Another bill signed by the governor aims to rein in the skyrocketing cost of Medicaid-like coverage for some immigrants without legal status in Colorado.

The immigration detention bill, , requires local health agencies to conduct unannounced inspections of detention facilities to ensure they meet food, water, housing and medical standards. Those facilities could face up to $50,000 in fines for any violations.

Only one detention center currently operates in Colorado — a privately run facility in Aurora owned by the Geo Group and contracted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The law applies only to state-, county- and privately run facilities. It would not cover detention centers owned wholly by the federal government.

“We have a responsibility to do everything we can to keep our communities safe from the violent and unconstitutional overreach of ICE,” said Sen. Iman Jodeh, an Aurora Democrat and sponsor of the law, in a statement. “We hear all too often about death, sickness, overcrowding, and other unacceptable conditions in ICE detention facilities, but there is almost no transparency. This law is about increasing oversight, ensuring frequent inspections, and protecting health and safety.”

Earlier versions of the bill included transparency requirements for the handling of federal immigration subpoenas received by the state — related to controversy about Polis’ cooperation with such a subpoena — and a prohibition on ICE agents entering nonpublic areas of jails. Both were stripped to avoid a veto from Polis, sponsors said.

On Thursday, Polis also signed , which will limit healthcare services provided under . The program seeks to mirror Medicaid coverage for low-income children and pregnant women who are immigrants without legal status.

Costs for the program blew past initial estimates, from an expected $14.7 million to $105 million, while the state also grappled with another budget deficit north of $1 billion.

The new law eliminates long-term services for people who aren’t already using them beginning in January. It also caps dental services and limits behavioral health services, among other changes. Members of the Joint Budget Committee, Democrat and Republican alike, frequently called it one of the toughest bills of the session because it takes access to healthcare away from children who had no say in their ailments or where they live.

To help manage insurance costs for homeowners, Polis signed . The law creates a new state enterprise that will assess a fee on homeowners insurance policies; the majority of the money generated must go to help homeowners retrofit residential property against extreme weather events like wind and hail.

The effort is part of Polis’ final-year effort to lower Colorado’s home and auto insurance costs.

“Homeowners insurance premiums have skyrocketed in recent years, squeezing household budgets and costing families thousands each year,” Sen. Kyle Mullica, a Thornton Democrat and bill sponsor, said in a statement. “This law is a commonsense approach to reduce costs and make Colorado homes more resilient and disaster-ready for years to come.”

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Attorneys with the filed a motion Tuesday to join with Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly and 23rd Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler in their January lawsuit against Gov. Jared Polis and other state officials over the law.

The local officials argued that the state law unduly limits law enforcement officers’ discretion when crime victims apply for , a visa set aside for non-citizen victims of crime who cooperate with law enforcement and meet other conditions.

The Department of Justice called Colorado’s law “deeply unfair” and argued in the motion to intervene Tuesday that the federal government’s law supersedes state law.

“The United States has an obvious interest relating to the integrity of the federal U-Visa program; that interest could be impaired or impeded by a ruling in Colorado’s favor,” the motion states.

Crime victims seeking U visas must have their applications certified by a law enforcement agency — that is, local officials must state that the applicants were victims of qualifying crimes and that they are helping in the investigation or prosecution of those crimes.

Federal immigration officials make the final decisions on whether or not visa applications are granted. Under federal law, victims seeking U visas must show that they have suffered physical or mental abuse due to a qualifying crime that happened in the U.S., they possess information about that crime, and they have been helpful or will be helpful to the prosecution.

In 2021, Colorado legislators changed state law to require that state officials consider only a victim’s helpfulness and whether they were subject to a qualifying crime when deciding whether to certify a victim’s application for a U visa. The state law also requires that officials consider a victim to be helpful unless there is documentation that the victim refused to cooperate with the case.

That shift undermines federal goals for the U visa program, the DOJ said in a news release Tuesday.

“Congress created a scheme to incentivize cooperation with law enforcement while relying on local official discretion to ensure that only deserving applicants receive U visas,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in the news release. “But Colorado is favoring the unhelpful alien over the crime victim who helps promote public safety and order. Federal law does not tolerate that backwards policy.”

No more than 10,000 U visas can be issued in any given year nationwide, creating a competitive process to receive one.

Between 2019 and 2025, 55 Colorado law enforcement agencies and district attorneys’ offices reported receiving 1,368 requests for U-visa certifications, according to records kept by the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice. The agencies signed off on 1,118 of those requests — approving about 82%.

Polis’ attorneys filed the notice with the Colorado Court of Appeals last week, roughly six weeks after a district court judge again told Polis that complying with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement subpoena would likely violate a state law that prevents information-sharing with ICE outside of criminal investigations.

The filing indicates that Polis will try to overturn that order and argue that ICE’s claims in the subpoena — that it wants information about the sponsors as part of a criminal investigation — are sufficient to sidestep state law and turn over personal information to the agency.

The notice is the first step in filing a formal appeal. In a statement Monday night, Polis spokeswoman Ally Sullivan said that the subpoena was related to a criminal investigation and that Polis “has been clear” that the state would cooperate with federal authorities on criminal probes. Asked if the state had done anything to check on the sponsors, she said the federal government has not requested help from state officials.

The filing comes nearly 12 months after Polis was first sued by Scott Moss, a now-former state employee who sought to block the governor from turning over personal information about the sponsors.

In late June 2025, Denver District Court Judge A. Bruce Jones told Polis that complying with the request would likely be illegal. Polis had claimed, without evidence, that the subpoena was part of a criminal investigation.

As the lawsuit dragged into 2026, the state Department of Labor and Employment then received another ICE subpoena seeking the same information as the first, prompting Moss to request a new order. In the new subpoena, ICE wrote that it wanted the sponsors’ addresses and employment details as part of an ongoing criminal case.

Moss argued that there was no criminal investigation and that ICE had simply adjusted its language to avoid another court order.

In April, Jones agreed, ruling that it was reasonable to assume ICE’s latest subpoena was just a new version of the first one, updated with a “talismanic phrase” referencing a criminal investigation to appease state law. He prohibited Polis from directing state labor officials to comply with the latest subpoena.

The state has hired two outside law firms to represent Polis and the labor department in the lawsuit. As of Monday, the state has spent more than $215,000 to defend the governor and attempt to comply with the subpoenas, according to figures obtained from the attorney general’s office in response to a records request.

Standing outside the Hudson facility’s empty parking lot, Bennet, who is running to become the Democratic nominee for governor, said he would partner with state legislators to . The law gives local governments more regulatory and planning authority over matters of statewide impact.

Those powers have typically been used for large projects that happen within a county or city’s boundaries — like airports, mining or water infrastructure — but Bennet said he wanted to expand them to also allow local governments to “say no” to detention centers. He is running in the June 30 Democratic primary against Attorney General Phil Weiser.

“Colorado will not become home to Donald Trump’s cruel immigration agenda,” he said of the president from a lectern in front of the Hudson Correctional Facility.

Since last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have considered reopening the former private prison northeast of Denver for immigration detention.

If Bennet’s proposal became law and could be used to slow down the opening of new facilities, it would require county officials to make use of it. Kelly Flenniken, the executive director of Colorado Counties Inc., a local government association, did not return messages seeking comment Tuesday, nor did a statewide group that represents county attorneys.

Bennet acknowledged that it “would be very hard” to stop the Hudson facility from reopening as a detention center, echoing what . The facility — and the land it sits upon — is privately owned and has already served as a prison.

Colorado is home to one immigration detention center, owned and operated by the private prison company Geo Group. But as part of Trump’s plan to arrest and deport millions of immigrants without legal status, the federal government has sought to dramatically increase its detention capacity nationwide. ICE has said it wants to add hundreds more beds in Colorado.

Planning documents obtained last year by the Washington Post identified two shuttered private prisons — in Hudson and Walsenburg — as expansion sites, and members of Colorado’s congressional delegation were told in August that ICE planned to open the Hudson prison, which has been closed for more than a decade.

also indicated that ICE issued a nearly $40 million letter contract to the Geo Group last June for the facility, which ICE calls the “Big Horn Correctional Facility.”

But months later, the fate of the facility remains unclear.

Bryce Lange, Hudson’s town manager, said Tuesday that he recently called Highlands REIT, the real estate investment trust that is the owner of the dormant prison, for an update because he’d heard rumors about its status.

“The owner stated that they don’t have a contract signed with anyone to open an ICE detention facility in Hudson,” Lange wrote in an email. He added that he believed the company was interested in leasing the space “to any entity that might be interested — including the state of Colorado, if they need additional capacity.”

The Highlands trust, which is based in Chicago, did not return a message seeking comment Tuesday. In an unsigned statement, the Department of Homeland Security said the agency has “no new detention centers to announce at this time.”

state or local officials from entering into agreements with private companies to open or operate immigration detention centers, or from selling companies’ land for that purpose. said that if he was elected, he would issue an executive order “reconfirming Colorado’s prohibition on the use of state land for new immigration detention centers.”

Earlier this year, Colorado lawmakers requiring regular and more intensive inspections of detention facilities. That bill is awaiting outgoing Gov. Jared Polis’ signature for passage into law.

Cecilia stood outside a federal immigration field office in Centennial, chewing her lip and weighing the few choices left to her. Behind her, piled in a car, was what remained of her family’s life in the United States.

It was early May, and a few feet away, her three sons took turns sticking their shoes into old prairie dog holes in the dirt, the youngest’s Crocs breaking through cobwebs. As the boys looked from the ground to their mother, she explained that if she returned to the office the next day, immigration agents had promised to detain the family and arrange their return to Venezuela.

The Centennial office building was similar to one into which her husband and the boys’ father had disappeared late last year. But unlike Ronald, who’d been arrested at what he thought was a routine appointment, Cecilia arrived that day hoping that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would take them away.

She and her three children — ages 12, 9 and 6 — had walked for three months to get to the United States in 2024, crossing notorious expanses of jungle and mountains for the prospect of a stable future and a reunion with Ronald, who’d come earlier that year. But like other families split by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, they now found themselves struggling to make ends meet in a single-parent household, with no regular paycheck and few options.

The loss of a primary source of income, coupled with the federal government’s efforts to keep many immigrants indefinitely detained, has spurred families like Cecilia’s — and detainees like her husband — to stop fighting and leave the country. They’ve given up on asylum cases or other legal defenses in favor of a swift release from detention and from financial collapse.

An unprecedented number have asked to leave while in detention, while tens of thousands more have, like Cecilia, . Many more have simply left on their own, immigration advocates say.

Cecilia, who had been seeking asylum in the U.S., said outside the Centennial office that her family would be flown first to Arizona and kept in a detention center before they left. She believed the government would expedite their exit, she said in Spanish, because she was seven months pregnant. Earlier, she said she’d heard that families could sleep in hotels.

Two nonprofit workers and a volunteer had come with the family to the field office. They weren’t accustomed to walking immigrants without proper legal status into ICE custody. They were skeptical of the stories Cecilia had heard — and as she spoke, they exchanged glances and shifted their feet.

“A detention center is not a hotel,” V Reeves, of Housekeys Action Network Denver, told her in Spanish.

Cecilia crossed her arms.

After her husband was arrested, she’d learned she was pregnant. In the six months since then, the family lost its apartment and Cecilia lost her own job after her pregnancy began to show. They tumbled into poverty and near-homelessness, and she wanted to leave for her kids.

“They’re hungry because I can’t work,” she said that morning, before they’d left the house. They were all struggling to sleep. She’d briefly continued sending the boys to school, where they could at least get reliable meals. But then she’d pulled them out, fearful they could be arrested.

To protect her privacy and that of her children in her small Venezuelan town, The Denver Post is identifying Cecilia by her middle name. The Post confirmed Cecilia’s identity with two immigration advocates helping the family and by identifying her later in an ICE detainee database.

Using internal ICE records obtained by the , The Post also confirmed Ronald’s initial arrest and release in spring 2024, as well as his second arrest at the Centennial office in November, two days before Thanksgiving. Those details matched both Cecilia’s description and the advocates’ records about the family. The Post was unable to speak with Ronald and is identifying him by his first name.

ICE spokespeople did not respond to questions sent earlier this month about Cecilia’s status, and they referred additional questions to another agency. On Thursday, in an unsigned statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security wrote that it “continues to support lawful and orderly departures and to work with interagency and international partners to mitigate documentation challenges where possible.”

On the morning that she turned herself in, Cecilia had $6 in her bag. If she decided to stay, she would need $800 to pay for another month in the single room the family shared in a south Denver home. She had an air mattress that was twin-sized and fraying. The boys took the floor.

So she made a choice. They would return to the Centennial office the next day and hope for a swift return home.

Losing a breadwinner’s support

Two other single-parent immigrant families had initially set out to surrender to ICE that first morning.

Diana Marquez Ruiz and her two children lived with Cecilia, in another room down the hall. Before they’d left, Ruiz had cried softly as she and Cecilia signed waivers to allow the advocates working with them to request congressional inquiries should the women vanish into ICE’s detention system.

But on the way to the field office, a sobbing Ruiz turned back with her two children, grief-stricken and unwilling to leave their dog behind in the U.S.

Ruiz’s husband was removed from the Aurora detention center on the same day as Ronald, and she’d befriended Cecilia afterward. Across the nation, men have made up the overwhelming majority of those arrested in immigration detentions. Of roughly 4,800 people initially detained in a Colorado ICE facility last year, nearly 9 in every 10 were adult men, according to ICE data analyzed by The Post. Eighty-six percent of those arrested by ICE in the state during President Donald Trump’s first year back in office were also men.

Of those detained, 477 men were married, according to the ICE data. For Ronald and nearly 2,000 more people, the data provides no information about their marital status.

“We are now seeing the breadwinner be the person that is getting detained often,” said Andrea Loya, the executive director of Casa De Paz, which works with detainee families in Aurora. “That����ap the person going to work, the person who was driving the car.”

Within six months of a family member’s arrest, families without legal status lost 70% of their income on average, according to a study of immigration enforcement in the United States between 2006 and 2009. More recent studies found that the children of deported parents “faced serious challenges due to deportation of a parent, including economic hardship, housing instability, food insecurity, and separation from parents,” according to a from a division of the American Psychological Association.

During her first visit to the ICE office this month, security guards told Cecilia to submit a self-deportation application through the CBP Home App, through a program in which immigrants are offered incentives — including a cash payout — if they agree to leave. But she had already tried that, unsuccessfully, and showed up at the office unannounced out of desperation.

“The CBP Home app gives aliens the option to leave now, and self-deport, so they may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream,” . “If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return.”

In a December legal filing, an executive with federal contractor Salus Worldwide Solutions wrote that more than 100,000 people were in the “pipeline” for one incentive program, and that the company had supported 34,738 assisted voluntary departures — like the one Cecilia was seeking.

“When we’re working with folks who are detained, the financial strain and emotional strain on the family and community is making it less likely that people will fight their case when they have a legal right to do so,” said Cindy Schlosser, a social worker who oversees the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network’s social service project. “… It����ap not just the detention, but the detention without hope of reasonable release that puts families and their loved ones who’re detained in these impossible situations to decide, ‘Should I be deported or not?’ ”

On that morning in early May, a third mother who identified herself by a pseudonym had been dropped off at the Centennial office with her son, her infant child and their luggage, seeking to self-deport.

But ICE rejected her and her family because the baby was a U.S. citizen.

‘No best choice’

If Cecilia had doubts about surrendering to ICE, the other mother’s rejection wiped them away.

She was adamant that she did not want her next child to be born here. It would only make it harder to leave.

The next day, the family left behind a breakfast of mini donuts and Coke. They piled their suitcases, a trash bag and their backpacks — patterned with stars and characters from “Lilo and Stitch” and “Paw Patrol” — back into the car and returned to the field office. The day before, Cecilia had packed her Mickey Mouse wallet and tucked away the orange folder that contained the family’s immigration paperwork.

She closed the door to the bedroom behind her.

“Ready,” she told the boys.

She’d arrived in the U.S. a month before Trump was elected president a second time, joining tens of thousands of Venezuelans who traveled to Denver or passed through the city in the final years of the Biden administration. Under Trump, her husband felt the brunt of the arrest-and-deport crackdown that had made the United States far less hospitable for families without permanent legal status.

The family had left Venezuela for a stable future they had not found.

After her own hardship and her husband’s experiences in detention, she said she would not miss the United States. Their long journey two years ago, she said, had been “for nothing.” She missed her mother.

“I want to leave,” Cecilia said. “The nervousness is leaving me.”

The advocates working with the family were less tranquil. They were not convinced that the family would be able to leave quickly, let alone that they would receive the — totaling $10,400 for her and the boys — who voluntarily leave the country.

Gracie Willis, an attorney with the National Immigration Project who didn’t work with Cecilia’s family, said her organization had spoken with hundreds of attorneys, activists and others who work with the immigrant community during regional meetings in April about ICE’s deportation efforts. Two of them said they knew people who actually received the money they had been offered to self-deport. She had heard of some families staying in hotels, as Cecilia hoped.

“There is no best choice,” said Jenn Piper, the Denver program director for the American Friends Service Committee, which worked with the family. “Even though I’m very nervous about what can happen with (Cecilia), am I going to say her best choice is being homeless and pregnant with her three kids in the United States?”

Still, the advocates made plans: One of them, Miriam, who asked to be identified only by her first name because she is an immigrant and feared retaliation from the federal government, asked Cecilia to sign several privacy waivers.

Cecilia stuck a piece of paper with Miriam’s phone number in her pocket, and they agreed that if Miriam didn’t hear from Cecilia soon, Miriam would alert members of Colorado’s congressional delegation.

Going back home

With luggage in tow, Cecilia and her sons walked back through the Centennial field office doors on May 5.

Inside, three people sat with them to arrange their transportation, said Miriam, who accompanied the family inside. They were searched, Cecilia produced her $6, and the boys were handed fidget spinners and promised food. Cecilia was shown a video on sexual harassment.

The family was given shoes without laces and new clothes — except for the 6-year-old, who had grown too skinny to fit the pants he was offered.

Cecilia’s eyes were teary as she said goodbye to Miriam, but she remained calm. She became anxious only when her phone was taken.

For the next week, Miriam and other advocates didn’t hear directly from the family.

During that time, a man called Cecilia’s mother and told her the family was safe. Cecilia briefly appeared in a public ICE detainee database before vanishing from it. ICE did not respond to emails from The Post about the family’s status during that period, and the American Friends Service Committee prepared to launch a public campaign.

Then, on the morning of May 13, Miriam’s phone rang. Cecilia was in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. She was safe and nearly home.

In a phone interview with The Post nearly a week later, Cecilia said she was back in the small town she had left years ago. Children were playing in the background. After turning herself in, she said she’d stayed in a hotel in Denver for three days, and she was seen by a doctor. There were government personnel watching them, but they weren’t armed, she said, and the family was treated well. They ate.

They next flew to Arizona, where she was given a phone to complete her self-deportation and receive the money she’d been promised. When she finally returned home, she slept.

She was not with her husband, and she declined to discuss their relationship. She spoke sparingly about the last few years and about what it was like to be home: “It’s good. I’m calm.” Her boys were well. She had no regrets.

“I went to this country,” Cecilia said of her time in America. “It didn’t work out.”

When the family flew to Venezuela, a doctor accompanied them, she said. Hers was the only family on board. The rest of the plane was occupied by roughly 180 shackled Venezuelan men, all being deported.

There’s a common narrative that there’s a certain number of jobs that get distributed between immigrant and non-immigrant workers, study author and CU Boulder economics professor Chloe East said. And when an immigrant is removed, the reasoning is that it creates a job for a U.S.-born worker, which is not at all what����ap actually happening, she said.

“Because immigrants take jobs that are undesirable for lots of reasons, they’re more dirty, dangerous, seasonal, lower paid, et cetera, it����ap actually pretty hard for employers to attract U.S. born workers to take those jobs,” East said. “… We don’t see any evidence that employers are raising wages to attract U.S. born workers to take those jobs, and so instead what seems to be happening is that employers are just reducing production and hiring overall.”

East and CU Boulder co-author Elizabeth Cox analyzed data from a federal monthly employment survey and data on ICE arrests across 58 regions around the country.

They found that after a region saw a surge in ICE arrests, employment among remaining immigrants declined 4% on average, likely due to a chilling effect. An increase of 1,200 ICE arrests in a region corresponded to 7,500 immigrants dropping out of the labor market, East said.

“People are fearful to leave their homes for fear that it is going to lead to an interaction with ICE and a potential detention or deportation,” East said. “That includes leaving people’s homes to go to work.”

This means that those most at risk within a household will stay home, and other family members might work instead. A co-authored by East in February found that U.S.-born teenagers in immigrant families were more likely to work in 2025 than in 2024 and less likely to be in school full-time. Her past work also shows that mass deportation increases the poverty rate for immigrant families.

The idea that increased immigration enforcement hurts the labor market is not a new one, East said. Her results in this study are consistent with her work studying immigration enforcement under President Barack Obama, and other economists have studied mass deportation in the 1930s and saw similar effects.

What is new under the second Trump administration is the scale and raw number of arrests, East said, as well as ICE being more indiscriminate about who they arrest. East, who specializes in labor economics and immigration policy, also in February that found ICE arrests reached a decade high. On average, there were 821 daily ICE arrests during the first 10 months of Trump’s second term, from January 2025 to October 2025, a 170% increase from daily ICE arrests made during President Joe Biden’s final year in office.

“ICE seems to be arresting people much more randomly and going to places that they don’t typically go, like people’s residences or workplaces or the parking lot of a business,” East said. “And that seems to be having a much larger impact on the immigrant community than we’ve seen in past mass deportation campaigns.”

This “chilling effect” expands beyond work, East said. Immigrants are avoiding going out in general, including to restaurants and retail stores, which is having a depressive effect on economic activity overall. Fewer people going to restaurants hurts business and means restaurants are hiring fewer people.

“There’s some other research coming out parallel to mine that shows that is happening in the second Trump administration,” she said.

One study , a global, independent research network, found areas experiencing the largest ICE enforcement surges saw overall card spending decline by 1.7 percentage points. The Minnesota North Star Policy Action research institute in February that found that consumer spending declined by an estimated 2.9% in Minnesota resulting from ICE activity in January, representing a loss of $626 million in one month.

East����ap latest study also found the biggest labor market impacts are in industries with higher percentages of undocumented immigrants, such as the agriculture, construction, manufacturing and wholesale industries. The largest negative impact is in construction, where 16% of the workforce is made up of undocumented immigrants, according to the study.

Moving forward, she plans to dig into that construction finding and collect data to see how the production of new buildings and new homes is being impacted. She also wants to explore how immigration is impacting the childcare sector.

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William Ortiz-Riveraon Monday was released from the Aurora GEO facility sometime before 8 a.m., according to Andrea Loya, executive director of immigrant advocacy organization Casa de Paz. The organization welcomes and helps people released from the immigration detention center.

Ortiz-Rivera’s attorney was not provided information on his release nor was Casa de Paz, Loya said. Ortiz-Rivera hopped on a bus that took him to downtown Denver, miles from his home in a senior living facility. He was lost for five hours in 83-degree weather, wearing a long-sleeve shirt and sweatpants. He had barely any money and the only items to his name in a plastic bag, Loya said.

“It is inhumane to do this to individuals,” said a Tuesday news release from Casa de Paz. “Casa de Paz has been in the community for 14 years and the Aurora Geo facility knows this. They also know that we regularly are not stationed outside the facility until 10 a.m. and in the past we have received calls for early releases. In addition, we are typically notified when vulnerable individuals, such as (Ortiz-Rivera), are released.”

Two days after being asked for comment, the Department of Homeland Security formerly known as Twitter, stating that the man they released had previous arrests for burglary and drug possession. Ortiz-Rivera was issued a final order of removal in 1988, but remained in the country illegally, the post said.

DHS said ICE gave Ortiz-Rivera a public transportation voucher and notified his attorney.

Loya responded to DHS’s post, saying that in 14 years, Casa de Paz has never seen ICE provide anyone a bus voucher and that Ortiz-Rivera’s attorney said she was not notified.

ICE has previously told Casa de Paz that it has to release people based on the orders it receives and sometimes that means letting people go immediately, Loya said.

“Yet, this is simply not true,” the news release said. “We’ve seen people who have paid bonds days in advance but are being held a few days after. We demand that people be released during appropriate times during the day so they can make the suitable, and safe arrangements to get back to their loved ones.”

In a moment of lucidity, Loya said Ortiz-Rivera called one of his longtime caregivers on Monday and described his surroundings. His caregivers and members of Casa de Paz found him Monday afternoon near the intersection of Stout Street and Broadway, Loya said.

“The advocates fighting for his case have done everything they can to keep his senior living apartment so he doesn’t lose his housing, so they were ready for his release,” Loya said. “People had his keys, ways of doing the paperwork, things were ready for him to get home after release, but nobody was notified.”

Loya was thankful Ortiz-Rivera was found safely.

“Today, we don’t mourn another death at the hands of ICE because this community refuses to let our neighbors get lost in the shadows,” the news release said. “We demand that ICE and Geo use the resources that are available to them and the community so that we can ensure the safety of those released from custody.”

Updated at 3:12 p.m. May 14: This story was updated with comments from the Department of Homeland Security posted to social media on May 14, 2026.

In a 60-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson wrote that ICE had continued making the arrests without first determining if an immigrant lacking permanent legal status was likely to flee. that is required by both federal law and Jackson’s prior order restating ICE’s obligations under that statute.

Because the agency had “failed” to train its agents properly, he ordered ICE officials in Denver to provide warrantless arrest guidance to all of the field office’s deportation officers, who now number more than 200 in strength.

Jackson found that ICE had “uniformly” failed to follow his order requiring better documentation of arrests. He ordered the agency to provide even more records so that he and the attorneys who sued ICE over its arrest practices last year could monitor its progress. ICE’s failure to better document its arrest practices “confounds effective oversight,” Jackson found.

“When the Court issues an injunction, ‘it����ap to be followed,’ ” he wrote.

While ICE can conduct warrantless arrests, federal law — and Jackson’s order — requires ICE agents to determine that an immigrant is both likely in the country illegally and is likely to flee before a future court date.

The ruling comes nearly six months after Jackson first found that ICE wasn’t following federal law. In late November, the judge sided with attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and two other law firms that had sued ICE last fall and ordered the agency to follow its own guidance and federal law.

The ACLU and the other attorneys, who represented immigrants arrested by the agency, then alleged that ICE wasn’t following Jackson’s order. They pointed to several additional arrests, as well as a collection of ICE arrest reports that didn’t document how ICE had reached a legal conclusion that an arrest was warranted.

As he did at the end of the hearing in March, Jackson criticized three agents who testified in his courtroom and who appeared to demonstrate little to no understanding of how to legally conduct warrantless arrests.

The judge wrote that one agent had a “shallow understanding” of his order. He said that though senior ICE officials had made some attempts to provide guidance to their teams in Colorado, the problem was that deportation officers “clearly do not know or understand” what’s required of them.

The ICE agents who testified appeared unaware of those requirements. At one point in the hearing, one agent sat silently for 30 seconds as he tried to recall what Jackson had already ordered him to do — until the judge finally intervened and told him he could just say he didn’t know.

In his latest ruling, Jackson required agency leaders to provide more training to deportation officers operating in the state and to give the attorneys suing the agency a running update on the implementation of that training. Any immigration agent who hasn’t been trained on the order within 45 days will be prohibited from making warrantless arrests, he wrote, and any agents hired after the order are prohibited from making the arrests until they’re trained.

He also ordered the agency to turn over a far larger batch of arrest reports and more details about those arrests. Though Jackson didn’t wade into the legality of ICE’s practice of issuing warrants in the field — oftentimes after agents have stopped someone — he did order agents to document when and how they obtain those field warrants.

“Without more robust compliance measures in place, they could resume violating (the prior order) with impunity,” he wrote. “Perhaps most importantly, the Denver Field Office has hired dozens of new officers since the (order) was issued and is likely to hire more. The evidence at the hearing did not instill confidence that these officers will be properly trained on the (order) and comply with it.”

A message sent to ICE representatives was not immediately returned Tuesday morning.

Hans Meyer, a Denver immigration attorney who’s part of the legal team that sued ICE, praised Jackson’s decision in a statement Tuesday afternoon.

“The scope of ICE’s lawlessness is breathtaking and includes ICE agents making warrantless arrests and then trying to justify the arrest by issuing a warrant after-the-fact, refusing to document the details of a warrantless arrest, and completely misunderstanding or ignoring the requirements of federal law and federal court orders,” he wrote.

The lawsuit — and subsequent attempts to enforce Jackson’s order — come as ICE has dramatically increased its presence out of the Denver field office, which covers both Colorado and Wyoming. The number of deportation officers here has more than doubled to roughly 200, and immigration arrests in Colorado surged during President Donald Trump’s first year in office.

passed on a near-party-line , with nearly all of the chamber’s Democrats in support against their Republican colleagues and a lone Democratic dissenter. After it passed the abortion measure, the House then passed , which would require inspections of immigrant detention centers and direct the state to publicly disclose when it receives federal immigration subpoenas.

Both bills now go to the Senate, with just over two weeks remaining in this year’s legislative session.

If passed, the abortion measure would require both public and private colleges and universities with health centers to provide students access to abortion medications that end pregnancies. Any campus with an on-site pharmacy would be required to stock the medication. At colleges without pharmacies, health center providers would directly dispense the pills or write prescriptions that could be filled elsewhere.

The bill would go into effect Aug. 1, 2027. It would not apply if a college says that providing the medication would violate its religious principles. Colleges would also be exempted if they could lose grant funding for stocking the pills; if federal regulators should later pull approval for an abortion medication, the measure would direct colleges to follow that federal guidance.

The standard abortion prescription typically involves two medications, typically mifepristone and misoprostol, taken within a day or two of each other, .

Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat who sponsored the bill, said Monday that the measure came from students. The bill strengthens Colorado’s already robust abortion protections, with both state law and the state constitution protecting abortion access.

“This bill is nothing more than making sure that the constitutional right — that our voters put in place — is made accessible when people have gone through the challenging and difficult process of making the decision to have an abortion; that the abortion pill is accessible if they are on campus,” she told colleagues.

In the bill’s fiscal impact note, legislative analysts projected zero direct expense to the state from the bill, since it doesn’t require the state to cover the cost of the medication unless a student already qualifies otherwise.

Students who testified at a committee hearing earlier this month said providing access at health centers would help provide students with reliable and nearby access to abortion care.

One student from the University of Colorado’s Colorado Springs campus — whose testimony was read by an organizer from the advocacy group New Era — said she didn’t know where to go when she decided to end her pregnancy. She nearly went to a “fake abortion clinic,” she said.

Another student, Paola Ordoñez Sanchez at Colorado State University, said she had an unexpected pregnancy in October. When she sought an abortion, she said, she had to coordinate transportation, miss classes and figure out how to pay for her treatment off-campus.

She tearfully said she “fell through the cracks” of CSU’s health system.

Republicans consistently have opposed Democrats’ efforts to expand abortion access, and they did so again with HB-1335, arguing that the abortion pills could have negative side effects on the women who take them. House leadership limited debate on an initial vote Friday.

“Adoption is also a choice. If we’re going to provide information, we should provide it all,” said Rep. Rebecca Keltie, a Colorado Springs Republican. She was supporting an amendment that would’ve blocked colleges from using various revenue sources to promote the availability of the pills.

“We should make it fair and equitable and then let that person decide for themselves,” she said.

The lone Democrat who opposed the bill was Rep. Bob Marshall, who represents Highlands Ranch. He said he’d committed not to support further expansions of abortion rights. He also said he didn’t understand the need for the bill because abortion pills can be dispensed in myriad other ways.

House passes immigration bill

Also Monday, the chamber cleared HB-1276 on a straight 42-21 party-line vote.

The bill would tweak several parts of state law, largely in response to events from the first year of the immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump. After Gov. Jared Polis has repeatedly tried to comply with a federal immigration subpoena, HB-1276 would generally require the state to publicly disclose when it receives those types of requests.

It would direct the state to notify people whose information is about to be released.

The measure would also prohibit U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering nonpublic areas of jails. That comes after an advocacy group in the high country has warned that immigrants are being arrested inside the facilities after posting bail or otherwise being released. Lawmakers had initially blocked ICE from entering those areas in legislation debated last year, but they struck that provision before the bill passed.

The new measure would require regular inspections of immigration detention centers, stepping up state regulators’ current ability to visit at will. That comes amid ongoing concerns about the conditions inside Colorado’s only active detention center in Aurora — and amid ICE’s plans to open more facilities here.

Finally, the bill would tighten penalties for state and local agencies when their employees illegally share information with ICE. Lawmakers enacted a penalty of up to $50,000 last year for any employee who illegally collaborates with federal immigration authorities; this year’s bill would apply that fine to agencies that either directed their employees to break the law or intentionally failed to mitigate that risk.

That provision comes after a Mesa County deputy appeared to violate state law last year, when he alerted ICE to a Brazilian college student’s presence on Interstate 70.

The bill still needs approval by the Senate before it goes to the governor. On Thursday, Polis declined to take a position and indicated he wasn’t aware of what the measure would do.

“There’s one thing … which we are generally supportive of, which is inspection of detention facilities,” he said after a reporter listed the bill’s contents. “There are other things that we might not be, so we’re always happy to provide feedback to legislators about where we are. When the bill passes, I weigh the good and the bad and make a conclusion about what’s in the best interest of the state.”

Hayam El Gamal and her five children, ages 5 to 18, were released in Colorado, their attorney, Eric Lee, said in an email Sunday.

Federal immigration agents arrested the family Saturday in Colorado, hours after they returned to Colorado following their court-ordered release from a Texas detention facility, Lee said.

The family was flown to Detroit and was headed to New Jersey to be deported when the plane was forced to turn around and return to Detroit, Lee said. The family then returned to Denver.

Two federal judges issued orders Saturday barring the Trump administration from removing the family from Colorado or the U.S., according to

A federal magistrate judge on April 20 approved the release of El Gamal and her five from a federal detention center in Dilley, Texas, with the stipulation that they appear at future immigration hearings. They had been there for 10 months after El Gamal’s husband, Mohamed Soliman, was arrested in a June 2025 Molotov cocktail attack against demonstrators on the Boulder mall.

The El Gamal family has received due process and a final order of removal was issued, U.S. Department of Homeland spokeswoman Lauren Bis wrote in an email.

“Despite receiving full due process, this activist judge appointed by Bill Clinton is releasing this terrorist����ap family onto American streets AGAIN,” Bis wrote. “Under President Trump, DHS will continue to fight for the removal of those who have no right to be in our country—especially terrorists and their associates. We are confident the courts will ultimately vindicate us.”

Soliman is accused of using a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to burn people who gathered on the pedestrian mall in downtown Boulder for a weekly demonstration urging the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Witnesses said Soliman shouted, “Free Palestine” during the attack.

Karen Diamond, 82, died from injuries sustained in the attack. Police identified 29 who were injured.

El Gamal and her children were detained by federal immigration authorities two days after the attack. A federal judge in Denver ordered a deportation case against the family.

The family was living in the Colorado Springs area after arriving in the U.S. in August 2022 and was seeking political asylum. Federal officials said Soliman, who was born in Egypt and lived in Kuwait for 17 years, arrived on a tourist visa that expired in February 2023.

After being taken into custody by ICE in 2025, El Gamal said in a statement provided by her attorney that she and her children were “shocked” by Soliman’s actions and were cooperating with authorities.

Lee said on X that El Gamal and her children were denied medical care while in federal custody. He said El Gamal has reported a painful lump on her chest and medical scans have shown fluid around her heart.

Soliman faces 118 criminal charges in state court, including dozens of counts of attempted first-degree murder and assault, in addition to a federal hate-crime count.

Updated April 26 at 5 p.m. to add comment from Department of Homeland Security and detail about the El Gamal family’s recommended release from detention.

Denver Post reporter Katie Langford contributed to this report.