DENVER (AP) — A federal judge ruled Tuesday that immigration officers in Colorado can only arrest people without a warrant if they think those people are likely to flee.
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U.S. District Senior Judge R. Brooke Jackson issued the order in a legal challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and other lawyers.
They’re representing four people, including asylum-seekers, who were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement without warrants this year as part of President Donald Trump’s increased immigration enforcement. The lawsuit accuses immigration officers of indiscriminately arresting Latinos to meet enforcement goals without evaluating what’s required to legally detain them.
Jackson said each of those who sued had longstanding ties to their communities and no reasonable officer could have concluded they were likely to flee before getting a warrant to arrest them.
Before arresting anyone without a warrant, immigration officers must have probable cause to believe both that someone is in the country illegally and that they are likely to flee before an arrest warrant can be obtained, under federal law, he said. Jackson also said immigration officers needed to document the reasons for why they are arresting someone.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, called it an “activist ruling” and said the department follows the law.
“Allegations that DHS law enforcement engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE,” she said in a statement.
The ruling is similar to one made earlier this year in a case brought by another chapter of the ACLU in California involving arrests by Border Patrol agents. The government has appealed that ruling.
Another judge had also issued a restraining order barring federal agents from stopping people based solely on their race, language, job or location in the Los Angeles area after finding that they were conducting indiscriminate stops. The Supreme Court lifted that order in September.
McLaughlin suggested the government would appeal the Colorado ruling.
“The Supreme Court recently vindicated us on this question elsewhere, and we look forward to further vindication in this case as well,” she said.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A week before Chancely Fanfan was scheduled to attend an immigration court hearing in San Diego, he received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security instructing him to show up for what he thought would be a routine check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after his hearing.
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After the 31-year-old Haitian man showed up with his wife and 11-month-old baby to his court hearing and ICE check-in on Oct. 20, immigration officers arrested him, providing no reason other than that the government required it, his attorneys said.
Fanfan had no criminal history and showed up to all his court hearings and check-ins with ICE since his arrival in the U.S. last year, according to the petition filed Tuesday in the Southern District of California. The Center for Immigration Law and Policy and the Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law are challenging the October detentions of Fanfan and two others following their check-ins with immigration officers.
“Petitioners have had no criminal contact since their prior releases from DHS custody, and two petitioners have no criminal history of any kind,” according to the petition.
The petitioners were detained after entering through or between U.S. ports of entry when they came to the country. After vetting, they were released from federal custody.
The lawsuit alleges immigrants are being deprived of due process after previously being declared fit for release, only to be arrested and detained when suddenly summoned to reappear at an ICE office. Many cases involve people whose cases in immigration court were reopened.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.
The UCLA School of Law’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy said the detentions in San Diego alone “are certainly in the dozens, and likely exceeds 100.” The lawsuit is asking the judge to certify the class, which could mean that others who were arrested and detained in similar circumstances could benefit from a favorable ruling.
A gardener from Mexico who has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years sat on the floor of a long hallway outside a packed waiting room at ICE’s San Diego office on Monday. He spoke to The Associated Press on condition that only his first name, Lorenzo, be published because he feared potential consequences.
About 10 years ago, Border Patrol arrested Lorenzo at a highway checkpoint in Southern California. He went before an immigration judge who closed his case and spared him from being deported. For years, he had heard nothing from immigration authorities until last week, when he was told his case was being reopened and that he was to report to ICE on Monday. He didn’t follow up with the AP after his check-in.
Arrests at ICE check-ins appear to have accelerated since early October in San Diego. Lynn Devine, a volunteer observer, saw one woman who checked in being escorted to an elevator in handcuffs by two officers on Monday.
“She was looking at the floor. I told her I was praying for her,” Devine said.
A federal judge will be deciding whether to release the three petitioners and whether to declare such detentions unlawful.
The federal Bureau of Prisons is closing a California lockup that was once home to Al Capone and Charles Manson over concerns about crumbling infrastructure, including falling concrete that threatens to knock out the facility’s heating system, according to an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press.
Director William K. Marshall III told staff on Tuesday that the agency is suspending operations at the Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island, a low-security prison south of Los Angeles. It currently houses nearly 1,000 inmates, including cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and disgraced celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti.
The decision to close the facility, at least temporarily, “is not easy, but is absolutely necessary,” Marshall wrote, calling it a matter of “safety, common sense, and doing what is right for the people who work and live inside that institution.”
FCI Terminal Island, opened in 1938, is the latest Bureau of Prisons facility to be targeted for closure as the beleaguered agency struggles with mounting staff vacancies, a $3 billion repair backlog and an expanded mission to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown by taking in thousands of detainees.
Marshall cited problems with underground tunnels containing the facility’s steam heating system. Ceilings in the tunnels have begun to deteriorate, causing chunks of concrete to fall and putting employees and the heating system at risk, he said.
TOPSHOT – Inmates gather at a recreation yard behind security fencing at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terminal Island, a low-security federal prison for men operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the harbor entrance to the Port of Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California on September 13, 2025. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
Inmates gather at a recreation yard behind security fencing at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terminal Island, a low-security federal prison for men operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the harbor entrance to the Port of Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California on September 13, 2025. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
Inmate cell blocks behind security fencing at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terminal Island, a low-security federal prison for men operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the harbor entrance to the Port of Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California on September 13, 2025. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
Bars cover windows behind security fencing at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terminal Island, a low-security federal prison for men operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the harbor entrance to the Port of Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California on September 13, 2025. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
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TOPSHOT – Inmates gather at a recreation yard behind security fencing at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terminal Island, a low-security federal prison for men operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the harbor entrance to the Port of Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California on September 13, 2025. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
“We are not going to wait for a crisis,” Marshall told employees. “We are not going to gamble with lives. And we are not going to expect people to work or live in conditions that we would never accept for ourselves.”
Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Randilee Giamusso, responding to the AP’s questions about FCI Terminal Island, confirmed that the agency is taking “immediate action” to “safeguard staff and inmates.”
Inmates at the facility will be moved to other federal prisons “with a priority on keeping individuals as close as possible to their anticipated release locations,” Giamusso said. In his memo to staff, Marshall indicated that the process could take several weeks.
The facility’s future will be decided once the Bureau of Prisons has “assessed the situation further and ensured the safety of all those involved,” she said.
The Bureau of Prisons has long been bedeviled by FCI Terminal Island’s aging infrastructure, Giamusso said. In April 2024, an architectural and engineering firm contracted by the agency identified more than $110 million in critical repairs needed over the next 20 years.
The Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s largest employer, has more than 30,000 workers, 122 facilities, about 155,000 inmates and an annual budget that exceeds $8.5 billion. But the agency’s footprint has shrunk over the last year as it wrestles with financial constraints, chronic understaffing and changing priorities.
In December 2024, in a cost-cutting move, the agency announced it was idling six prison camps and permanently closing a women’s prison in Dublin, California, that was known as the “rape club” because of rampant sexual abuse by the warden and other employees.
In February, an agency official told Congress that 4,000 beds meant for inmates at various facilities were unusable because of dangerous conditions like leaking or failing roofs, mold, asbestos or lead.
At the same time, the agency is building a new prison in Kentucky and, at Trump’s direction, exploring the possibility of reopening Alcatraz, the notorious penitentiary in San Francisco Bay that last held inmates more than 60 years ago.
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Marshall, his top deputy and Attorney General Pam Bondi visited in July, but four months later, Alcatraz remains a tourist attraction and a relic of a bygone era in corrections.
In addition to failing facilities, the Bureau of Prisons has been plagued for years by severe staffing shortages that have led to long overtime shifts and the use of prison nurses, teachers, cooks and other workers to guard inmates.
That problem has only worsened in recent months, in part because of a hiring freeze and recruiting by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has lured correctional officers away with promises of signing bonuses of up to $50,000.
In September, Marshall said the Bureau of Prisons was canceling its collective bargaining agreement with workers. He said their union had become “an obstacle to progress instead of a partner in it.” The union, the Council of Prison Locals, is suing to block the move, calling it “arbitrary and capricious.”
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge in Miami set a $60,000 bond Tuesday for U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who made her first appearance in court on charges of conspiring to steal $5 million in federal disaster funds meant to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.
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The Florida Democrat is facing 15 federal counts that accuse her of stealing funds that had been overpaid to her family’s health care company, Trinity Healthcare Services, prosecutors alleged. The company had a contract to register people for COVID-19 vaccinations.
Cherfilus-McCormick stood with her attorneys as Judge Enjoliqué Lett read all 15 charges, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. She told the judge she is aware of the charges she faces.
She said in a statement sent to the AP that she plans to fight for her constituents.
“Today I made my initial appearance in a case that is both politically timed and politically motivated,” Cherfilus-McCormick said in the statement. “Let me be clear: I am innocent and I look forward to my day in court. This has been a fight not just for my name — it’s a fight for my constituents, an attack on the progress we have been making and the movement we have started.”
She said she will not be “intimidated or silenced.”
In addition to bail, the judge said Cherfilus-McCormick must surrender her personal passport, and she is restricted from traveling to and from Florida from anywhere other than Washington, D.C., Maryland and the Eastern District of Virginia.
The congresswoman will be allowed to retain her congressional passport so she can do certain duties for her job.
In a federal indictment unsealed earlier this month, prosecutors claimed that within two months of receiving the funds in 2021, more than $100,000 had been spent to purchase a 3-carat yellow diamond ring for the congresswoman.
The health care company owned by Cherfilus-McCormick’s family had received payments through a COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract, the indictment said. Her brother, Edwin Cherfilus, requested $50,000, but they mistakenly received $5 million and didn’t return the difference.
Cherfilus-McCormick has denied the charges, through her attorney, David Oscar Markus.
Prosecutors said the funds received by Trinity Healthcare were distributed to various accounts, including to friends and relatives who then donated to Cherfilus-McCormick’s campaign for Congress.
Cherfilus-McCormick won a special election in January 2022 to represent Florida’s 20th District, which includes parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties, after Rep. Alcee Hastings died in 2021.
The charges she faces include theft of government funds; making and receiving straw donor contributions; aiding and assisting a false and fraudulent statement on a tax return; and money laundering, as well as conspiracy charges associated with each of those counts.
According to a statement provided by the congresswoman’s chief of staff, she doesn’t plan to resign from office and maintains her innocence. She said she has cooperated with “every lawful request” and will continue to do so until the matter is resolved.
Payne, who reported from Tallahassee, Florida, is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
