It’s no small irony the Colorado federal judge who has made news by laudably reaffirming the rule of law on illegal immigration — hails from a state whose sanctuary policies have made a mockery of it.

It seems Colorado native and Chief U.S. District Judge Dan Domenico in Denver has upended the conventional wisdom of plenty of his peers on the federal bench by upholding the continued federal detention of illegal immigrants. He has done so in more than one case recently, ruling against detainees’ release, as The Gazette reported this week.

You’d think it’s a given that someone who had entered the country illegally, if caught, would be held in custody pending deportation. But you’d be wrong.

After the new presidential administration took office last year and began its promised crackdown on illegal immigration, activist attorneys inundated Colorado’s federal court system with “habeas corpus” cases demanding the release of those who were detained. The habeas corpus filings challenged the federal government’s authority to hold illegal immigrants in confinement without releasing them on bond while their removal proceedings unfold.

A number of federal judges in Colorado and nationwide have obliged. They bought into the petitioners’ argument that their clients aren’t subject to federal authorities’ mandatory detention policy for illegal immigrants “seeking admission” to the country — because they already are here. Oh, how clever.

Yes, really. Thus, they are eligible for hearings to consider their release as well as for release itself while their federal immigration cases slowly make their way through the courts.

If you find yourself thinking that illegal immigrants granted release simply won’t show up for their next court date — and, of course, many don’t — you’re probably not thinking like a lawyer. Which is to say you’re just falling back on common sense.

The good news is that Domenico, by all accounts a distinguished legal mind, also appears to embrace common sense. He evidently gets what those leading the crackdown on illegal immigration know all too well: The system for adjudicating deportation cases had become a revolving door over the years.

The deluge of illegal immigration in recent decades of course has many causes. Not the least of those is a porous and historically underpoliced U.S. southern border. 

But one significant impediment to enforcement of the law against those who enter the country illegally is the legal labyrinth that keeps them here. It is a system the open-borders crowd knows how to navigate, confounding attempts at deportation in many cases. And when judges go along, embracing hair-splitting legal pretexts, it further confounds law enforcement.

Domenico isn’t alone in recognizing federal law enforcement’s authority to detain illegal immigrants even after they have settled in the U.S. As The Gazette reported, the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit and the St. Louis-based Eighth Circuit also recently rejected the predominant view that illegal immigrants should be eligible to walk free. 

Majorities on those courts have reasoned someone who has been unlawfully present in the United States is still “seeking admission” and thus falls under the provision of law authorizing detention without a bond hearing.

Otherwise, the justice system will become little more than a sieve for illegal immigration — just as the entire nation would become a de facto sanctuary. As Colorado, unfortunately, already is.