Colorado Judge Orders ICE To Retrieve Man It Deported In Violation Of His Court Order

Marco Uriel Rodriguez Hernandez was sitting in the privately run Aurora ICE Processing Center when a federal judge in Denver granted him a temporary restraining order blocking his deportation. Less than 24 hours later, immigration agents put him on a flight to Mexico anyway. Now that same judge has ordered the government to go get him back.

Chief Judge Daniel D. Domenico of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado ruled on August 25 that the government removed Rodriguez Hernandez before his removal order became final and in violation of the temporary restraining order he had issued just a day earlier, according to the Denver Gazette. Domenico ordered the government to take all available lawful steps to return Rodriguez Hernandez to the United States, drawing on the legal authority the U.S. Supreme Court established in April 2025 when it ruled that trial courts can require the government to facilitate the return of people wrongfully deported, in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

The timeline, as laid out in court filings, is stark. ICE transferred Rodriguez Hernandez out of the Aurora detention center on August 6 to an unknown location. That same day, his attorney, Skylar M. Larson, contacted ICE to alert the agency to his new habeas case, and Rodriguez Hernandez filed another habeas petition challenging an immigration judge's denial of bond. Domenico granted the restraining order barring his deportation on August 7. The very next morning, ICE deported him to Mexico from Texas anyway.

Government Blames Miscommunication

Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth E. Puskar told the court the removal was inadvertent, explaining that ICE officials in Texas were unaware Domenico had issued the restraining order in Denver just the day before. Puskar said the government defendants greatly regretted mistakenly deporting Rodriguez Hernandez, and the government has maintained the violation was administrative rather than intentional. Rodriguez Hernandez has reported that ICE deported him without allowing him to contact his lawyer beforehand, and attorney Larson wrote that the removal destroyed the status quo the court's order was meant to preserve.

Larson has requested that the government take all available lawful steps to facilitate Rodriguez Hernandez's return, and Domenico's order requires the government to provide an update on those efforts within a week. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about how they will carry out the judge's order.

Not an Isolated Case

This is not the first time a Colorado federal judge has found that ICE ignored a court order blocking a deportation. U.S. District Judge Nina Y. Wang ruled on June 1 that ICE unequivocally violated her injunction when the agency deported a habeas petitioner to Nigeria in April 2026 while his petition was still pending, according to Colorado Politics. During a court call in that case, an ICE representative admitted agents had simply missed putting a hold on the man's file. Wang later determined the government could not be required to pay that petitioner's attorneys' fees as a sanction, and she declined to order the government to return him to the United States — a contrast with Domenico's ruling in the Rodriguez Hernandez case.

The surge of habeas petitions flowing through Colorado's federal courts traces back to a June 30 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Santillan Quiroz v. Mullin, which found that noncitizens detained in the interior of the country are entitled to bond hearings and rejected the government's policy of mandatory detention without bond outside border entries. Hoodline previously reported on that decision in the ruling shredding no-bond policy. Per the ACLU of Colorado, the decision established binding law across six Western states — Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, and Wyoming — after federal authorities had restricted bond hearing access across the region starting in July 2025. Colorado federal judges have since found that the government improperly denied bond hearings to people eligible by law, triggering a flood of habeas corpus petitions in the district court over nearly a year.

More Detention Disputes Piling Up

Other Colorado judges have handed down similarly forceful rulings in recent weeks. Chief Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak ordered the immediate release of detainee Kasanda Katende Jo on August 20, ruling that DHS violated his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights by re-detaining him without a warrant or due process during what was supposed to be a routine check-in; Katende Jo had lived in the U.S. since January 2023 before being re-detained without prior notice. Varholak said DHS appeared to have ignored the law and detained the man unlawfully, and he has scheduled a hearing for September 10 concerning repeated apparent violations of the law — a session that suggests the court may be weighing systemic remedies rather than treating the incidents as one-off mistakes.

Separately, Senior U.S. District Judge William J. Martínez bypassed immigration court proceedings entirely last week to order another petitioner's direct release, after Immigration Judge Bobbie C. Masters had justified continued detention using only the single word “Danger.” And Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter has required the government to explain by Friday why ICE should not be sanctioned for re-detaining a petitioner just four days after an immigration judge found that person suitable for release. The government has asked for more time to compile the information Neureiter requested.

Domenico's Own Confirmation Fight

The rulings arrive as Domenico, a 2019 Trump appointee who previously served as Colorado's Solicitor General, awaits Senate confirmation to a seat on the 10th Circuit itself. He was nominated on May 12, and the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-10 along party lines on July 23 to advance his nomination, according to Colorado Politics. Colorado's Democratic senators have said they will not vote to confirm him, and senators Dick Durbin and Cory Booker have submitted written inquiries to Domenico regarding his handling of immigration habeas cases. His order demanding ICE retrieve a man it wrongly deported now sits at the center of that fight, complicating any simple narrative about how a Trump-appointed judge is expected to rule in cases pitting due process against federal immigration enforcement.

Elsewhere in the country, the stakes of a bungled return remain visible in the ongoing case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose wrongful deportation to El Salvador and subsequent legal fight established the Supreme Court precedent Domenico relied on. Hoodline covered the early push for his return in Ansari's push to bring him home. The Justice Department asked the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in August to reinstate human smuggling charges against Abrego Garcia after a trial judge threw out the indictment as retaliatory, according to the Guardian — a reminder that even a court-ordered return does not necessarily end a deportee's legal troubles.