Putting a GPS ankle monitor on an immigrant who has just been freed by a federal court is not a local officer's improvisation in Colorado — it is a written policy that came from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters. That is what ICE Assistant Field Office Director Nichole Black told U.S. District Judge Nina Y. Wang in Denver on Thursday, November 5, in the habeas corpus case of Gerald Faustin, according to Colorado Politics, whose court reporting is the primary account of the hearing. No ICE or Department of Homeland Security statement on the testimony was reported.
Source: Colorado Politics, Nov 5, 2026, via Immigration Analytics
This is a new development in a confrontation Awaaz Punjab has been following this week. On November 3, Judge S. Kato Crews barred ICE from re-detaining a released petitioner without a bond hearing first, and on November 4 Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney opened an inquiry after Black testified she had been directed to re-arrest some people freed on habeas petitions. The November 5 hearing before Judge Wang added a second, different mechanism — not re-arrest at the prison gate, but a court-ordered release that arrives with supervision the judge never imposed.
What happened in the Faustin case
Gerald Faustin filed his habeas petition on October 20. Judge Wang gave the government seven days to respond and ordered that Faustin be released within 24 hours of that deadline if it did not respond. No response came, Colorado Politics reported. Faustin was let out — but with GPS monitoring fitted and an order to report to an ICE office in Wichita, Kansas, his lawyer told the court, even though the judge's release order said nothing about any conditions.
Wang then ordered another response from the government and again received none. Earlier in the week she ordered Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Soler to appear in court with an ICE representative. Soler then filed a notice saying ICE was 'in the process' of lifting the conditions on Faustin's release — an acknowledgement, in court, that the conditions were being withdrawn after the judge pressed the point.
In the hearing, Wang stated the court's position in one sentence: 'The court's order contemplated no additional conditions of release, nor did it determine any conditions of release were required.' Against that, Black testified that ICE places GPS monitors on anyone released under a habeas order who has no complicating medical condition, and that Faustin's order did not expressly forbid monitoring. Asked whether that rule was written down, she said yes — and that it came from headquarters, passed to her through Deputy Field Office Director George Valdez and Denver Field Office Director Nathan Rasper. Soler could not point the judge to any Supreme Court or Tenth Circuit decision allowing an agency to change a court's release order.
Why a headquarters rule changes the scale of the dispute
A habeas corpus petition is the route by which a detained person asks a federal judge to order their release from unlawful custody. ICE ordinarily does set supervision terms for people it releases itself — through bond, through conditional parole under 8 U.S.C. 1226(a), and through its Alternatives to Detention programme, which relies on ankle monitors and phone check-ins. The government's apparent position in Denver is that a habeas order ends the detention but leaves that ordinary supervision authority in place unless the judge says otherwise. Judge Wang's position is the opposite: a court-ordered release sets its own terms, and an agency that adds conditions is rewriting the order.
Colorado Politics noted that this is not the first time a judge in the district has drawn that line: in January 2026, Judge Gordon P. Gallagher ruled that ICE cannot impose conditions beyond what an immigration judge authorised. And on November 3, Judge Crews' order in Garcia Vargas v. Baltazar (No. 1:26-cv-05185-SKC) barred ICE from re-detaining the petitioner unless the government first proves at a pre-deprivation bond hearing, by clear and convincing evidence, that he is a flight risk or a danger — an order aimed at re-arrest, while Wang's hearing now targets monitoring.
Source: U.S. District Court, District of Colorado — Order in Garcia Vargas v. Baltazar, Nov 3, 2026
If the monitoring rule is written and national, as Black testified, it would apply wherever ICE releases someone on a habeas grant — not only in Colorado. The pool of people affected is growing with detention itself: a September 2026 report by the Government Accountability Office put ICE's average daily detained population at 67,180 on July 30, 2026, up 71 percent from 39,314 on January 20, 2025. Habeas lawyers in other states now have reason to ask judges to state expressly, in every release order, whether any conditions are allowed at all.
For a released detainee, an ankle monitor is not a formality: it restricts work, travel and daily life, and a missed check-in or a dead battery can become a fresh enforcement problem. For Punjabi and other immigrant families across the United States — including truck drivers whose work is long-distance driving — the question decided in Denver, whether a judge's unconditional release order can be converted by an agency into monitored release, decides what 'freed by the court' actually means in practice.
What happens next
Wang said she was 'seriously contemplating' ordering the government to provide more information, which could bring the written headquarters policy itself into the court record; its wording would show whether ICE treats monitoring as routine supervision or as a response to habeas losses, and that distinction is likely to shape how far judges go if they consider contempt. Separately, Denver Field Office Director Nathan Rasper is due before Judge Sweeney on Monday, November 9, when the government must also account for every person in Colorado re-detained immediately after a court-ordered release. Awaaz Punjab will follow both hearings.