Federal immigration officials intend to triple Colorado’s immigrant detention capacity by opening as many as three new facilities in the state in the coming months, according to recent planning documents obtained by the Washington Post.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was already moving to reopen a closed correctional facility in Hudson, northeast of metro Denver. The Denver Post reported on the Hudson plan earlier this week based on what members of the state’s congressional delegation were told.
But the new documents indicate the agency is also targeting the reopening of another private prison in Walsenburg, in southern Colorado, and the addition of another 28 beds at the Southern Ute Detention Center in Ignacio, which is on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation, southeast of Durango.
The documents also say ICE plans to expand its capacity at its sole operating facility in the state, in Aurora, from a contracted cap of 1,360 beds to its maximum capacity of 1,530. That expansion, along with the opening of the Hudson and Walsenburg facilities, are both expected before the end of the year, according to the documents.
ICE is rapidly seeking to expand its detention capacity amid President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation push. By January, the Washington Post reported, its plans call for detention beds to reach 107,000 nationwide, which would be more than double the nearly 50,000 capacity of the immigration detention system when Trump began his second term.
The expansion and openings would mean Colorado would have the sixth-most ICE detention beds in the country, according to the Washington Post’s analysis.
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesman confirmed to the Washington Post that the planning documents were legitimate but said the list was outdated and that its contracts were “not accurate.” The list was last updated July 30, the Washington Post reported.
Spokespeople for ICE did not immediately return messages from The Denver Post on Friday.
If all three facilities — in Hudson, Ignacio and Walsenburg — were to open, it would represent a significant expansion not only of ICE’s current footprint but of its own previous plans. When it put out a request for potential detention sites earlier this year, the agency said it was looking to add up to 850 to 950 new beds in the state.
But now, the three possible new detention centers, coupled with more beds in the Aurora facility, would more than triple capacity from the current limit of 1,360 beds to just over 4,000. Both the Walsenburg and Hudson facilities were among several pitched to ICE in response to its request earlier this year.
The agency’s expansion was triggered by Congress, which last month passed a sweeping tax-and-spend bill that included $45 billion for ICE detention facilities.
A spokeswoman for the Southern Ute Tribe also could not immediately provide comment Friday morning.
The Walsenburg facility, formally the Huerfano County Correctional Facility, is owned by CoreCivic, a private prison company. Spokesman Ryan Gustin did not directly respond to questions about the Washington Post’s report, deferring questions to ICE.
“We stay in regular contact with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and all our government partners to understand their changing needs,” he wrote in an email, “and we work within their established procurement processes. It is our policy to respect these processes.”
Protesters planned to hold a protest outside of the Walsenburg prison Friday, opposing its rumored turn to an ICE facility.
In a May earnings call, Damon Hininger, CoreCivic’s CEO, said that ICE had toured its facilities in Colorado and indicated it was interested in both the company’s Walsenburg prison and its closed prison in Burlington. The company had advertised detention officer jobs on LinkedIn for its Walsenburg prison, contingent on the company winning a contract there. That job posting is no longer available, though maintenance positions have been posted for both prisons.
“I think having beds out West — that are not all the way over to the coast in California — where they could service the needs of Salt Lake and Denver and even some of the needs out of Wyoming, Montana, makes our Kit Carson and our Huerfano facilities very attractive to ICE,” Hininger said.
The call was previously reported by Colorado Public Radio.
The Hudson facility is owned by the GEO Group, which runs the Aurora detention center. The company did not return messages seeking comment earlier this week.
It’s unclear if the list of planned new facilities will grow. On an earnings call last week, Pablo Paez, the GEO Group’s executive vice president for corporate relations, said the company was in talks with ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service to activate several other sites nationally, including the Cheyenne Mountain Reentry Center in Colorado Springs.
That facility was also on the list of potential sites submitted to ICE for consideration earlier this year.
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