NEW YORK — New documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Colorado reveal further details about Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) plans to expand ICE detention facilities in Colorado.
The records, obtained as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by the ACLU and ACLU of Colorado in April 2025, identify facilities under consideration as potential ICE detention sites in response to a Request for Information issued by ICE for facilities in the Denver area.
The documents are released on the heels of congressional passage of a reconciliation bill that has allocated $45 billion to ICE to expand its immigration detention infrastructure nationwide. This amount is larger than the budget for the entire federal prison system and is estimated to allow for the detention of over 100,000 people daily.
“ICE’s planned expansion of immigration detention will only serve to endanger the lives of immigrants held in dangerous and inhumane conditions, while enriching prison profiteers,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “ICE’s ability to expand immigration detention has been supercharged by recent congressional appropriations, placing immigrants in our communities at even greater risk.”
The 115 pages disclosed by ICE identify six potential locations for ICE detention facilities in Colorado and also provide information regarding the history of facility use; available transport; and proximity to local hospitals, immigration courts, and legal services. Notably, many of these facilities have not been operational for several years. The facilities include:
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Huerfano County Correctional Center in Walsenburg, owned by CoreCivic, a private prison corporation. The facility formerly held Colorado and Arizona state prisoners, but closed in 2010, and has a capacity to hold 752 people.
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Cheyenne Mountain Center in Colorado Springs, owned by the GEO Group, Inc., a private prison corporation. GEO lost its contract with the facility, leading to its closure in March 2020.
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Hudson Correctional Facility in Hudson, owned by real estate investment trust Highlands REIT. This facility is a prison formerly leased to GEO, which incarcerated Alaska state prisoners under contract, and was shut down in 2014.
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The Baptiste Migrant Detention Facility in La Junta, owned by the Baptiste Group, formerly a Boys’ Ranch facility last used in 2023. The Baptiste Group has operated other migrant children’s facilities, including one at Homestead, Florida. In 2021, Tennessee suspended the Baptiste Group’s license due to arrests of workers on charges of sexual battery and child abuse at a migrant children’s facility.
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The Colorado Springs Migrant Detention Facility in Colorado Springs, also owned by the Baptiste Group, is a former skilled nursing facility.
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Apex Site Services, a provider of temporary structures and modular buildings, proposed a soft-sided detention facility in Walsenberg, and BHPE LLC (Begini Howard Private Equity), a private equity firm, also submitted proposals.
“Current immigration detention sites, including the GEO detention facility in Aurora, are already notorious for their inhumane conditions, including persistent medical negligence, inadequate nutrition, and routine rights violations,” said Tim Macdonald, legal director at ACLU of Colorado. “It is unconscionable to go on to expand this cruel, for-profit detention machine.”
These FOIA documents follow several other similar disclosures released by ICE as the result of the ACLU’s litigation that detail proposals to expand immigration detention nationwide.
In 2019, ACLU of Colorado released “Cashing in on Cruelty,” a report detailing death, abuse, and neglect at Aurora Contract Detention Facility, operated by the GEO Group, Inc. In 2024, the family of Melvin Ariel Calero Mendoza, a 39-year-old Nicaraguan asylum seeker, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the facility and its medical director. The lawsuit alleged the facility failed to diagnose and treat a blood clot in Mendoza’s leg.
As the ACLU has previously documented, the federal government’s immigration detention system overwhelmingly relies on private prison corporations.
The FOIA documents are available here.
