We’ll say it again: Colorado U.S. District Court Judge Dan Domenico gets it. He isn’t about to be snookered or cowed by the nationwide lawfare campaign to spring illegal immigrants from federal detention. 

And he deserves a round of applause.

Unlike all too many of his peers on the federal bench, Domenico isn’t bowing before the wave of contrived and pretextual habeas corpus claims used to free detainees and undermine the nation’s much-needed crackdown on illegal immigration. Instead, the Colorado native and chief judge of Colorado’s federal trial courts is methodically applying the law. 

The upshot of standing his ground is that more illegal immigrants who are caught in the federal crackdown are remaining in confinement, where they belong, pending deportation proceedings. No get-out-of-jail-free cards.

It’s why we also welcomed news last week that Domenico has been promoted to fill an opening on the Denver-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which handles appeals of federal court cases from Colorado and five neighboring states. 

The Gazette’s news affiliate Colorado Politics recently detailed some data that reaffirms Domenico’s success. Colorado Politics found that of 35 habeas corpus appeals assigned to Domenico from September 2025 through April of this year, he had resolved seven — denying four of the appeals. Most of the rest of the 35 are still cooling their heels in detention.

In stark contrast, his counterparts in Denver’s U.S. District Courts had granted almost all of the appeals before them in that same time frame. And they acted fast, with relatively little time spent deliberating them. 

Whether the other judges are simply rubber-stamping the appeals — waving through immigration lawyers as if they were lined up in their cars at a drive-thru court — is for others to decide. But those judges’ lopsidedly high percentage of approvals for habeas corpus filings by the lawyers — well over 80% and, for one judge, it was 100% — does seem to suggest a level of sympathy for their cause.

Domenico’s deliberate approach, on the other hand, points to more than just the obvious need to balance the rash of ginned-up habeas corpus filings with the rest of a busy federal judge’s hefty caseload. Common sense, reassuringly, also appears to play a role.

Notably, he hasn’t bought into the petitioners’ brazenly silly argument that their illegal immigrant clients aren’t subject to immigration authorities’ mandatory detention policy — technically, it applies to illegal immigrants “seeking admission” to the country — because their clients already are here. Which, taken to its absurd, illogical extreme would mean any of the estimated 14 million illegal immigrants currently within U.S. borders, if arrested, couldn’t be detained pending the adjudication of any federal efforts to deport them.

Sure, it’s ridiculous in principle, but there’s also a practical problem with cutting loose illegal immigrants while they await the next court date in their deportation proceedings: They won’t show up.

Domenico likely sees through the farce. He evidently gets what immigration agents on the frontlines have known all too well for all too long: The system for adjudicating deportation cases has become a revolving door.

In fact, a significant impediment to enforcement of the law against those who enter the country illegally — is the legal labyrinth that keeps them here once they’ve gotten in.

We need more such judges with the wisdom to see beyond the labyrinth. And more with the backbone to blaze their own trail.