some of those previously deported from Colorado have already been sent to the El Salvador prison, according to their attorneys. At issue is what kind of legal rights migrants have to challenge the government's allegations before they are removed from the U.S. Trump has said the United States is facing an "invasion" by the Tren de Aragua gang and that he has the authority to use the 1798 law. The act was last invoked during World War II, including in Colorado, to hold Japanese Americans at internment camps, including Camp Amache . "If you think of internment camps during World War II in the United States, that's the kind of framework that we're looking at in terms of how this law has been used in the past," Laura Lunn, an immigrant advocacy lawyer with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, said. The legal battle has triggered a series of emergency filings over the weekend after the Supreme Court bumped a case out of U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., saying it needed to be filed in Texas and other states from which people are being deported. Asked about why this case matters, Macdonald said, "if the government can remove these folks without due process, it erodes civil liberties for every one of us, and they could be next. We could be next. If the government is able to dispense with due process, it's a risk for liberty for all of us."
