Just west of downtown Glenwood Springs, perched between Midland Avenue and Interstate 70, a strip mall houses a gym, a chiropractor’s office, a tax accountant, and on the far end of the building, one less-common tenant: an ICE detention facility, one of at least nine such secretive facilities in the state.
Between January and October of last year, 2,831 individuals were held in at least one of the nine facilities. The oldest was 91 years old; the youngest was a 1-year-old girl. Many detainees were held for weeks at a time in rooms without beds, well in excess of the agency’s own internal rules for the small detention facilities, most of which are tucked into strip malls and industrial parks around the state.
On the official detention facilities page of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s website, the agency lists only one facility in Colorado: the Aurora Detention Center managed by the GEO Group. In addition to the GEO facility, there have been headlines in recent months about ICE’s desire to open two new detention facilities in the state, one in Hudson and the other in Walsenburg.
Data obtained by the Deportation Data Project via Freedom of Information Act request, and analyzed by the Colorado Times Recorder, though, shows that the agency’s footprint of detention facilities in Colorado is much wider than previously thought, including small, nondescript holding facilities like the one in a strip mall in Glenwood Springs. While some of these locations are listed in agency documentation as field offices or sub-offices, federal data reveals in no uncertain terms that they double as detention facilities, housing thousands of detained Coloradans in the last year alone.
We analyzed data covering arrests, daily facility headcounts, and tens of thousands of entries detailing individual stays in detention. In the data, each hold room is identified by a unique 7-letter identifier — DENHOLD for Denver, PUEHOLD for Pueblo, and so on. We have included these identifiers throughout the piece to help readers locate Colorado facilities in the original data. Due to ongoing FOIA litigation, the available data only covers agency operations until October 2025, giving no insight into any possible changes in detention trends over the last four months.
SEE MORE: National datasets, including those used in this investigation, can be viewed or downloaded from the Deportation Data Project’s website
Hold rooms, as the agency calls the small, tucked-away detention facilities, are forbidden from containing “bunks, cots, beds” or other sleeping apparatuses, according to ICE documentation. They consist mainly of a bench, some access to potable water, and a drain in the floor. Many do not have toilets.
Hold rooms have been used by the agency since at least 2011 as temporary locations for detainees en route to formal detention centers. Last year, the Trump administration dramatically expanded both the number of hold rooms and the length of time detainees are held in them, part of a 91% increase in detention facilities nationwide.
Though the agency’s own rules say that detainees may not be kept in hold rooms for more than 72 hours, many have remained in the facilities for weeks at a time. Here in Colorado, at least one detainee was kept in a hold room for 39 days. The rules also state that no unaccompanied minors, no women with children, and no adults over 70 may be placed in hold rooms. ICE has broken those rules as well.
CTR reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s press office for comment and with a list of questions regarding this investigation, including inquiries about the expansion of hold rooms and the extended periods of time for which detainees are being kept in them. ICE has not responded.
Parts of this data have been reported before, but never this granularly, and never with a focus on Colorado. Last October, when the Deportation Data Project released their latest datasets, both the Guardian and CNN reported on the expanded use of hold rooms under the Trump administration, as well as the agency’s routine violation of its own rules regarding detention time. A January 2026 report from the American Immigration Council was also instructive in this reporting. Outside of those sources, little else has been reported about this archipelago of hidden detention facilities.
Sources in the immigrant rights and legal communities were also critical in uncovering and understanding this story. Because of the extraordinary sensitivity of the work many are engaged in, however, we have not quoted any sources on-record, choosing to let the data speak for itself.
As ICE negotiates for additional facilities in Colorado, while facing blowback from members of the state’s congressional delegation, the hold room data analyzed by the Colorado Times Recorder reveals the true extent of immigration enforcement actions in Colorado.
In Glenwood Springs, the story is out: local activist groups including the Garfield County Democratic Party learned months ago that prisoners were being held in the strip mall, and have staged regular protests at the location in recent weeks. In other corners of the state, though, from Craig to Pueblo, the facilities – and the people confined within them – remain hidden in plain sight.
ICE’s use of hold rooms did not begin with the Trump administration, but the nature of their use changed dramatically last June. Before the June 24, 2025 memo, official agency rules only permitted detainees to be kept in hold rooms for up to 12 hours. After the memo, the limit was extended to 72 hours, with even that limit being routinely exceeded. Last year, the number of people held in ICE custody on any given day increased by more than 75%, with hold rooms playing a crucial role in the ballooning detention system.
The hold rooms also play a role in the overwhelming increase of detainees without criminal records – a stat which, per the American Immigration Council, increased by 2,450% last year alone. Of the 73 detainees held at the Glenwood Springs hold room (GSCHOLD) between January and October 2025, 45% had no criminal record. Of the 55% of detainees with criminal records who passed through the hold room, most were tagged with driving under the influence or other traffic offenses. Only 17% of the detainees held in Glenwood Springs last year had violent criminal records, according to the Times Recorder’s analysis of the federal data.
The Glenwood Springs hold room at 100 Midland Avenue, though, is one of the least-utilized in the state.
Just down the interstate, the Grand Junction hold room (GJCHOLD) held nearly four times as many people as the Glenwood Springs facility between January and October of last year, making it the busiest of the rooms outside of the Front Range. Of the 213 detainees held in Grand Junction, only 21 were women. 299 of the 311 were ultimately transferred to the GEO facility in Aurora as their next step in the machinery of incarceration and deportation.
The other hold rooms tucked away from the Front Range are located in Alamosa, Craig, and Durango. During the time period covered by the data set, 53 individuals were detained at the Alamosa hold room, 66 were held in Craig, and 33 were held at the Durango facility (DURHOLD), located at 32 Sheppard Drive, including members of the Solano family whose story made news last year. That incident led to a protest outside the facility.
The Craig facility (CRGHOLD) is housed in an ICE Enforcement & Removal Operations (ERO) field office at 466 Tucker Street. Google Street View shows the building as a nondescript blue warehouse with a fence surrounding the back half of the property. Even in the low-resolution Street View images, razor wire can be seen running along the top of the fence, the only indication of its secondary role as a facility for housing prisoners. In Alamosa, the secretive hold room (ALMHOLD) is also located in a field office. Like in Craig, the field office at 1921 State Street in Alamosa is nondescript, the back half fenced-in and hemmed with three rows of razor or barbed wire.
Though comprehensive, the dataset analyzed by the Colorado Times Recorder is not without its mysteries. The Denver hold room (DENHOLD), for instance, is no longer located at the address the data set provides for it. We visited and found that the listed location, a strip mall in Montbello behind a 7-Eleven, now holds a furniture store, and has for about two years, according to an employee. Despite no longer being in that location, data shows the Denver hold room operating all the way through October of last year. That to say, the facility exists, somewhere, but it’s not clear exactly where.
The dataset also lists an ICE facility – but not specifically a hold room – located at 777 Bannock Street in Denver, an address which has been occupied by Denver Health for more than a century. When reached for comment, a Denver Health spokesperson noted that the hospital had previously been made aware of their location’s presence in the data, but claimed that there are no ICE operations at the hospital. The data verifies that claim: the address is listed as containing an agency facility, but there are no detention stays attached to the address, meaning no one is listed as ever having been held there. The hospital’s spokesperson speculated that Denver Health’s role as a hospital of last resort could mean that, at some point in the past, they may have had some deal to receive patients from detention facilities in emergency situations, but they were not aware of any specific arrangements.
Despite those oddities about the agency’s Denver-area facilities, much of the data pertaining to detentions in the city is perfectly clear.
Between January and October 2025, 1,398 detainees made their way through the Denver hold room – wherever it is located – for various periods of time, including both children and the elderly. According to the data, at least 39 children aged nine or younger were held at the facility last year. The youngest detainee held at the Denver hold room during the time period covered by the data was a one-year-old girl. Her entry status was listed as “not applicable,” possibly on account of having been born in the country. On July 30, 2025, she was transported to the ICE facility in Dilley, Texas where hundreds of children are being held.
Of those on the other end of life who were held at the Denver hold room last year, the oldest was a 91-year-old man. He was ultimately transported from the Denver hold room to the soft-sided processing facility at Fort Bliss – a tent city in the Texas desert which has experienced a number of detainee deaths in the last two months.
738, or 53%, of the Denver hold room’s total detainees covered by the data set were marked with a tag reading “Not an Aggravated Felon,” and only 410 of the detainees, or just 29%, actually had a “most serious charge” listed. Many charges in that column were for traffic offenses, trespassing, and DUI.
At least three detainees who came through the Denver hold room last year may have been deported to CECOT, the sprawling prison complex in El Salvador which has been at the center of a number of fights between the Trump administration and the courts. While most detainees listed as having been deported to El Salvador also had Salvadoran citizenship, three of the men sent to the Central American nation had Venezuelan citizenship – a detail which aligns with the administration sending 250 Venezuelans to CECOT last year. The American Immigration Council referred to that action as “one of the worst abuses of government power in generations.”
The data lists a nation of citizenship for each detainee. The column labeled “ethnicity,” however, only has two options: “Hispanic Origin” and “Not of Hispanic Origin.”
Last summer, two men were each held at the Denver hold room for more than a month. One, a 29-year-old Nicaraguan man, was held in the facility for 39 days, from July 19 to August 27. The other man, a 32-year-old also from Nicaragua, was held from July 22 to August 27, a total of 36 days in the room.
The Colorado Springs hold room (CSDHOLD) is located in the Pueblo Bank & Trust building at 415 East Pikes Peak Avenue, where a Department of Homeland Security Investigations office occupies much of the second floor. We visited that location as well, which bears no external signage and no mention of Homeland Security on the interior building directory, and found the office, including a small fenced-in parking area and what appear to be federal vehicles. According to the data, the Colorado Springs HSI hold room temporarily housed 154 people at different times between January and October 2025. Most were transferred to the GEO facility within a day, but at least one was held at the Pikes Peak Avenue location for three days.
Further south, the Pueblo hold room (PUEHOLD) saw 315 occupants during the time period, the third-busiest hold room in the state after Denver. Located inside the ICE substation at 935 State Highway 67 on a bleak stretch of road next to the Fremont County airport, the Pueblo hold room was the site of at least three detentions well in excess of the 72-hour limit.
On April 25, a 42-year-old man was taken to the Pueblo hold room. He was released 12 days later on May 7. Three weeks later, on May 29, a 25-year-old man was brought to the hold room, where he was held until June 12, a 14 day stay. The longest hold at the Pueblo facility during the time covered by the data was 19 days, served by a 27-year-old man from April 8 to April 27 before being transferred to the GEO facility. All of these extended stays happened well in advance of the agency memo increasing the allowed detention time from 12 hours to 72 hours.
North of Denver, the Frederick hold room (FRDHOLD) placed second among Colorado hold rooms in number of detainees between January and October 2025, at 526. Despite that number, the facility at 3770 Puritan Way lacks the external signs of security found at many of the other hold rooms. Last July and August, a 31-year-old man was held at the facility for 34 days, according to the data. The youngest detainees held in Frederick during the time period were two 6-year-olds – one boy, and one girl. The oldest was a 71-year-old Chinese man with no apparent criminal record.
The largest ICE facility in the state, and the agency’s only declared Colorado detention facility, is the GEO Group facility just south of I-70 in Aurora, referred to in ICE data as the Denver Contract Detention Facility (Aurora) or DENICDF. Between January and October of last year, more than 13,000 individual stays were recorded at the facility.
ICE, though, claims it needs more beds in Colorado, and is in the process of attempting to open two new mega-facilities like the Aurora location. In January, the ACLU of Colorado obtained documents showing a contract between the Trump administration and the GEO Group to open a detention holding facility in Hudson, Colorado, located about 30 miles northeast of Denver in Weld County. The new detention center is intended to occupy the defunct Hudson Correctional Facility in the town, a 1,200-bed prison which operated for only five years before closing in 2014. ICE now calls it the Big Horn Correctional Facility.
A separate facility, a 752-bed former prison in Walsenburg, south of Pueblo, is also the intended site of a new immigrant detention center. If plans for that facility come to fruition, ICE intends to more than double the number of beds in the 200,000 square foot jail. A shortlist obtained by the ACLU lists four other possible locations for future facilities.
ICE has other facilities in the state as well, which show up in the data, like the agency’s official Denver field office, located in Centennial. Other facilities are listed as “IGSA” or inter-governmental services agreement locations, which include locations like the Mesa and Teller County jails.
Last week, three Democratic members of Colorado’s congressional delegation challenged the agency on their plans for expansion in the state. Rep. Brittany Pettersen was joined by Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper in signing a letter urging ICE to “immediately abandon” plans for new Colorado facilities.
Pettersen, for her part, said that there was “not a chance in hell we’re going to sit back and allow this rogue, lawless agency to expand their despicable operations in Colorado.”
“My stomach is sick thinking about the families being ripped apart and the kids forced to endure a lifetime of trauma and heartbreak from losing their parents,” she said. “A new ICE facility in Colorado won’t make us safer – especially without guardrails to ensure basic, humane treatment of those at the facility. If DHS refuses to reverse course, we will continue to fight back against their unlawful practices and show up to conduct our duty to ensure oversight and accountability.”
Even before the existence and widespread use of Colorado’s nine ICE hold rooms was reported, the three Democrats expressed concern in their letter that the agency was “skirt[ing] congressional oversight of existing facilities.”
The information obtained by the Deportation Data Project, and the Colorado Times Recorder’s analysis of it, validates that concern: in a ten-month span of 2025, more than 3,000 Coloradans were held in one or more of at least nine unaccountable, off-the-map detention facilities, in addition to the one facility which has already been the source of oversight concerns. Many were held well in excess of the agency’s own rules regarding detention.
Rather than seeking to open their second and third Colorado detention facilities, the planned ICE facilities in Hudson and Walsenburg would be the agency’s 11th and 12th in the state. It is unclear whether anyone in an oversight role has ever been made aware of the other nine.
Curious about the data? Check out the Deportation Data Project’s introductory webinar to learn how to sort through millions of rows of data yourself.
CORRECTION 3/10: The number of detainees at the Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, and Pueblo hold rooms between January and October 2025 was initially reported inaccurately, and the number for each location has been corrected in this story.
