ACLU lawsuit against Teller County sheriff dismissed by judge
The Teller County Sheriff’s Office is no longer being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union over holding prisoners with immigration issues at the request of U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A judge dismissed the lawsuit this week — seven months after the ACLU filed it — after both sides apparently agreed to drop the case.
The ACLU said Sheriff Jason Mikesell didn’t have the authority to hold an inmate 48 hours past his release until ICE officials could arrive to assume custody.
The inmate, Leonardo Canseco, is no longer in jail.
Last August, a month after the lawsuit was filed, a judge denied the ACLU’s request for an injunction to have Canseco released on a bond of $850.
At the time, Mikesell said ICE gave him the authority to detain Canseco and that doing so would protect the community from a potentially dangerous criminal.
“The (ICE detainees) that we’ve arrested have been arrested on drug charges and attempted homicide charges,” he said. “We’re working with the federal government to protect our citizens and keep people who pose a threat, in jail.”
But in Canseco’s case, he was in jail only for two misdemeanor charges relating to gambling fraud, and the $8 in question was repaid.
Mikesell said that doesn’t matter.
“There’s a lot more behind something than just that one instance,” he said. “ICE has been pretty good about, they just don’t give a detainer for something simple. There’s usually always something behind it causing that detainer to be in place.”
The specific reason for the detainer is unclear, however, because ICE isn’t required to disclose it to local authorities.
Mikesell said he detains an average of five federal inmates annually.
In a statement released Thursday, the ACLU said: “Under Colorado law, Sheriff Mikesell has no authority to enforce federal immigration law. A written agreement with ICE cannot change that. In an appropriate case we will raise these issues in court. We agreed to the dismissal of the Canseco case because the court was unlikely to consider our legal arguments, since our client had left jail long before the agreement came into effect.”
According to earlier reports, the ACLU also agreed to drop the lawsuit after it received assurances from the county that it will notify the ACLU about future federal holds at the jail.
“We were going to do that anyway,” Mikesell said. “We have nothing to hide.”
The ACLU has a similar lawsuit pending against the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, filed in March 2018. A judge sided with the ACLU and issued an injunction to stop federal holds at that jail.
But El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder said earlier this week that he doesn’t have room for any inmates from other agencies anyway because of his jail’s overcrowded conditions.
The office said it detained 296 inmates in 2017 and 61 in 2018 before the injunction was granted.
