Colorado Communities Kept in the Dark About New ICE Detention Plans

By Taylor Dolven | The Colorado Sun

All Walsenburg Interim City Administrator John Galusha knows about the plans for the long-closed private prison in the city he oversees is what he’s read in the news: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is considering reopening it to detain immigrants.

And he’s not alone.

Huerfano County Administrator Carl Young doesn’t know if the prison will reopen. And Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade and Hudson Town Manager Bryce Lange are similarly in the dark about proposed plans to reopen detention facilities in their communities.

Most local government leaders reached for this story said the private prison companies that own the facilities wouldn’t need local government approval to reopen them as-is. But they would need local resources, like water and wastewater handling, to operate, making a heads-up helpful. 

“It would be nice to have some advance warning,” said Galusha, who started in his current role just a few days ago after serving about two decades in county government. “A week or two, so we could order supplies,” like wastewater treatment chemicals.

The officials expressed optimism and skepticism about the prospect of private prison companies reopening facilities in their communities to detain immigrants. For some, it could be an economic boost, they said. For others, not so much.

In other states, though, communities are fighting back against immigrant detention plans. The city of Leavenworth, Kansas, filed a lawsuit to block private prison company CoreCivic from reopening the prison there as an immigrant detention center. Union County, New Jersey’s manager said last week the largely shuttered county jail can’t be used for immigrant detention after protests.

ICE spokesperson Steve Kotecki declined to comment on the record about the agency’s plans to expand immigrant detention in Colorado. The agency already detains immigrants at a facility in Aurora that is owned and operated by the private prison company Geo Group.

But in records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, private prison company proposals in response to a request for information from ICE in February show interest in reopening shuttered facilities in Walsenburg, Colorado Springs, Hudson and La Junta to detain immigrants.

Republicans in Congress voted earlier this month to increase ICE’s annual budget to about $28 billion from $8 billion, making it the highest funded law enforcement agency in the country. The extra cash increases detention capacity from the currently funded level of a daily average of about 57,000 people to at least 100,000. ICE detains most immigrants in……

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