Hundreds of protesters gathered in the town of Hudson on Wednesday in a demonstration against plans to open a new immigrant detention center in the rural community 30 miles northeast of Denver. While those in attendance made their opposition to the facility clear, many wondered why the state’s leaders haven’t joined them in speaking out.
“Everybody who is in office, who’s supposed to use their power to stop this, should be doing just that — and if they’re not, we need to hold them accountable,” said Jenifer Montes, one of the organizers of the event.
The protest, held at the currently shuttered Hudson Correctional Facility, saw more than a mile of cars stretch down the dirt road leading to the prison, with some attendees coming from as far as Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, or as close as downtown Hudson. Many of the protesters also packed into a Hudson town hall meeting later that evening to voice their opposition to the facility during a public comment session that lasted more than an hour.
Montes, a member of the Immigrant Partnership Team in Weld County, as well as No Concentration Camps in Colorado, noted that Gov. Jared Polis had not made any comments regarding the Hudson facility specifically, save for a more general statement from his office in July confirming that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had not shared any plans regarding detention expansion and calling for more transparency from the agency.
When asked if the governor would like to update or expand on his previous comments, Polis’s Deputy Press Secretary Ally Sullivan reaffirmed the July statement in an email.
“We have received no communications about this facility from the administration, and there has been no transparency about future plans beyond what has been reported in the media. Governor Polis urges ICE to be transparent about their operations in our state,” wrote Sullivan.
Other notable state leaders who had not previously spoken on the issue include U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who’s running for governor, and Sen. John Hickenlooper, who’s currently running for reelection. Both are Democrats.
In a statement made to the Colorado Times Recorder on Friday, Attorney General Phil Weiser’s director of communications wrote: “Weiser was made aware of ICE plans to open an immigrant detention camp in Hudson. The AG is visiting with community members who have concerns about the proposed facility, and AG Weiser is firmly opposed to any ICE detention camps being opened in Colorado, whether in Hudson or anywhere in our state.”
Hickenlooper’s office responded to our request shortly after this article was published with a statement from the senator. Also included in the written response was confirmation from his office that he has been receiving updates from local officials and community leaders, and that he plans to vote against an upcoming bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security on the grounds that it “doesn’t go far enough to rein in ICE’s lawlessness.”
“In the past year, we’ve seen ICE ignore due process rights and actually terrorize our communities. That needs to end,” said Hickenlooper in a written statement. “Opening another large detention center in Colorado, like the proposed one in Hudson, takes a bad situation and makes it worse.”
Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO), who represents the district Hudson is located in, did not immediately respond to our request for comment, although he has previously spoken in support of the proposed detention facility. Sen. Bennet was also asked for comment, but has not yet responded. This article will be updated with any responses received.
State Sen. Julie Gonzales (D-Denver), who’s currently mounting a primary challenge against Hickenlooper, drove to Hudson from the Capitol to speak to the protesters outside the prison gates.
“All of us, collectively, together, need to force elected officials at the local, state, and federal levels to do better and to be good — to cause good trouble, in the words of John Lewis,” said Gonzales during her speech. “To be like Renee Nicole Good, a person who was simply obeying the Constitution, filming ICE, documenting their atrocities.”
In an interview following her speech, Gonzales spoke about the work she has already done from the statehouse to protect immigrants and resist ICE, including a bill she sponsored last year that limited local law enforcement cooperation with ICE.
“This year, I’m advancing legislation along with Senator Mike Weissman to ensure that if ICE tramples on the Constitution, there are remedies available to Coloradans in state court,” said Gonzales, referring to the recently introduced SB 26-005.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) first released a list of potential immigration detention sites in Colorado in July, which it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. In the months since, several protests have been held at the Hudson site, as well as at another proposed site for an ICE jail in Walsenburg.
Additional documents relating to the Hudson site were recently released by the ACLU on Jan. 8, and indicate that plans for the facility, referred to as the Big Horn Correctional Facility in the documents, are still underway. One of the released documents was a contract dated Dec. 1, 2025, between ICE and GEO Group, the Hudson facility’s current owner, though it had been redacted to hide the terms of the contract and pricing amount.
“This is probably our third or fourth protest here at the Hudson facility,” said Dana Miller, co-lead of Denver’s Immigrant Partnership Team, when asked how she’s seen resistance against the facility grow in recent months. “We end up having a lot more social media and TikTok and those kinds of things that are really helping to get out the word, but I think because of what’s been going on in Minneapolis, people are waking up and are going to be showing up in much bigger numbers than they have been in the past.”
Following the protest, dozens of people lined up to share their thoughts with the Hudson Town Council at their biweekly meeting that evening. While the night’s agenda did not include any official discussion of the ICE facility, the vast majority of the three-minute speeches made during the public comment section called on the town to resist further development of the detention center.
“Renee Good was not the first or the last person to be shot by ICE, but she was the first to be executed live,” said Stacey Graham to the town council during the meeting. “Your decision, and some of the other tools that you’ve been given, give you some power. Don’t bring violence to our backyard.”
Although over half of Americans disapprove of ICE activity, according to a recent YouGov poll, directly speaking out against the Trump administration’s sweeping mass deportation agenda could prove politically costly for Democratic officials, with the president having a history of retaliation against politicians who stand against him.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, both Democrats, are reportedly being investigated by the Justice Department over comments they made about ICE operations. Colorado has seen the U.S. Space Command relocated out of the state, and an important water bill vetoed in what many speculate is retribution for Gov. Polis refusing to transfer former Mesa County election official Tina Peters to federal custody.
While Montes understands why politicians might hesitate to speak out, she has no plans to stop calling on them to do more and hopes that more people join her.
“We have a letter-writing campaign through CIRC (Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition) right now that we started last week,” said Montes in an interview following the event. “We’ve already got over 2,000 letters sent out to all of the state representatives, telling them how we know that there are ways that they can stop this at the permitting stages if they really cared — it’s just that they choose not to.”
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Sen. Hickenlooper and his office.
