A federal judge on Friday rejected a request from Denver Public Schools to block the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from carrying out immigration enforcement at schoolhouses across the country.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017, denied the school district’s request for a preliminary injunction, which would have prevented immigration agents from making arrests on school property.
DPS sued Homeland Security last month, seeking the reinstatement of a policy that had largely prevented immigration arrests at schools. The district argued the possibility of immigration raids instilled deep fear in students and their parents.
“I agree that DPS has shown there’s real confusion and concerns and fears among some portions of those families,” Domenico said in announcing his decision at the conclusion of the hearing in Denver’s federal courthouse. “They have shown they are having to spend time and effort to address those concerns.”
But, Domenico said, DPS did not show that impacts to its schools — including declining student attendance — are specifically due to changes to Homeland Security’s so-called sensitive locations policy rather than broader concerns about the rise in immigration enforcement under the new Trump administration.
“The concern was that there would be no limitations or no protections for schools necessarily and that, under the new memo, I think is an overstatement,” Domenico said, referring to a late-January directive. “The fact that there has been no actions on school property in the time that the memo has been released here or as far as we know anywhere else highlights that fact.”
Legally, he said, the change between prior guidance and the new policy under Trump is not “significant.”
DPS is believed to be the first school district in the nation to sue the Trump administration over the end of a policy the longstanding sensitive locations policy, which was last updated under President Joe Biden in 2021 and also prevented U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from making immigration arrests at churches and hospitals.
“While we are disappointed in the judge’s ruling, it is important to note that he acknowledged the real damages public schools have suffered,” DPS spokesman Scott Pribble said in a statement. “He also acknowledged that there are no fundamental differences between the 2021 and 2025 policy, which had not been known prior to our court filing. DPS was successful in forcing the government to release the new 2025 guidance that had previously been kept from the public.”
The Department of Homeland Security had argued in its court filings in the DPS case that the sensitive locations policy hasn’t fundamentally changed under the Trump administration despite the agency rescinding previous guidance.
On Jan. 31, then-acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello issued a memo that gave ICE personnel the “responsibility for making case-by-case determinations regarding whether, where and when to conduct an immigration enforcement action in or near a protected area.”
Fears grow following ICE raids
But educators across metro Denver have grown concerned about ICE agents showing up in schools since Trump’s re-election in November. The president has promised mass deportations and his anti-immigrant rhetoric has occasionally targeted migrants in Aurora and Denver.
Both cities were sites of high-profile raids last month. ICE and other federal agents didn’t make any arrests at Denver schools on Feb. 5, but at least four DPS students were detained that day, according to the district.
DPS’s lawsuit follows a flurry of others by a variety of states and groups across the nation that are suing the Trump administration because of the president’s various executive actions that affect not only immigration enforcement, but also federal funding and transgender rights.
Several religious groups sued the administration over changes to the sensitive locations policy and a federal judge has narrowly prevented ICE agents from detaining people in certain houses of worship while that case moves forward.
Before his ruling, Domenico expressed his “extreme reluctance” to issue a nationwide injunction, although he noted that judges across the U.S. have been doing so in response to other lawsuits filed against the Trump administration.
Claire Mueller, an attorney representing DPS, argued in favor of the judge issuing a nationwide ruling, saying that it would be inequitable for DPS schools to be protected under a narrow injunction but not other districts, such as neighboring Aurora Public Schools.
The judge repeatedly questioned Mueller and attorneys representing Homeland Security about whether an injunction would have prevented the Feb. 5 raids at Cedar Run Apartments. The complex is located near multiple DPS schools and buses were prevented from picking up students due to the presence of law enforcement that morning, according to district officials.
Mueller told Domenico that while an injunction would not have prevented last month’s raids, DPS schools are being harmed by the uncertainty surrounding the end of the sensitive locations policy.
“Students are afraid to come to schools,” Mueller told the judge. “Parents are afraid to send their kids to school.”
Schools still seen as “protected areas”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado has argued on behalf of Homeland Security that district officials are incorrect in believing previous policy completely prevented enforcement activities at schools. The attorneys noted that while a new policy issued on Jan. 20 was less specific, it still allowed other departments to enact their own policies.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued its own guidance that again defined protected areas to include schools and required supervisory approval before enforcement action could be taken in those protected areas,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in a court filing.
The federal government doesn’t think there needs to be a “bright-line rule” that says explicitly when immigration agents can make arrests in schools, U.S. Attorney Thomas Isler said during the hearing.
Homeland Security “still recognizes schools as protected areas,” he said.
DPS attorneys argued in their lawsuit that even though arrests haven’t yet occurred on school property, the change in policy has created anxiety among parents and their children and has led families to keep students home from class.
District lawyers argued the drop in attendance “constitutes a clear threat to DPS’s stability” because school funding is calculated based on how many students are in a classroom.
DPS has welcomed more than 4,700 immigrant children into the district’s classrooms in recent years, enough to, at least temporarily, reverse a years-long decline in K-12 enrollment that is occurring because fewer babies are being born.
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