Several members of Colorado’s congressional delegation sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security and ICE leadership Tuesday opposing a proposed ICE detention center in Weld County.
Rep. Brittany Pettersen, along with Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, expressed their concern about the facility and requested more clarity from DHS on their decision to authorize it.
“As ICE agents continue to terrorize our communities, illegally detain U.S. citizens, and skirt congressional oversight of existing facilities, we strongly oppose the expansion of ICE detention beds in Colorado,” wrote the officials in their letter.
The Big Horn Correctional Facility, as it has been referred to in documents obtained by the ACLU in January, would be located just outside of the town of Hudson in the no-longer-operational Hudson Correctional Facility. The prison housed 1,200 inmates before it shut down in 2014 and is now owned by the Highlands REIT, a real estate company, which may have leased the facility to ICE. The private prison company GEO Group was contracted on Dec. 1 to run the proposed facility.
Hudson is one of several locations that are being considered for detention centers in the state, with additional sites in Walsenburg and Ignacio. ICE currently operates one detention facility in Colorado, which can hold around 1,500 people, in Aurora. The Hudson facility would increase that number to 2,700 statewide, according to the letter sent by Colorado officials.
“We have no new detention centers to announce in Hudson, Colorado at this time,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to Axios Denver today.
Here are the stances of Colorado’s statewide or congressional officeholders who’ve spoken on the Hudson facility so far.
Gov. Jared Polis, D
“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 Deputy Press Secretary Ally Sullivan on Jan. 23 in response to our request.
Sen. Michael Bennet, D
Bennet was a signatory on the Feb. 24 letter to DHS and ICE leadership.
Sen. John Hickenlooper, D
“In the past year, we’ve seen ICE ignore due process rights and actually terrorize our communities. That needs to end. Opening another large detention center in Colorado, like the proposed one in Hudson, takes a bad situation and makes it worse,” said Hickenlooper in a written response to our Jan. 23 request.
Attorney General Phil Weiser, D
“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,” said Attorney General Phil Weiser’s director of communications in response to our Jan. 23 request.
Rep. Gabe Evans, R
Evans, who represents the 8th congressional district where Hudson is located, has previously spoken in support of the proposed detention facility, although he did not respond to our Jan. 23 request for comment. Asked on a conservative radio show this summer what he thought of having an ICE detention facility “right near your backyard” in the town of Hudson, Evans responded that “we’ve got to have the facilities to be able to, when we find these people, detain them and not do what the Biden administration did, which was just turn them loose back into the community with the court date and hope they show up.”
Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D
Pettersen was a signatory on the Feb. 24 letter to DHS and ICE leadership.
