Three Colorado Towns Will Host New ICE Detention Centers

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency that arrests and deports immigrants, plans to open three new detention facilities in Colorado, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post.

The three towns set to host ICE detention facilities include Ignacio, Walsenburg and Hudson, which was named last week as a future location for ICE holding.

"U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s enhanced enforcement operations and routine daily operations have resulted in a significant number of arrests of criminal aliens that require greater detention capacity," ICE says in a statement. "While we cannot confirm individual pre-decisional conversations, we can confirm that ICE is exploring all options to meet its current and future detention requirements."

On August 12, House Representative Brittany Pettersen's office confirmed that ICE had told her about plans to open a new facility in Hudson, a small Weld County town. The Washington Post reveals the plans for don't end there, however, with a small 28-bed facility planned in Ignacio and another in Walsenburg with 1,400 beds.

Hudson has a correctional facility with a 1,250-bed capacity that hasn't been in use since 2014. However, the Washington Post article details ICE's plans for a "Big Horn Detention Facility" in Hudson with a capacity of 1,100 beds.

Hudson Town Manager Bryce Lange says that no one from the federal government has informed the town about plans to reopen the facility, and he is "not certain what the 'Big Horn Detention Facility' name is about, either." Lange previously said he would support the ICE detention facility the same way he would any business.

Colorado currently has one ICE facility, located in Aurora. That complex is staffed and operated by GEO Group, a private prison company that also used to run the Hudson Correctional Facility when it was home to Alaska state prisoners between 2009 and 2014. According to Congressman Jason Crow, about 1,400 immigrants are in the Aurora detention center, including activist Jeanette Vizguerra.

Adding the three new facilities would nearly triple ICE's current immigrant detention capacity in Colorado, bringing it to over 4,000 people. The Washington Post adds that ICE plans to add more than 40,000 beds nationwide by opening more facilities in various states, including nineteen detention centers in Texas.

This comes as President Donald Trump carries out an aggressive immigration enforcement plan that includes roundups and deportations of undocumented immigrants and people going through the asylum, DACA and other immigration processes.

A New York Times article published on August 11 found that about 60,000 immigrants are currently detained by ICE across the country. Hundreds of immigrants have been arrested in the Denver metro area by ICE, including at residential raids, with more than 200 people arrested during one week in July.

According to GEO Group, the company spent $70 million around the time Trump took office in January to prepare the Aurora ICE detention center for more detainees. Before Trump took office, that facility held between 200 and 300 people at a time, but it always had about 1,500 beds.

In July, the American Civil Liberties Union published documents from ICE that showed the agency was eyeing as many as six new facilities in Colorado, including two in Colorado Springs, two in Walsenburg and one in both La Junta and Hudson. 

Despite local protests, ICE plans to take over the Huerfano County Correctional Center in Walsenburg, a city of 3,000 about halfway between Pueblo and Trinidad. The facility was owned and operated by private prison company CoreCivic from 1997 to 2010, when it was used to house more than 700 state prisoners from Arizona. When the facility reopens, ICE plans to nearly double its capacity, according to the Washington Post.

John Galusha, the interim city administrator for Walsenburg and former Huerfano County Administrator when the prison was open, says that "Walsenburg has not been informed by anyone about a decision to open the shuttered prison."

Galusha didn't want to speak on behalf of Walsenburg residents, but tells Westword that "I can tell you that the economy was better when the facility was open."

"Even though only about 15 percent of the workforce was local, the sales tax and restaurants were in much better shape. Another factor is that prison populations are used in population counts by the state, and as a result of the prison housing 750 additional residents, we received almost one-third higher Conservation trust funds from proceeds from the Colorado Lottery," Galusha adds. "I, for one, support the facility strictly from an economic perspective."

In Ignacio, a small town of 800 on a South Ute Reservation near Durango, ICE plans to use the Southern Ute Indian Adult Detention Center. The Southern Ute Indian Tribe has a tribal detention center with a 55-person capacity, but it's unclear whether it's the same facility that ICE plans to use. The Southern Ute Tribe has not responded to a request for comment yet.