Before ICE agents killed Renee Good and Alex Peretti in Minneapolis this past January, most people in the bustling mountain town of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, were not even aware that an ICE field office and temporary detention center had been operating in their community for over 20 years.
Just eight months later, the eyes of the state and even the nation were on Glenwood Springs this past Thursday as the City Council voted 6 to 1 to begin legal enforcement actions against ICE’s private landlord JG Housing Solutions LLC. ICE has continued to operate a detention center after its Special Use Permit (SUP) was revoked by the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission in a late April decision.
That’s a good story, and it’s largely the one the politicians and media have latched on to. It has a beginning, middle, and end, but like all struggles against systems of injustice, it’s never that linear.
“For many of us, this started in January after Renee Good and Alex Pretti were murdered; people here were grieving and angry, and instead of stopping there, they started asking questions. Ordinary people with jobs and kids teaching themselves land use code at their kitchen tables.” Ashley Stahl explained in a public comment at the Council’s hearing last Thursday. Stahl was the first to speak, which was fitting; Stahl has been bringing this issue to council for months.
“I want to be honest … his building was never a secret, not to everyone. Our immigrant neighbors have known exactly what happens at 100 Midland for twenty years, because it was their brothers and mothers and cousins who were taken through that door never to come home again.” Stahl continued.
Stahl said that “listening” to impacted community members was crucial in learning about and exposing the ICE detention facility nestled into the far end of an unassuming shopping center.
This issue didn’t come to a head as a byproduct of the benign machinations of municipal governance working as it should. This issue was brought kicking and screaming into the light of day by dozens of local activists who refused to take ‘no,’ as an answer from the city of Glenwood Springs.
While the question that was before council this past Thursday was fairly straightforward, the path the people have led the city down to get to this historic decision has been anything but.
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The Glenwood Springs facility is just one of a network of 170 such facilities across the nation that had largely gone unnoticed, often tucked away, unsigned in strip malls and industrial parks.
The people held in these ICE “hold rooms” often do not have access to a phone to call lawyers or families, medical care, adequate food or even a place to lie down.
“They put us in a cell. There was no natural light. There was no air. There was no rest. They gave us food and water, and that was it. Every time I asked what would happen to my children, or if they could eat something, they would hit me. They told me I didn’t matter. They told me my children didn’t matter,” said Fernando Jaramillo-Salon in a statement put out by Compañeros: Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center. Jaramillo-Salon and his two children, ages 12 and 15 at the time, endured thirty-six hours of these conditions at the ICE hold room in Durango, Colorado.
“We were tortured. We didn’t see the light of the sun. The three of us were confined in a tiny cell, without [enough] food, and with our hands, waist, and feet chained. We were devastated,” he said.
Jaramillo-Salon and his children were detained on their way to school on October 27. The community in the Four Corners region mobilized within hours and attempted to prevent ICE from removing the Salon family from their community by blocking the entrance to the facility.
The blockade ended the next day in pepper spray, rubber bullets, and charges for an ICE agent who allegedly placed a woman into a chokehold barred by Colorado law. The Jaramillo-Salon family was then transported to an ICE facility in Dilly, Texas.
“But when we were finally taken out and saw everyone supporting us out there, we felt hopeful. That gave me strength. From the black car, I tried to thank everyone, but I don’t think anyone saw us. I’m very grateful to every person who was there,” said Jaramillo-Salon. “I saw many people were hurt.”
Conditions are not any better in the Glenwood Springs facility.
“This was the third case that I have spoken to … where otherwise healthy people that never really knew they had health issues, when they are held in the [Glenwood Springs] detention facility, have medical emergencies that have warranted an EMT or Paramedic response,” said Claire Noone, a local immigration lawyer.
The July 24 medical incident that Noone was describing finally proved to the city that ICE was continuing to use the ‘hold room’ despite the revocation of the SUP.
From October of 2022 to March of 2026, 149 people have been held in the Glenwood Springs hold facility, all but seventeen of those since Trump took office, according to the most current data from the Deportation Data Project. From January to October of 2025, 2,831people passed through one of nine of these facilities in operation throughout Colorado.
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Glenwood Springs is known for its mineral hot springs and white-water rafting, and provides much of the workforce for the mega-resorts of Aspen and Vail. Glenwood Springs’ ten thousand residents live between steep, brushy mountains, sharing limited valley floor space with I-70 and the Colorado River. Roughly 31% of Glenwood Springs is Latino,and the town leans Democrat while situated in a county that leans Republican.
While governmental officials, immigration lawyers, impacted communities, and advocates and allies knew what was happening quietly at 100 Midland, the broader public was largely unaware.
Way back in June, Mountain Action Indivisible, a progressive advocacy group, held a small vigil utilizing a pedestrian bridge over a busy bypass to draw attention to the adjacent ICE hold room and facility.
Then, in the wake of the ICE killing of Alex Pretti, on January 24, an impromptu memorial was set up on a fence between a public walking trail and the ICE facility while people rallied on the same bridge. The memorial was promptly torn down.
This peaceful action led to a threatening letter from a local attorney, Sherry Caloia, representing the HOA for the 100 Midland Center, which includes the ICE Field Office, along with a Food Bank, a Social Security office, a dental clinic, and more.
Just a few days later, the Garfield County Democrats held another vigil honoring Pretti and Good, at the same bridge adjacent to the ICE facility. This time, the peaceful event was met by private security guards blocking a public easement, which prevented elderly and disabled folks from participating in the event.
“This told me … that people were watching our emails (Garfield Colorado Democratic Party) and Mountain Action Indivisible’s emails,” said Mae Gray, Co-Chair of the Garfield County Democratic Party.
Mae’s suspicions would be confirmed months later in an email obtained through a follow-up Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request. A June 2026 email from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Sarah R. Vasquez alerted Glenwood Springs Police Sergeant Michael Prough, to a community vigil planned near the ICE facility, which was shared on Facebook by Mountain Action Indivisible.
The outsized response also raised Noone’s eyebrows. “I first looked the property up on the assessor’s website, then requested the property file,” explained Noone. “They [City of Glenwood Springs] responded, ‘I’m sorry we don’t have any records for this property because it’s owned by the FBI.’”
“I’m looking at the assessor’s website now; it’s owned by JG Housing Solutions,” Noone replied. Eventually, the city came back to Noone with a file on the property that raised more questions than it answered.
The temporary occupancy certificate had expired in 2005. Noone then asked to see the current occupancy certificate and was told that the one from 2004 was the only one in the file.
Noone and others were stunned; not only had this under-the-radar federal detention center been operating in their community, but it had been operating for over 20 years with a Certificate of Occupancy. The formal legal document that verifies the structure strictly complies with the specific building codes, zoning laws, and safety standards required to house individuals under physical restraint or security. s. The city stated that it was a clerical error.
“This isn’t just an oopsie daisy … this is a 20-year gap, through several different professional administrations,” said Noone. “If we would have stopped there and listened to authority, we would have walked away, but we knew better. Matching our intuitions and what impacted communities were telling us with official records anyone can [request] was the magic combination.”
This unleashed a flurry of follow-up CORA requests as the people of Glenwood Springs’ questions continued to be met with denials, half-truths, and stonewalling by the city.
Unfazed, community members dug into the details, watched the facility, asked questions, and then, most importantly, published what they found along with multi-faceted calls to action, via an anonymous link tree.
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Stahl was the first to raise the issues publicly, at a February 19 City Council meeting: “I’m here to publicly report a major public safety violation at 100 Midland Ave. … the ICE facility,” she said.
Her concerns were dismissed by the city staff.
Since then, residents have been regularly utilizing public comments as a tool to educate the Council, community, and the media while providing a counter-narrative to the city administration’s rationales.
“At some points, I genuinely felt hopeless about it, and all we could do was keep trying– keep gathering info– keep trying to protect people,” said Zodie Woolsey. “There were dozens of us who were going to city council meetings, yelling and begging them to listen.”
According to people involved in this community effort, a major turning point was when Colorado Times Recorder’s Logan Davis, acting on a tip from a local, exposed the little-known network of nine such ICE hold rooms across Colorado.
Soon, Colorado Congressman Joe Neguse was knocking on the door of the Glenwood Facility asking to do an inspection. Thirty-one Colorado lawmakers sent a letter to Kristi Noem, then Secretary of Homeland Security.
The city scrambled to help get the facility inspected and rush through a certificate of occupancy.
The HOA sent out a Cease and Desist letter, hoping to silence the locals speaking out. It didn’t work.
Ultimately, it was the same data set that informed Davis’ reporting that finally gave the people the information they needed to challenge ICE’s special use permit for the ‘hold room.’
Back in the 2000s and early 2010s, when these regional ICE facilities and hold rooms were created, ICE’s policy limited detentions to just 12 hours, and that 24-hour hold limit was codified into the SUP issued by the City of Glenwood Springs.
ICE has since extended the maximum time someone can be held in a ‘hold room’ from 12 to 72 hours, in a June 2025, memo. Additionally, data curated by the non-profit Deportation Data Project, and obtained via FOIA requests from ICE, showed conclusively that at least eight people were held at the Glenwood Springs facility in 2025, longer than the 12 hours allowed by the SUP issued by the city.
The undeniable violation of the SUP was brought to city officials and triggered a notice of violation, which was sent out in March, and a Planning and Zoning hearing set for late April.
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On April 28, residents packed the meeting room, overflow room, and the hallways of city hall. This was not an average Planning and Zoning meeting: State Rep. Elizabeth Velasco sent a letter urging revocation, then candidate for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional district, Alex Kelloff, spoke, and even a quartet of singing grannies sang their way into the public record.
During the hearing, it became obvious that the people came far more prepared than the city administrators did.
At one point, a commissioner asked the head of economic development, Trent Hyatt, for the dimensions of the cells. He admitted he didn’t know the dimensions. A few minutes later, local resident Zodie Woolsey spoke, and brought to the podium a to-scale 3D-printed model of the facility based on the blueprints in the city’s own files.
“That moment clarified something important in the room. Getting this right matters deeply to our community, and we put in the work to become experts on this. A title does not automatically make someone an authority,” Noone said.
Neither ICE nor their landlord attended the hearing or provided a response.
The P&Z commission – despite warnings by City Attorney Karl Hanlon’s that enforcement would be difficult, even making the federal government’s “supremacy clause’ arguments – voted 5 to 1 to revoke the SUP, based on changes in ICE policy and documented holds that exceeded twelve hours.
After the decision, the city issued a formal notice of decision. When the appeal window closed on May 5, the case was closed, and the property lost any authority to be used as a detention facility.
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The City did not take immediate enforcement action.
According to City Attorney Hanlon, the city was waiting for hard evidence that the facility was still being used as a detention center before starting enforcement actions.
That evidence came on July 24, when a man being detained overnight at the now unpermitted ICE detention center had a medical emergency and was transferred via ambulance to the local hospital.
The evidence forced the city of Glenwood Springs to take action.
A hearing was set for August 6, and City Attorney Hanlon, who had long cautioned against enforcing local land-use code against the ICE facility, wrote a memo to council recommending the city file suit against the federal government in “federal court to avoid the additional expenses of filing in state court and having the case removed to federal court.”
“Staff is recommending moving forward with filing suit at this time,” the memo continued, “attempting to enforce the City’s local regulations until a court tells us we can’t is good policy.”
With city staff and the people making the same ask, the vote at the meeting was almost a foregone conclusion, but people still packed the hearing room. Dozens of informed, passionate people rose to speak — many of them having sharpened their rhetoric and oratory skills, through months of rising to speak truth to power.
Prolonged cheers and applause echoed as the vote went 6 to 1 to enforce.
The Department of Homeland Security did issue a statement, which admits to continued use of the hold room. “This is FALSE. ICE is not holding detainees for more than 12 hours at the facility in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. This is a processing facility, not a detention facility.”
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Something had fundamentally changed in those Council chambers over the past eight months. The council was no longer looking at a room of passive taxpayers, voters, and concerned residents hoping to be heard, but rather a room full of people who will no longer take an official no or trust us at face value again.
The Glenwood Springs Council was, in fact, now looking out at an army of minor CORA experts, land-use buffs, investigators, advocates, political strategists, confirmers, letter writers, and lobbyists, largely self-trained because no one else was going to do it.
“The community earned this. People here filed the records requests, showed up meeting after meeting, and kept pushing when they were told nothing could be done. Last night the city chose to come on board, and we’re glad to have them,” said Stahl, who was the first to rise and speak back in February. “There’s a front line wherever we decide there’s going to be one. A rural Colorado mountain town of ten thousand people just decided there’s one here. I have never been prouder of this community.”
“While it’s been frustrating, even maddening, it’s also really beautiful,” said Noone, of the circuitous route it has taken to get to this point. “This shows what’s possible when a community actually shows up and follows the path of justice that has its own momentum and power.”
After making it this far, the community that has come together to expose this hold room and the quiet injustices that occur there is going to continue the fight.
“Our hope is that this does not end with us. We want what happened here to inspire other counties and communities across Colorado to recognize the power they have to stand up, demand accountability and take action,” said Mae Gray of the Garfield County Democratic Party. “When one community finds the courage to stand up, it reminds others that they can too.”
While the city’s focus has been the SUP and the land use code, questions under the building code and fire code remain unanswered. Just days before the August 6 victory, Noone, in an individual capacity, filed a formal complaint alleging building violations at the facility that are separate from the Special Use Permit.
The 15-page complaint alleges multiple building code violations, including lack of documented inspections at the I-3 International Building Code standard required for detention centers, and it is backed up by 100 pages of the city’s own documents.
Under the municipal code, the complaint triggers a mandatory investigation and written findings by the end of the month.
“We commend the city’s decision to act, and we will continue to ensure that it enforces its code in a neutral and equal manner to protect the public,” said Noone.
If the back-and-forth this issue has taken over the past eight months is any indication of the future, this story is far from over.
