The private prison giant Geo Group has signed a multiyear contract with the Trump administration to reopen a shuttered prison in Hudson, Colorado, and turn it into an immigration detention center.
The agreement will nearly double U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s immigrant detention capacity in Colorado. The new “Big Horn Contract Detention Center” will hold up to 1,188 detainees, , on top of the 1,530 beds available at the state’s only other immigrant holding facility in Aurora, also operated by Geo.
The five-year contract between ICE and the company was signed Thursday and is worth up to $528.6 million, . Geo, in turn, will begin paying $250,000 in monthly rent to the company that owns the prison, the Chicago-based Highlands REIT, a real estate investment trust, later this year.
Once the prison opens and begins housing detainees, Highlands will receive more than $958,000 per month, . That will increase by 3% each year.
Hudson officials have not responded to a request for comment sent early Friday evening, nor have officials with ICE. Geo spokesman Christopher Ferreira referred The Denver Post to the company’s news release. In that announcement, CEO George C. Zoley said the new Hudson facility would “play an important role in helping meet the need for increased federal immigration processing center bedspace.”
The company expects to make roughly $85 million from the facility in its first full year of operation, “excluding transportation revenue.”
Geo’s press release did not say when the facility would open. The lease between Geo and Highlands REIT begins Aug. 1 and will last for 88 months, according to securities filings.
The facility will be used exclusively by ICE, which had been looking for an additional detention center in Colorado for more than a year. The announcement ends speculation that the Hudson facility would be reopened, with the rumors helping prompt Democratic state legislators to pass a new law requiring more oversight of immigrant detention facilities in the state.
Last month, Geo filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s ability to impose new requirements — which include improved medical care and outside inspections — on the company, given its role as a federal contractor.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
