New ICE Expansion Documents Released as a Result of ACLU of Colorado Public Records Lawsuit Reveal Additional Plans for Expanded Detention in Colorado 

DENVER — New heavily redacted documents obtained by the ACLU of Colorado reveal new information about Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) plans to expand immigrant detention capacity in Colorado.

The 306 pages of records, obtained after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by ACLU of Colorado in September 2025, show that ICE is now calling the Hudson Correctional Facility, located in Hudson, Colo. and long identified as a potential new immigrant detention facility, the Big Horn Correctional Facility. Most additional details, including operation timelines and contracts, however, have been redacted or withheld so far. Other pieces of information, including correspondence with contractors like facility owner Highlands REIT and operator The GEO Group, Inc., were never provided to ACLU of Colorado.

“While we have forced ICE to finally give us and the public some additional documents, the agency still resists any meaningful transparency into its actions. They continue to try to keep the public in the dark about their expanded detention plans and operate in the shadows with virtually no oversight,” said Tim Macdonald, ACLU of Colorado legal director. “As ICE escalates its aggression across Colorado and the country, we must demand more answers, not less. We must have more transparency into how they plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to imprison more people who have not been convicted of any crime.”

“The documents we received from ICE fail to answer fundamental questions about the agency’s planned expansion for the Denver field office,” said Scott Medlock, ACLU of Colorado senior staff attorney. “With Congress allocating unprecedented resources and funding to ICE and DHS, the public deserves to know how the federal government intends to use this infusion of money.”

The records disclosed by ICE primarily include internal emails, agency approvals, and excerpts of what may be contracts with private vendors, with much of the correspondence taking place in the spring and summer of 2025. The information that can be accessed in these heavily redacted documents include:

• ICE issued a letter contract for The GEO Group for $39,042,069 for six months of services for the Hudson facility. ICE officials stated that they anticipated additional approvals for the Hudson facility “this afternoon” on June 6, 2025.

• ICE issued a letter contract for The GEO Group dated Dec. 1, 2025, for the Hudson facility, with all terms and pricing amounts redacted.

• ICE redacted more than 100 pages of documents from late August 2025 purporting to justify why they should award a sole source contract to the GEO Group for the Hudson facility without full and open competition.

• An additional contract for the Southern Ute Indian Adult Detention Center, valued at less than $100,000, was submitted for DHS approval in August 2025. No details about whether the proposal was approved could be located in the documents.

• A spreadsheet from February 6, 2025, purports to show that the Huerfano County Correctional Facility in Walsenberg, Colo. is “funded.” No additional details could be located in the documents.

• Correspondence from Fall 2025 alludes to ramp-up plans for the Big Horn facility.

ACLU of Colorado lawyers caution that the incomplete information makes it difficult to make any definitive conclusions about the agency’s expansion plans in Colorado. Nonetheless, the Trump administration continues to try to operate without public transparency and is prioritizing opening new detention facilities in Colorado.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and ACLU of Colorado obtained documents regarding a request for information to expand immigration detention capacity in Colorado and Wyoming in July 2025. These documents came after ACLU and ACLU of Colorado filed a first FOIA lawsuit in April 2025. ACLU of Colorado lawyers pushed the agency for more information; ICE provided less-redacted documents in August 2025, and then again in November and December 2025. These documents revealed that the agency was likely to reopen the Hudson facility and provided more details about the long-closed private prison. They also disclosed other sites under consideration, including the Huerfano County Correctional Facility, the Cheyenne Mountain Center and Colorado Springs Migrant Detention Facility in Colorado Springs, and the Baptiste Migrant Detention Facility in La Junta, in addition to several soft-sided facilities across the state.