A direct answer first

If ICE detained someone you love in Colorado in the last 24 to 72 hours, you are doing four things at the same time: locate the detainee, document everything you know about how they were taken, contact an immigration attorney before any hearing, and prepare for what comes next — bond, a master-calendar hearing, and the relief options that may be on the table.

This page is a general walkthrough of how the Colorado/ICE detention system works. It is not legal advice for any specific case. Most people picked up by ICE in the Denver metro and along the Front Range are taken to the Aurora Contract Detention Facility (also called the GEO Aurora ICE Processing Center), but transfers out of state happen quickly — sometimes within hours. The faster a family gets organized, the more options stay on the table.

You can reach Novo Legal Group’s intake line in English or Spanish at (888) 746-5245 (tel:+18887465245) any time.

The first 24 hours: what to do right now

In the first day, the question is not which form of relief will eventually apply. The question is whether the family can get accurate information to a lawyer in time to use it.

Families in this situation generally take these steps, in roughly this order:

1. Write down everything the witnesses saw. If a coworker, neighbor, or family member watched the arrest, get their account in writing or in a voice memo on a phone today, while details are fresh. Note the time, the location, what officers said, whether they showed a warrant, whether they were in marked vehicles, and whether the stop began as something else (a traffic stop, a workplace visit, a knock at the door).
2. Gather identity documents. A lawyer will need the detainee’s full legal name (with spelling variants), date of birth, country of birth, A-number if you know it (this is the nine-digit “Alien Registration Number” on any prior immigration paperwork), passports, prior immigration filings, marriage certificates, children’s birth certificates, and tax records. Put them in one folder. You do not need every document tonight — you need to know where they are.
3. Try the ICE Online Detainee Locator. Details below. If it returns nothing, do not assume your relative is not in custody. Locator results lag intake.
4. Do not let the detainee sign anything ICE puts in front of them without talking to an attorney first. This includes stipulated removal orders, voluntary departure forms, and waivers of a hearing. Some forms permanently close off relief.
5. Contact an immigration attorney before the first hearing. Families who get counsel involved in the first 72 hours generally have more options at the first master-calendar hearing than families who wait. There is no government-appointed lawyer in immigration court — see below.

If the detainee can call out from the facility, the most useful single sentence they can say to officers is: “I want to speak to my lawyer, and I do not want to answer questions or sign anything until I do.” They have the right to remain silent. They have the right to refuse to sign.

How to find a detained relative — the ICE Online Detainee Locator

The federal government runs an online detainee locator at locator.ice.gov. It is the first place to look, and it has limits the family should understand before they panic about a “no records found” result.

How the Locator works

You can search the Locator two ways:

• By A-number plus country of birth. This is the cleaner search. If you have any prior immigration paperwork — an I-94, an EAD card, a prior NTA, a green-card application — the A-number is on it.
• By first name, last name, country of birth, and date of birth. Use the detainee’s full legal name as it appears on official documents.

Why searches fail (and what to do)

The Locator is reliable when it works, but it fails for ordinary reasons that have nothing to do with whether your relative is in custody:

• Spelling variants. Hyphenated last names, accented characters, and maternal/paternal surname order all trip the search. Try every plausible spelling — including without accents, with surnames reversed, and with the maternal surname dropped.
• Missing A-number. Most families do not have it on day one. The name + DOB + country search is less reliable than the A-number search.
• Intake delay. When a new detainee is booked, there is typically a lag before they appear in the Locator. Try again in 8–12 hours and again the next day.
• Out-of-state transfer. ICE moves detainees. A relative picked up in Aurora on Monday may be in a Texas, New Mexico, or Louisiana facility by Wednesday. The Locator should still surface them — but the facility name will change.

If the Locator returns nothing after 48 hours

If the Locator returns nothing after 48 hours, the advocacy hotlines below are usually the faster route to confirming custody.

You can also call RMIAN’s family hotline at (303) 866-9308, the Colorado Rapid Response Network at 1-844-864-8341 (24/7 bilingual), or Casa de Paz at (303) 587-2589. These are advocacy-organization hotlines, not law firms, but they have working relationships with the Aurora facility and can sometimes help confirm whether someone has been booked.

Colorado-specific rules that shape what ICE can and cannot do

ICE is a federal agency. Its authority comes from federal law, including INA § 287 / 8 U.S.C. § 1357, which sets out what immigration officers can do during an arrest and what kind of warrant they need. But Colorado has passed its own laws over the last several years that change how state and local government interacts with ICE. None of these laws stop ICE from doing immigration enforcement — but they do constrain what state employees and county jails are allowed to help with.

If you live in Colorado, this matters because it shapes where ICE can pick someone up, whether a local jail can hold someone on an ICE detainer past their state release date, and what state actors can do on state property.

Colorado’s limits on ICE-detainer cooperation

An ICE detainer is a request from ICE to a local jail asking that jail to hold a person for up to 48 extra hours so ICE can take custody. It is not a judicial warrant. Colorado’s 2019 HB19-1124, codified at C.R.S. §§ 24-76.6-101 to -103, generally prohibits Colorado law-enforcement officers from arresting or detaining a person solely on the basis of a civil ICE detainer (C.R.S. § 24-76.6-102(2)), and prohibits probation officers and probation-department employees from providing an individual’s personal information to federal immigration authorities (C.R.S. § 24-76.6-103(1)).

Two important limits on what HB19-1124 does, framed factually: Colorado’s law-enforcement restrictions do not override federal authority. Local law enforcement may still cooperate with warrants signed by a federal judge or magistrate and with judicial writs for prisoner transfer. The statute constrains what state and county actors participate in — it does not stop ICE from making federal arrests off state property, and it does not give any individual immunity from federal immigration law.

What this means in practice for a Colorado family: a relative finishing up a state criminal case is sometimes released into the community first, and sometimes picked up by ICE at the moment of release. Which one happens depends on the county, the specific case, the presence (or absence) of a federal-judge-signed warrant, and the current posture of federal and state cooperation. The patterns change. A family that wants to know what will happen at release should ask their criminal-defense lawyer to coordinate with an immigration attorney before the release date — not after.

How a Colorado state criminal case interacts with ICE custody

This is the crimmigration intersection — the place where a Colorado criminal case quietly becomes an immigration case, and where Novo Legal Group’s practice sits.

Two things matter most:

1. What the plea actually was. Federal immigration law defines “conviction” broadly. Under INA § 101(a)(48)(A), a deferred judgment in Colorado state court can still be treated as a conviction for immigration purposes if the person entered a guilty plea (or a plea of no contest with admitted facts) and the court imposed any restraint on liberty — even probation. The fact that the case will eventually be dismissed in state court does not necessarily make it disappear for immigration purposes.
2. Whether the offense triggers an immigration consequence. Federal law treats certain offenses as “aggravated felonies” under INA § 101(a)(43), and others as “crimes involving moral turpitude” under INA § 237(a)(2). An aggravated-felony finding can trigger mandatory detention and bars almost every form of relief. The federal enumeration of aggravated felonies is long and counterintuitive: a theft offense with a one-year sentence can count, a drug-trafficking-related offense can count, certain offenses with one-year sentences can count regardless of how the state codes them. The Supreme Court has held in Leocal v. Ashcroft, 543 U.S. 1 (2004), that a state offense requiring only negligence is not a “crime of violence” aggravated felony — but most Colorado offenses are not Leocal offenses, and the analysis is statute-by-statute.

The practical takeaway: a Colorado criminal disposition that seems minor in state court can carry life-altering immigration consequences. A criminal-defense lawyer who is not also thinking about immigration consequences cannot reliably protect a noncitizen client at the plea stage. This is true even after Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356 (2010) — Padilla requires criminal-defense counsel to advise about deportation risk, but it does not undo the disposition once it is entered.

If your relative has a pending or recent Colorado state criminal case, that case is part of their immigration case. Treat it that way.

If you are calling from inside Colorado and want to reach our Denver office directly, the line is (303) 335-0250.

Immigration detention bond in Colorado

The single most common question families ask in the first week is: can my husband, my wife, my brother, my mother get out on bond? The honest answer is sometimes, and the analysis depends on who set the bond, the relative’s criminal history, and how an immigration judge weighs the case.

ICE-set bond vs. immigration-judge bond

After an arrest, ICE itself can set an initial bond under INA § 236(a) / 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a). This is a discretionary call by ICE officers based on flight risk and danger. If ICE sets a bond, the family can post it through ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and the detainee is released pending the immigration case.

If ICE refuses to set a bond, or sets one the family cannot afford, the detainee can ask the immigration judge for a redetermination bond hearing. The judge re-evaluates the case independently and can lower (or raise) the bond.

Mandatory detention under INA § 236(c)

Here is where many Colorado detainees run into a wall. INA § 236(c) / 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c) requires ICE to take custody of certain noncitizens and bars their release on bond. The categories generally include people with prior convictions tied to controlled substances, certain firearms offenses, aggravated felonies under § 101(a)(43), multiple crimes of moral turpitude, and certain terrorism-related grounds. The Supreme Court held in Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U.S. 281 (2018), that people detained under § 1226(c) are not automatically entitled to periodic bond hearings; and in Nielsen v. Preap, 586 U.S. 392 (2019), that the mandatory-detention provision still applies even when there is a long delay between criminal release and ICE custody.

In practical terms: a relative who has a qualifying conviction in their history may be ineligible for bond, period — regardless of how strong their family ties, work history, or community connections are. Many Colorado detainees fall into this category. The mandatory-detention question is the first one a crimmigration attorney will analyze.

What an immigration judge weighs at a bond hearing

If the relative is not subject to mandatory detention, an immigration judge generally weighs two factors at a bond hearing: whether the person is a flight risk and whether they are a danger to the community. Evidence that supports release typically includes:

• Long-term physical presence in the United States (utility bills, leases, tax returns, employment records)
• U.S.-citizen and lawful-permanent-resident family members in Colorado
• Stable employment, ideally with W-2s and a letter from the employer
• A clean (or substantially clean) criminal record
• A plan for where the relative will live and who will support them
• Letters of support from community members, employers, clergy, and family

A bond hearing is a contested hearing. ICE attorneys appear. The detainee testifies under oath. This is not a hearing to walk into without counsel.

Posting bond once it is set

If the immigration judge sets a bond, the family posts it through ICE’s ERO unit (in person or, for some bonds, through Form I-352 cashier’s-check procedure). The person who posts is called the obligor and must be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident with the funds to post in full and a valid government ID. Once posted, ICE issues an order of release and the detainee is processed out — usually within hours, sometimes within a day or two depending on the facility.

A bond is not a fee. It is collateral. If the released person attends every hearing and complies with the final order of the immigration case, the bond is refunded to the obligor at the end of the case.

We use language like seek bond, challenge detention, and preserve options deliberately. No lawyer can guarantee that bond will be set, that any specific amount will be lowered, or that any specific detainee will be released. Anyone who promises that is not telling you the truth.

Removal defense — what happens after the first hearing

Most detainees see an immigration judge for the first time within days or weeks of arrest. The first hearing is usually a master calendar hearing — a brief, scheduling-focused appearance where the judge confirms the charges in the Notice to Appear, takes pleadings, and sets future deadlines. The actual contested hearing on relief is called the individual hearing (sometimes called the merits hearing), and it comes later.

Common forms of relief that may be available, depending on the relative’s history, include:

• Cancellation of removal for non-permanent residents under INA § 240A(b) / 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(b), which generally requires ten years of continuous physical presence, good moral character, no disqualifying conviction, and a showing of “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to a U.S.-citizen or LPR spouse, parent, or child.
• Cancellation of removal for lawful permanent residents under INA § 240A(a), with different statutory requirements.
• Asylum and withholding of removal for relatives with a fear of persecution in their home country.
• U-visa relief for victims of certain crimes who cooperated with law enforcement.
• T-visa relief for victims of human trafficking.
• VAWA-based relief for spouses, parents, and children who experienced abuse from a U.S.-citizen or LPR family member.

This is not an exhaustive list. The right form of relief depends on the relative’s history, the charges on the Notice to Appear, and the strength of the supporting evidence. Picking the wrong path — or waiving relief without realizing it at the first hearing — can foreclose options that would otherwise have been available.

There is no government-appointed lawyer in immigration court. This is one of the most disorienting facts for families used to the criminal-justice system. The Sixth Amendment right to appointed counsel does not extend to civil immigration proceedings. Padilla v. Kentucky requires that criminal-defense counsel advise about immigration consequences — it does not provide an immigration lawyer in removal court. RMIAN provides pro bono representation for some detainees at the Aurora Immigration Court, but capacity is limited and not every detainee gets representation. Many detainees represent themselves. They should not have to.

For Colorado families looking for broader background, Novo Legal Group’s immigration practice overview and the Denver immigration team page describe what working with our removal-defense team looks like.

Civil-rights crossover — when an ICE detention may have been unlawful

Most ICE detentions are lawful in the strict sense that the agency had statutory authority to make the arrest. But some are not. The way a person was picked up sometimes raises questions independent of whether they are removable — questions about excessive force, pretextual stops, racial profiling, warrantless home entry, or denial of access to counsel inside the facility.

These are factual categories that sometimes give rise to civil-rights claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (for state-actor conduct) or under Bivens and related federal-officer doctrine (for federal-officer conduct). They do not always. Whether any specific arrest creates a viable claim is a fact-intensive question that depends on what the officers actually did, what they said, what kind of warrant (if any) they had, and where the arrest took place.

The factual circumstances most often worth flagging to counsel:

• ICE entered a home without a judicial warrant and without consent.
• Officers used force during the arrest that caused injury.
• The stop began as something else (a traffic stop, a welfare check) that ended without state charges but with an ICE arrest.
• The detainee was denied access to a lawyer at the facility, or denied legal mail, or held in conditions that violated standards.
• The arrest involved racial slurs, pretextual identification demands, or apparent profiling.

If any of these describe what happened to your relative, write it down today. Memory degrades. Witnesses move. Body-camera footage is often retained for limited periods and can be requested. A civil-rights claim, if one exists, is a parallel matter that runs alongside the removal-defense case — not a substitute for it.

Novo Legal Group’s civil rights practice sits next to our crimmigration work. Where the same set of facts creates both an immigration defense and a civil-rights claim, the two cases get handled together. This is the part of our practice that does not show up on the advocacy-organization guides currently dominating this topic online.

What the family can do while a relative is detained

The detained person cannot be the project manager of their own case from inside the facility. The family takes that role. The work is concrete:

• Visit, call, and write. Aurora allows scheduled visitation. Phone calls are billed through the facility commissary system and add up fast — funding a phone account makes it easier for the detainee to stay in touch and to call counsel. Letters marked as legal mail (from an attorney) get different handling than personal mail; ask counsel to send important documents that way.
• Track medical issues. If the detainee has a chronic condition, medication needs, or sustained injuries during arrest, document every request for care and every response from the facility. Keep dates.
• Build the evidence file. A relative’s removal-defense case is built on documents that prove their life in the United States: tax returns, W-2s, leases, utility bills, school records for their children, medical records, marriage certificates, letters from employers, clergy, neighbors, and teachers. Pull these together in one folder. Counsel will tell you which ones the case actually needs.
• Get a power of attorney for U.S.-side decisions. If the detained relative is the one who handles the lease, the kids’ school enrollment, the bank account, or a small business — a limited power of attorney lets a trusted family member act on those without waiting for release. Talk to a lawyer about what to scope it for.
• Take care of yourself. This is not a sprint. Most removal cases take months. Eat. Sleep. Lean on the people who showed up in the first 24 hours.

Frequently asked questions

Talk to a Colorado crimmigration attorney before the next hearing

Families that get counsel involved in the first 72 hours generally have more options at the first master-calendar hearing than families that wait. That is not a guarantee — every case turns on its own facts — but it is the pattern we see at the Aurora Immigration Court.

Novo Legal Group is a Colorado law firm that handles immigration defense, the crimmigration intersection where a state criminal case becomes an immigration case, and civil-rights claims that sometimes arise from the way an arrest happened. We work in English and Spanish. We answer the phone.

If your relative was detained, call us at (888) 746-5245 (tel:+18887465245) or contact us online. We will tell you what we can do — and, just as importantly, what we cannot do — based on the facts of your situation.

Related reading

• Novo Legal’s Colorado immigration practice
• Denver immigration lawyer team
• Colorado civil-rights practice and SB 20-217
• About Aaron Elinoff

External resources for Colorado families (not affiliated with Novo Legal):

• ICE Online Detainee Locator — locator.ice.gov
• Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (RMIAN), Detention Program — rmian.org/detention-program; family hotline (303) 866-9308
• Colorado Rapid Response Network — 1-844-864-8341 (24/7 bilingual)
• Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC), Keep Families Together — coloradoimmigrant.org/our-work/keep-families-together
• Casa de Paz — (303) 587-2589