Colorado Mayor Backs ICE Facility to Revive Local Economy

By Ovie Westin | The Denver Gazette

The mayor of Walsenburg, Colorado said he would welcome an immigration processing facility in his city, arguing it would boost the local economy, which took a hit when a correctional facility shut down more than a decade ago.

Before its closure in 2010, the former Huerfano County Correctional Facility, which had a capacity to hold roughly 800 inmates, had provided the town with a steady source of income, as well as jobs for residents. 

Mayor Gary Vezzani told The Denver Gazette that he did not know about the proposal to repurpose the Huerfano prison into an immigration processing facility beforehand; he had not been contacted by federal officials, he said.

The beds could be doubled up or the facility would have to be expanded to match the proposed capacity of 1,400 outlined in reports, he said.

Six sites have been identified in Colorado as potentially new processing centers of the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, in addition to its existing facility in Aurora. 

Among them is the former Huerfano County Correctional Center in Walsenburg.

After Huerfano closed, Vezzani said his town, which has a population of around 3,000 people, lost “a major customer.”

Reopening the facility “is just economics,” he said. Reports at the time estimated that the town stood to lose some $300,000 a year in utilities, taxes and fees paid by the prison.

“It took quite a bit of revenue away to pay back these loans and debts and, plus, keep infrastructure running,” Vezzani said. “When all your revenue has to go to prior loans, it’s hard to keep everything running.”

Vezzani said he “doesn’t know why we wouldn’t support” the reopening of the facility, and that if ICE is going to build facilities somewhere, “we might as well” house them. 

The mayor also rejected claims that ICE facilities are “concentration” camps.

The mayor characterized securing an immigration processing center in his city as a welcome development.

“Once you’re in custody, having a place to do something with them, I think is less inhumane than trying to stuff them somewhere and get them out of the country. I don’t see the negative side of it,” he said. “Now, if there’s abuse and all that, I have no idea it’s part of our federal government, and I would think not.”

That the federal agency is eyeing Walsenburg and several other sites in Colorado as processing centers first surfaced in ICE documents obtained by the ACLU in a public records request.

In a statement to The Denver Gazette, ICE officials said the need for additional bedspace would be driving any decisions.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s enhanced enforcement operations and routine daily operations have resulted in a significant number of arrests of criminal aliens that require greater detention capacity,” an ICE spokesperson said in an email. “While we cannot confirm individual pre-decisional conversations, we can confirm that ICE is exploring all options to meet its current and future detention requirements.”

This month, the Trump administration has already told Colorado’s Congressional delegation it plans to reopen the shuttered Hudson Correctional Facility as an immigration detention center.

Located about 30 miles northeast of Denver in Weld County, the Hudson Correctional Facility is a medium-security prison that closed a decade ago.

“Hudson has the flexibility to manage a wide range of offenders of different classification levels,” said officials from the Geo Group in documents submitted to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a bid for the contract. Geo Group operates ICE processing facilities.

“With four distinct housing units, Hudson’s design plan can simultaneously accommodate different detainee groups, including both male and female detainees, after some minor modifications to the fencing,” they said.

The Hudson prison was built in 2009 and held inmates from Alaska until 2014, when it was closed. It has space for about 1,250 inmates.

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