DENVER — A federal judge in Denver criticized agents who testified in his courtroom this week and who didn’t seem to know what his November order limiting the use of warrantless arrests required them to do.

“Those guys were not examples of what we hope ICE officers would know and do in the field,” U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson told a lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Jackson indicated that federal immigration authorities were not complying with the earlier order putting restrictions on warrantless arrests. The order came late in the first year of President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign.

The judge had called attorneys representing the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and ICE back into his courtroom for a hearing this week after the ACLU and other attorneys alleged that ICE was repeatedly violating his order. The judge had directed ICE officers in the fall to fully document the reasons that they felt a person needed to be arrested without a warrant, among other requirements.

But none of the arrest warrants turned over to the ACLU showed that documentation, the ACLU argued. None of the three deportation officers who testified Tuesday, the first of two days in court, said they’d received specific or formal training for how to conduct warrantless arrests in compliance with that order.

Jackson said the men "didn't have a clue," and he questioned if any ICE agent was being properly trained. Because none of the reports indicated that agents were making sure a warrantless arrest was necessary, as required by Jackson's order, "by definition they're not in compliance," he said.

"I think the evidence of their noncompliance is extensive," said Tim Macdonald, the legal director for the ACLU in Colorado.

A senior ICE official then testified that statements from officials in Washington, D.C., conflicted with guidance provided by agency personnel in Denver — and said he wanted agents to always have a warrant before arresting an immigrant without proper legal status. That official, Denver assistant field officer director Gregory Davies, said he'd trained 15 agents — out of roughly 200 in Colorado and Wyoming — on Jackson's order.

But that training came last month, shortly after the ACLU raised concerns about compliance.

Davies said four local agents were removed from the field in part because of their failure to properly document warrantless arrests. Davies also said that agents involved in leaving ace of spades "death cards" in arrested immigrants' cars in January in Eagle County had been removed from field duty.

Scrutiny of how ICE conducts arrests

The ACLU of Colorado, along with two other law firms, sued ICE last year, alleging that its agents were arresting people without first determining if they were likely to flee, which is required by law. Jackson agreed and ordered ICE to document, in each arrest report, how agents had determined that they needed to arrest someone for whom they didn't have a warrant.

After he issued the order in November, Jackson's picture and home address were posted online by someone in Florida who wrote that Jackson "loves illegal immigrants."

The three agents who testified this week, all of whom were identified by their initials, said that if they encountered someone for whom they didn't have a warrant, they would seek an administrative warrant signed by a supervisor during or after the immigrant's arrest.

Jackson seemed concerned about how these "field warrants" could be used to sidestep federal requirements regulating warrantless arrests. But he said the issue needed to be settled elsewhere — and likely by a higher court.

None of the agents said they'd received training on his earlier order, other than through an email in early December. One agent who testified Tuesday, identified as J.L., repeatedly said he didn't understand when asked about the judge's order.

Jackson broke in, telling the agent that the questions were simple.

The attorney asking the questions, Denver immigration attorney Hans Meyer, tried again, asking J.L. what Jackson's order had specifically directed agents to do when handling warrantless arrests. J.L. repeated the word "specific" to himself and then sat silently for nearly 30 seconds.

Finally, Jackson intervened, telling him to just say if he didn't know.

"I'm drawing a blank, your honor," J.L. replied.

Attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security said J.L. and another agent who testified, identified as J.B., had both been removed from field duty. J.B., who said he was deployed to Portland and Minneapolis in recent months, had also been involved in an Oregon lawsuit related to warrantless arrests.

In that case, J.B. had smashed a car window seconds after telling the driver to roll the window down. The judge in that case found parts of J.B.'s testimony lacked credibilty and ruled against ICE.

Attorney: It's 'really a documentation issue'

Nicholas Deuschle, one of the attorneys representing the agency, agreed that the agents weren't "shining examples" of proper conduct in the field. But he argued that ICE had been working hard to comply with the order and that the problem was with agents' description of arrests in their reports, not with how arrests were actually being carried out.

Davies also testified that, though ICE was arresting between 15 and 25 people per day in Colorado and Wyoming, which are covered by the Denver field office, the agency was also moving to a more "targeted" approach.

"The documentation of I-213 needs correcting," Deuschle told Jackson. An I-213 form is essentially an ICE arrest report. "We flagged that in our response, we're not disputing that. It's really a documentation issue."

Jackson said he didn't want to generalize based on the testimony of three agents. He said he believed Davies, who'd said local officials were intent on obtaining warrants and would counsel agents who failed to document arrests correctly.

Davies criticized memos and social media posts from national ICE officials and said he expected his agents to follow local training.

Still, Jackson questioned if any ICE agents were receiving proper training, especially as the agency had nearly doubled its Denver-area staffing to roughly 200 deportation officers in the past year.

"You've got 60 to 100 new officers, up to 25 arrests of people a day," Jackson said. "It's an extraordinary thing that's happening in this country, including in this state. It's an unprecedented thing. I can't just assume that all these guys are getting trained or understanding it or getting it, when we have yet to see even one (arrest report) that was filled out properly for a warrantless arrest."

One immigrant testified Tuesday that he was arrested at a Parker construction site and spent 48 days in detention after two agents approached his truck, asked for his ID and where he was from, and then handcuffed him.

He said he was not asked about his community ties or his family. The man has three children who are U.S. citizens, has no criminal record and has lived in the United States for 30 years. He was arrested in January, nearly two months after Jackson issued his order — which had also required agents to document whether someone they were arresting posed a flight risk, which would be more likely without known community ties.

Jackson said Wednesday that there was "no world in which" ICE officers had a warrant — even one issued quickly, in the field — for the man before he was arrested.

Federal immigration authorities also scheduled the man for a check-in appointment in Centennial on Tuesday — the same day he was set to testify at a federal courthouse in downtown Denver.

Jackson did not issue a ruling Wednesday on the issues raised during the hearing, and he did not provide a timeline for when he might do so.

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