Denver is not moving forward with plans to hire a private security company to take over the city’s migrant sheltering efforts, Mayor Michael Hancock’s office announced Thursday, less than two weeks after a backlash emerged over the proposed $40 million contract.
The Denver City Council was scheduled to vote Monday on the contract with Aegis Defense Services LLC. The company, which does business as GardaWorld Federal Services, was selected unanimously following a request for proposals that opened early this year.
However, after nonprofit leaders met with city staff and company representatives this week, they said their concerns only grew about the international company’s history of and , as well as its lack of experience in sheltering migrants.
In a written statement, the outgoing mayor’s office stated that it had hoped to finish negotiations, community engagement and get council approval prior to the new administration taking over, but there’s more work to be done.
“With more than 500 Central and South American refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants still in our care, we continue to believe that contracting out shelter services is in the best interest of our guests, city taxpayers, and city employees and operations,” Hancock’s office said. “This contract was intended to alleviate the current staffing pressures on city operations and to provide a more financially feasible strategy to managing the challenge of migrant arrivals, many of whom experienced significant trauma on their journey to the United States. The current financial and operational burden is not sustainable.”
Denver has spent nearly $20 million to provide services and shelter to 12,630 migrants since December, according to city data.
Representatives of GardaWorld did not respond to multiple interview requests, but in a written statement, said, “We respect the city of Denver’s decision and look forward to continuing to discuss ways we can assist the city in the future.”
The City Council’s Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee had late last month with caveats: The council members on the committee said they wanted to see the contract, know more about the company’s history and work, and find out the city’s long-term plan for the large numbers of migrants and asylum seekers coming to Denver, many of them escaping .
The full council’s consideration of the proposal would have come one week before mayor-elect Mike Johnston and a new council are sworn into office. That was the plan as late as Wednesday, when Hancock’s spokesperson Mike Strott said the mayor wanted to complete the project, which has faced delays, but had been in the works for the past six months.
“We wanted to hand over a support system that was in place and operational and didn’t draw city employees away from their other duties while a new administration was getting set up, rather than one that was in formation,” Strott said. “The mayor-elect and his transition team have received regular updates from us on all aspects of the migrant sheltering response effort.”
In a statement, Johnston did not provide specifics on his administration’s plans, but said he’s committed to continuing the work of addressing the migrant crisis.
“I’m incredibly grateful to the city and the city employees who have done a great job to help support migrants as they arrive in Denver,” Johnston said. “We know that this is a critical and complicated issue, which is why we specifically created a standalone transition committee on migrants and immigration that is working with community leaders to collect feedback on how our administration can best care for and serve migrants. As we work collaboratively to identify an equitable and fair solution to this crisis, we will continue to partner with local nonprofits and community members to support the migrant population in Denver.”
“Guinea pig for sheltering of vulnerable people”
The decision to scrub the vote on the contract came as welcome news for leaders of metro Denver nonprofits that provide services for migrants. They had lamented that they were left out of the initial process and became increasingly concerned the more they learned about GardaWorld.
The company misrepresented its experience with migrant sheltering to the city and has not been transparent, said Jennifer Piper, the interfaith organizing director of the American Friends Service Committee in Denver.
Piper, like others who spoke to The Post, said she’d never heard of GardaWorld before this proposal and neither had other nonprofit leaders doing migrant work in other cities where GardaWorld said it operates shelters.
GardaWorld had said it runs migrant shelters in Chicago; El Paso, Texas; and New York City. The Post spoke to the head of one of the main nonprofits that helps migrants in El Paso, and he said he’d never heard of the company until the county contracted with GardaWorld a week ago to help with transportation.
State agencies in Illinois, which GardaWorld contracts with, did not return requests for comment, and neither did officials in New York.
“The real question is, does Denver want to be the guinea pig for sheltering of vulnerable people with a corporation that has no experience doing that, and only experience in policing and military-style operations? And my answer is no,” Piper said.
Denver nonprofit leaders and city staff spoke with GardaWorld representatives on Wednesday to get questions answered, and Piper said it was revealed that while GardaWorld held some government contracts to do so, it had not actually sheltered migrants for any city or county, despite prior claims to the contrary.
And while the company does have experience building tent shelters after hurricanes, that’s vastly different than running migrant shelter and support services, Denver advocates said.
GardaWorld also has contracted with the federal government to provide services at Fort Bliss, near El Paso, and in San Antonio, Texas, to unaccompanied minors who had crossed the border, according to research by New York-based American Friends Service Committee investigative fellow Davi Sherman.
The federal government last year detailing abysmal living conditions at Fort Bliss, , and long delays before children were connected to case managers or reunited with family members. Employees also reported retaliation if they brought up poor conditions or management.
Providing services “in a welcoming, dignified manner”
Denver City Council members commended the Hancock administration, city staff and council leadership on pausing the vote on the GardaWorld contract, with outgoing Councilwoman Robin Kniech saying, “They have really dug into this contract and reevaluated and listened to each other.”
Kniech, the chair of the committee that first considered the proposal, added, “They did their very best to set up the next administration with an answer to a very pressing logistical, human rights and financial problem.” But ultimately, she said, they realized they needed to rethink the next steps, whether that’s some sort of adjustment or an entirely new solicitation for migrant services.
Councilman Paul Kashmann, another member of the committee, said he’s not opposed to outsourcing Denver’s migrant response for financial and staffing reasons, but he wasn’t anywhere close to being comfortable with GardaWorld as the operator. When Kashmann first heard of the company’s proposal, he did some research online and everything he found was “pretty universally negative,” he said. He asked a company representative for specifics and heard nothing.
“I think it boils down to I need to have confidence that whoever gets the contract for the services is going to provide them in a welcoming, dignified manner,” Kashmann said.
GardaWorld presented a troubling history to immigration advocates. The international company was founded in Canada in 1995, according to its website, and has since rebranded numerous times and acquired multiple companies. Starting in 2015, it began providing detention and transportation services to the Canada Border Services Agency, although Piper said that, on the call with GardaWorld, company representatives claimed that the sites contracted with Canada’s border patrol are humanitarian, not detention-oriented.
But the company’s own noted that it provided detention services.
Unsafe conditions and retaliation against hunger strikers at detention centers the company oversaw, research by Sherman, the American Friends Service Committee fellow, shows.
GardaWorld specializes in security services, providing security guards, security and surveillance equipment as well as armored vehicles, police support and facility management. But it has expanded into sheltering and detention in recent years. It operates in 45 countries, including in conflict zones. Aegis, acquired by GardaWorld in 2015, still operates in Iraq, protecting oil fields, according to its website.
“I think the big picture is that it’s very clear, despite the narrative that the company is pushing, is that it’s in the business of detention,” Sherman said.
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