Dahlkemper was first elected commissioner in 2018, the same year Weiser won the state attorney general’s office. She has also served on the Colorado Fire Commission and the Ponderosa Mountain Pine Beetle Task Force and was president of Jeffco Public Schools’ Board of Education.

As a county commissioner and chair of the Gateway to the Rockies Opioid Council, she worked with Weiser to distribute part of the state’s $900 million settlement with opioid manufacturers. She also helped lead Jefferson County’s 2024 push under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, known as debrucing. Jeffco voters approved the change in 2024.

During the primary campaign, Weiser said he intended to work on some kind of statewide TABOR reform, though the exact details were to be determined and would depend on how voters decide on a slate of tax measures this November.

Weiser said he wanted a governing partner in his lieutenant governor and highlighted her ability “to take on complex problems.” He also called her a “bridge builder” and “a healer” who could serve rural and urban Colorado alike.

“We’re not getting someone who is going to need a long learning curve,” Weiser said. “We’re getting someone who is seasoned, who knows a range of issues inside and out.”

Dahlkemper said her work with Weiser on the opioid crises “underscored, for me, Phil’s fearlessness and his collaborative leadership style.”

“Like Phil, I take showing up, listening and getting results seriously,” Dahlkemper said.

In addition to her elected roles, Dahlkemper previously worked as a journalist for Colorado Public Radio and owned a communications firm. Her husband, attorney Mike Feeley, is a former state lawmaker who served as the Democratic minority leader in the Senate.

Weiser and Dahlkemper will face Republican nominee Victor Marx in the November general election. Marx has not yet named a running mate. Nominees for governor have seven days after the certification of the primary election to name their running mates. The secretary of state’s office expects to certify the election later this week, giving Marx until roughly the end of the month to name his pick.

The Marx campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Colorado’s lieutenant governor, who is first in the line of succession, becomes acting governor while the state’s top official is traveling out of state. Recent governors have also assigned their lieutenant governors certain responsibilities and tasks.

Under outgoing Gov. Jared Polis, Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera a half-dozen programs, including Polis’ Office of Saving People Money on Health Care, the Office of eHealth Innovation, the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs and Serve Colorado, which administers the AmeriCorps program in the state.

Weiser and Dahlkemper said that should they win the election, the exact scope of her work as lieutenant governor hasn’t yet been set and would be determined by listening to Coloradans. They also did not rule out Dahlkemper collecting an additional salary beyond the position’s official pay, at $106,086 next year. for an extra-pay arrangement.

That’s the conundrum facing Colorado as it nears its sesquicentennial, or 150th anniversary of statehood, on Aug. 1. Less than a third of Colorado voters, 30%, said they’d heard much about the landmark, according to , and only 6% said they’d heard a lot about the event.

“I’m sure the historians will be a little depressed about this one,” chuckled pollster Lori Weigel, principal of New Bridge Strategy, during a poll briefing.

Dozens of events big and small are to mark the milestone anniversary. The full details are available at .

All that said, most Coloradans do feel an innate pride in the state and its success. Eighty-four percent said they were moderately to extremely proud of their home state, outpacing the 75% who felt similar levels of national pride.

Further, there’s near-unanimity in what Coloradans feel is important now: protecting Colorado’s lands and waters (89% ranked it as very important; 99% said it carried some level of importance); ensuring free and fair elections (89% very important, 98% assigning it some level of importance); and being a place where people can afford to live and work (84% very important, 98% giving it some level of importance). Those three topped the list.

The poll, conducted June 26 to July 1, included 655 registered voters statewide. It was conducted by a bipartisan team from New Bridge Strategy and Aspect Strategies on behalf of the Colorado Polling Institute. The margin of error is 3.8 percentage points.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a quarter of proud respondents cited the state’s natural beauty and outdoors as their top reason they’re proud to be a Coloradan. The next-largest category, the state’s progressive policies and rights, was cited by 13% of respondents.

But politics also crept into respondents’ ways of thinking, too.

Among conservatives, 97% said they were proud to be American, versus 67% who said they were proud to be Coloradans. That dynamic flipped for liberals, 94% of whom were proud to be Coloradans compared to 61% who were proud to be American.

Of course, Republicans hold trifecta control of Congress and the White House, while Democrats have large majorities in the state legislature and occupy the governor’s office.

Overall, the pollsters highlighted that this poll — conducted during the high nationalism of the Fourth of July and America 250 celebrations and the hosting of the men’s World Cup soccer tournament in U.S. cities — found more unity than not, and far less partisanship than they usually see in their polls.

Seventy percent of respondents said they felt Coloradans had more in common than things dividing them, and 66% felt the state’s best days were ahead. They felt similarly about the country, with 77% saying Americans had more in common that not and 63% saying the country’s best days were ahead.

“We often see everything so divisive,” Weigel said. “The fact that we had solid majorities agreeing that our best days are ahead, that did surprise me to some extent.”

The Monday morning protest sought to highlight “demands for freedom, for humane conditions and to end all contracts with GEO Group, Inc.,” .

State Rep. Kenny Nguyen, a Broomfield Democrat at the event, said there were up to 100 people there, and they were “just exercising their First Amendment rights on a public street.” Protesters carried signs reading “bring them home,” “we keep each other safe” and “ICE out.”

He left when several men in tactical gear, apparently law enforcement, showed up on the outskirts of the protest.

The Arapahoe Sheriff’s Office reported that four people were detained, cited and released for misdemeanor obstruction charges.

“Those who were not impeding with operations of a public building were able to continue their civil demonstrations,” Anders Nelson, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, said in a statement. “We support citizens right to peaceful demonstrations.”

The protest was in response to the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown on undocumented immigrants. In Colorado, Adams County health officials have accused ICE of slowing an investigation of tuberculosis at its Aurora facility and advocates have reported that detained immigrants are no longer receiving their original mail and experiencing months-long delays in sent mail.

On Friday, an employee of the Geo Group, which contracts with ICE, shot a protester outside the Aurora immigration detention center. The contractor, Brandon Booth, 42, is facing an attempted murder charge.

The survey of 500 voters found remarkable unanimity between voters leaning left or right on the question of AI regulations, with support for some types of oversight or regulation exceeding 80%. The findings come from a poll conducted in May and June by the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland through its , which shared the data with The Denver Post.

“Voters are intrigued by AI, but they have a lot of anxieties as well,” Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation, told The Post. “They agree it’s not enough for the tech companies themselves to regulate AI — they want the government to have a role.”

The goal of the program’s surveying is to identify solutions supported by voters to major public policy issues. It has conducted polls this year both nationally and in more than two dozen competitive U.S. House districts, including Colorado’s 8th, which covers a stretch of the Front Range from Commerce City to Greeley.

Artificial intelligence has in the last few years as the powerful technology has seeped into numerous facets of life, spurring fears of jobs lost to computer automation and the potential for algorithms, instead of human beings, to adjudicate critical healthcare claims and loan application decisions.

And money from tech companies with an interest in AI development has begun to shape and fuel the 8th District race, which pits Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans against the Democratic nominee, state Rep. Manny Rutinel, in November.

“Not only are Democrats and Republicans on the same side of this issue, but the majorities are large majorities,” Kull said of the public perception of AI borne out in the poll. “There’s substantial anxiety about it. Voters think this thing needs to be contained.”

Eighty percent of voters leaning Democrat and 84% of voters leaning Republican in the 8th District said they favored the creation of a new federal agency to oversee the burgeoning technology. Meanwhile, 80% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats in the district want new AI programs to pass a “government-designed test” before being implemented.

Most of the respondents in the 8th District poll were categorized as Democratic or Republican based on either their actual affiliation or, for unaffiliated voters, their lean toward one side or the other.

When it comes to “deepfakes” — video or images that are digitally altered or repurposed to deceive viewers — the poll showed little tolerance from 8th District voters. Eighty-nine percent of voters from both sides of the aisle said AI-generated content on TV or online should be required to carry a label identifying it as such.

The vast majority of voters — again, 89% among those leaning to either side — were even less tolerant of the use of deepfakes in the political arena, saying such content should be prohibited altogether in campaign ads.

“People have enough trouble figuring out what’s true as it is,” Kull said.

State lawmakers in 2024 passed a law requiring campaign ads that use AI to disclose that fact. When it comes to broader regulations on AI, the legislature has struggled to reach consensus. It passed a groundbreaking law two years ago that attempted to regulate the use of AI by companies and other organizations in ways that might discriminate against people, but the law was delayed as lawmakers, Gov. Jared Polis and outside interests debated changes.

In May, Polis signed a significant rewrite of the earlier law. At the national level, the Trump administration has threatened to challenge individual state regulations while calling for a national regulatory framework that hasn’t passed Congress.

The Program for Public Consultation poll also asked 8th District voters about the dystopian potential of machine-controlled weapons being deployed one day. That question prompted 80% of voters on the Democratic side and 84% on the Republican side to agree the United States should work with other countries on a treaty to “prohibit the development and use of AI-powered weapons that can fire on targets without a direct human command.”

A majority of district voters — 81% from each party’s leaners — also favored the U.S. signing an international treaty “to regulate large-scale AI programs.”

While the poll did not ask specifically about the recent explosion in data center development, Kull said the cloud computing facilities that have rattled communities with concerns about their environmental impacts — particularly water and electricity consumption — “have become somewhat of a symbol” of the larger AI issue.

Both Rutinel and Evans have weighed in on artificial intelligence and related issues.

Rutinel has sponsored bills in the state Capitol that would place guardrails around the technology, including that required a developer of a “high-risk artificial intelligence system” to use reasonable care to protect consumers from “algorithmic discrimination.” He also was among the sponsors of that rewrote those regulations.

Last month, Evans helped introduce a bill in Congress called the , which would ensure Americans “are not left footing the bill for the grid upgrades and increased energy generation required to develop new data centers.”

“I don’t see significant numbers of voters saying they don’t want anything to do with AI,” Kull said, “but they are looking for candidates who are responsive to public concerns about the downsides of AI.”

Delvin Rodriguez was not among them. But it wasn’t for lack of trying: In late October, a month after he was arrested during a traffic stop on his way to a construction site near Dillon, the 39-year-old Colorado resident, who did not have permanent legal status, agreed to leave the country. Two of his sisters recalled that Rodriguez had spoken with a lawyer, who told him fighting his case would be expensive and likely unsuccessful, in part because he’d been arrested by immigration authorities when he first entered the country in 2018.

At first, through phone calls from the detention center in Aurora, he’d assured his sisters that he was only on vacation. After he met the lawyer and decided to stop fighting his removal, he was calm, his family remembered.

“I said that it was OK. I respected his decision,” remembered one sister. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation by ICE. “Everything’s in God’s hands. Either way, he was going home.”

But Rodriguez did not go home. Before Christmas — more than two months after he first entered the detention system — he was dead in Mississippi, one of a growing number of immigrant detainees who’ve died in custody over the past 18 months.

Rodriguez was the first person arrested in Colorado to die in immigration custody in eight years, according to a review of the agency’s official releases, and he was the 32nd immigrant to die in federal custody under President Donald Trump’s second administration. In the seven months since his death, that total has increased to 55.

His death was ruled a suicide by a Mississippi medical examiner, according to an autopsy report obtained through a public records request. At least nine other detainees have died by suicide since January 2025, amid the federal government’s efforts to rapidly increase arrests while gutting the independent agencies charged with scrutinizing the country’s rapidly expanding immigrant detention network.

In the months since, his family and a Colorado advocacy group have pressed for answers on the circumstances of his death and why he was still detained. With the help of a U.S. senator, some details have emerged only in recent days.

After his arrest, Rodriguez spent 66 days in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Aurora detention facility,  according to ICE detention records analyzed by The Denver Post. He was briefly logged at a holding room in Arizona before moving again, on Dec. 1, to one of the nation’s largest detention facilities, housed in a private prison in Mississippi.

When he arrived, Rodriguez called his sisters. He told them he had not eaten much because there wasn’t enough food, they recalled. He was anxious about why he hadn’t left the country yet.

Two days later, he was isolated in an open-door cell after he exhibited behavior that “concerned” staff at the Adams County Correctional Center in Mississippi, said Alex Sánchez of Voces Unidas, an advocacy group working with Rodriguez’s family. Sánchez was present for a briefing about Rodriguez’s case last week by U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet’s office. The cell’s open door would allow staff members to monitor him “at all times,” and Sánchez said the setting sounded akin to suicide watch.

His sisters remembered talking to Rodriguez on the phone. They said he still seemed calm.

On Dec. 4, the day after he was moved to the cell, Rodriguez was found unresponsive around 4:15 p.m. On-site staff gave him CPR, and paramedics arrived at roughly 4:40 p.m., according to statements from ICE and CoreCivic, the company that operates the prison. He spent the next 10 days on life support in a nearby hospital, where .

Officials from ICE and from CoreCivic have released little additional information about his case.

“Where was the staff (who) were in charge? Were there cameras, what truly happened?” his sister said earlier this year in an interview with The Post, before the family was provided details about his placement in a special cell. She spoke Spanish and communicated through an interpreter. “We want a test of justice for him.”

It’s unclear when the center’s staff members last checked on Rodriguez before he was found unresponsive, or why he was able to attempt suicide in a setting that seemed designed to prevent it.

“It was the middle of the day, so where were they?” Sánchez said of the staff members who were supposed to monitor Rodriguez. “How does it happen in the middle of the day, especially when it sounds like staff did some kind of intervention (the day before)?”

, detainees at risk of suicide “may” be placed in a “suicide-resistant cell with constant (one-to-one) monitoring” that must be documented every 15 minutes. The cell must be free of “objects or structural elements that could facilitate a suicide attempt.”

ICE denied a records request seeking documents about Rodriguez’s case, citing an ongoing law enforcement investigation. An unnamed agency representative did not respond when asked about the investigation, instead referring The Post to .

Suicides in detention centers face scrutiny

In a May investigation into detainee suicides, that ICE detention centers have repeatedly fallen short in ways that violate ICE’s own standards. An examination of the 10 suicide deaths found the detainees died in facilities that had ignored signs of distress, delayed mental health treatment and failed to monitor detainees who were already deemed at risk.

They also permitted detainees to have access to materials that could be used for self-harm, the AP found. Rodriguez used items in his cell to hang himself, according to the autopsy report, an ICE statement and information gleaned by Sánchez during the briefing by Bennet����ap office. Several other detainee deaths have involved similar means, according to a Post review of ICE fatality reports.

“Someone should not be able to kill themselves in a detention center or a prison,” William Lopez, a public health professor at the University of Michigan who studies incarceration and deportation, told The Post. “… One should not be able to kill someone else in one of these facilities; one should not be able to harm someone else. The fact that it����ap been happening, again, points to ineptitude.”

When ICE announced Rodriguez’s death, the agency said he had received a mental health screening two days before he was found in his cell and that he was cleared for the general population. The report does not mention that staff members were concerned about his behavior or that they had placed him in a cell for closer monitoring.

Last week, Rodriguez’s family learned more about the circumstances surrounding his death from Bennet’s office, which had been briefed by officials from the Department of Homeland Security.

In a statement, Bennet spokeswoman Sophie Ulin said agency officials had explained “the timeline of events and outlined the procedures that were followed.”

ICE did not respond to questions about the briefing. In a March statement, ICE spokeswoman Angelina C. Vicknair said that all detainees are “provided comprehensive medical care from the moment they enter ICE custody … (including) a medical, dental, and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.”

CoreCivic also did not respond when asked about the family’s briefing. In an April statement to The Post, spokesman Brian Todd said the incident had been thoroughly reviewed.

“We adhere to all applicable federal detention standards in our ICE-contracted facilities, including our Adams County Correctional Center,” he wrote. “Our immigration facilities are monitored very closely by our government partners at ICE, and they are required to undergo regular review and audit processes to ensure an appropriate standard of living and care for all detainees.”

As of April, the Mississippi facility was the second-largest ICE detention center in America by average daily population, at Syracuse University. A said it had five mental health observation cells, 202 detention officers and six mental health providers for a facility capable of housing more than 2,100 detainees at a time.

Brandon Riches, an immigration attorney in Mississippi who previously conducted legal training for detainees in the facility, said the detention center was one of the nicer ones he’d been in. But it still felt like a “maximum-security prison.”

“Locks on the doors, push the button to get through, the whole nine yards,” he said.

Still, like many other detention centers, the facility has a checkered history.

In May, that the facility had failed to properly review and document staff members’ use of force.

In 2012, three years after Adams County opened its doors, immigrant detainees launched a deadly riot over the facility’s conditions. An affidavit by an FBI agent, first reported by the , said detainees rioted over “inadequate or substandard food, medical conditions and disrespectful staff members.” Hostages were taken, and one correctional officer was killed.

Nine years later, in 2021, that a sick detainee died in the facility after staff failed to send the patient to the hospital. Federal inspectors also criticized the facility’s communication between detainees and staff, as well as its grievance standards.

‘He had been through a lot’

In his final conversations with his sisters, Rodriguez told them the facility was crowded and that he wasn’t receiving enough food.

He’d supported his sisters and mother since he began working at age 18. He’d served in the Nicaraguan military, then worked in construction in Costa Rica before traveling to the United States, where he applied for asylum.

“He had been through a lot before relocating to the U.S.,” said Karen McCarthy, an attorney who represented Rodriguez during his prior immigration proceedings. They also lived in the same neighborhood in Summit County. “He struck me as an honest person. I enjoyed getting to know him. He was always very cordial and polite, and somebody you wanted as a neighbor.”

When ICE announced Rodriguez’s death, the agency said he had been scheduled to fly home on Dec. 13 — the day before he was removed from life support.

The Mississippi prison to which he was moved is a short drive from a major airport in Alexandria, Louisiana. A sort of reverse Ellis Island, Alexandria is one of the primary departure points for deportation flights, particularly for those heading to Nicaragua, , a nonprofit group that defends immigrants’ and refugees’ rights. There were 10 flights to Managua, the country’s capital, in November, and nine more in December.

Why Rodriguez wasn’t on any of those flights is unclear.

Federal agencies have declined to provide specific information about his case, and he did not have a lawyer for most of his time in detention. His family said he had signed papers with ICE to stop contesting his removal. ICE records indicate his deportation order was signed Oct. 24.

Rodriguez told his sisters he was missing some sort of travel document, though his family had his passport. To maximize efficiency, ICE often keeps people from the same country detained until it can fill an entire flight, according to several immigration attorneys who spoke generally about ICE practices. Deportation timelines vary based on factors that are often opaque, those attorneys said.

“People don’t actually get deported rapidly all the time,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, a national advocacy group. “There are a lot of cases in which individuals can languish in detention for days, weeks, even months prior to deportation. That����ap because the actual act of deportation itself requires coordination inside the government.”

Rodriguez’s missing travel document may have slowed his deportation, attorneys said. Hans Meyer, an immigration attorney in Denver, said Rodriguez may have had “horrifically bad luck, and he got disappeared into a horrible black hole.”

On the day that Rodriguez died, there were more than 68,400 people in immigration detention centers across the United States. That was an all-time high, .

“That is just the reality of the system,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “People get caught in it and fall through the cracks and end up not being deported, even though they desperately are asking to be.”

In the letter sent Tuesday evening, Jill Hunsaker Ryan, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, also asked the Aurora facility’s warden and health administrator to allow inspectors to review medical records for the detainee who contracted . A positive test result was identified late last month.

She directed officials to provide facility access to inspectors investigating the case, as well as records for other individuals who have been screened for TB and the information necessary to determine the disease’s potential spread.

By Wednesday evening, a CDPHE spokeswoman said facility officials had not yet responded to the requests.

The escalation came amid a nearly three-week standoff between Adams County health officials and the Aurora facility’s operators and federal officials — who, local officials say, have blocked investigators from interviewing detainees, inspecting the facility and reviewing records. Adams County officials issued a public health order last month seeking that information after the Geo Group, which operates the facility, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has ultimate control over it, refused to cooperate.

“These barriers prevent public health officials from determining the scope of potential exposure and taking appropriate steps to protect detainees, employees, contractors, visitors, people who have been transferred or released, and others who may have been exposed,” Hunsaker Ryan wrote to the facility’s leaders in the letter. “Immediate cooperation is necessary for the investigation to proceed.”

A spokesman for Geo Group did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday afternoon. Representatives for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security told The Denver Post earlier this week that there were no active tuberculosis cases in the 1,530-bed facility, though they did not respond when asked if that meant officials had moved any individual who had tested positive.

The agencies have not publicly acknowledged the positive test, which health officials said they identified on June 22 using samples taken from the facility.

In a Wednesday statement to The Post, Gov. Jared Polis said he was “deeply concerned by the reports of active Tuberculosis at the GEO facility in Aurora and the inability for local public health to do their jobs because of interference from the facility.”

“We are focused on protecting public health and urge the GEO Group to let Adams County Public Health do their jobs to investigate this alleged outbreak, including providing any necessary testing and treatment to prevent disease spread,” he wrote.

Immigration attorneys and advocates have told The Post that a number of detainees in the facility have been tested for TB in recent weeks and that at least one person had been removed from the facility. Because of Geo’s and ICE’s refusal to provide full access to the facility, health officials have said they cannot confirm reports of additional cases or quarantines.

Hunsaker Ryan’s letter lists the state laws that underpin the state’s access and information requests, as well as health inspectors’ legal responsibility to investigate TB cases. She did not say what the state will do if Geo and ICE do not comply by Friday.

CDPHE spokeswoman Hope Shuler wrote in an email to The Post that agency leaders still hoped facility officials would respond to the letter, adding that their goal was “to work collaboratively with GEO.”

“This is how we would treat any potential outbreak of a communicable disease,” Schuler said. “If we are unable to obtain the necessary access and information, we will determine appropriate next steps, but our goal right now is simply to gain access for purposes of determining whether we have an outbreak.”

The standoff is not the first time, in Colorado or elsewhere, that ICE and its detention center contractors have refused access to outside inspectors.

Adams County officials admonished the Aurora facility earlier this year for failing to provide sufficient information for an investigation into a separate suspected outbreak. In Washington state, to allow state health inspectors into a Tacoma detention center after the facility repeatedly denied them access.

After ICE moved to block members of Congress from conducting unannounced visits to detention centers, another federal judge ordered the Trump administration to grant access to the lawmakers, including Colorado’s U.S. Reps. Jason Crow and Joe Neguse.

Geo has also resisted recent attempts to more tightly regulate the conditions of its facilities. Last month, the company filed a lawsuit challenging a new state law in Colorado that requires regular outside inspections of detention centers; that legislation also covered investigations of communicable diseases.

On Monday, Geo Group announced that it had signed a contract worth up to $528.6 million to open a new detention center in Hudson, on the grounds of a shuttered prison the company once operated.

confirmed a tuberculosis case on June 22, using third-party testing from samples within the detention center, agency spokesman Jennifer Lucero-Alvarez told The Denver Post. Health officials then “immediately” began an investigation into the case.

But personnel at the detention center would not voluntarily provide more information about the infection, prompting the county to issue a public health order on June 25 that required, among other things, an interview with the patient, medical records, identification of any exposed individuals and access to records in the facility.

“As of today, GEO has not provided the full information or access needed for (the county health department) and the Denver Health Tuberculosis Clinic to complete the required public health investigation,” Lucero-Alvarez said Tuesday.

In a separate statement, Kelly Weidenbach, the executive director of the Health Department, said the agency was required by law to investigate active cases of tuberculosis, or TB. The potentially fatal illness spreads through the air and typically affects a patient’s lungs, .

The Guardian that more detainees had tested positive for tuberculosis, citing information from an unnamed detainee. The county health department said it was aware of other reports about more cases, but the agency has not confirmed them or been able to determine the full scope of potential exposures “because the epidemiologic investigation remains incomplete.”

Staff members, visitors, detainees and others may have been exposed. Amy Beeson, the medical director of Denver Health’s TB program, which contracts with Adams County health, said in a separate statement that her staff had “not been permitted to communicate with GEO staff regarding patient care or evaluation of individuals who may have been exposed to TB in the facility.”

“ACHD continues to seek the information and access necessary to complete this legally required public health investigation,” Weidenbach said.

It is illegal to “willfully violate, disobey or disregard” a public health order. Colorado lawmakers also — including “all access necessary” to investigate infectious diseases — at immigration detention centers. The law includes financial penalties of up to $50,000 for any facility that denies inspectors access.

Geo spokesman Christopher Ferreira referred a request for comment to ICE. In an unsigned statement Monday evening, a representative for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said the Aurora facility had no confirmed, active cases of TB.

The representative did not respond when asked if that meant the patient described by Adams County and by advocates had been moved from the facility. In a follow-up statement, an unnamed ICE representative said the agency had “complied with all federal CDC guidelines and policies on communicable disease, as well as with Colorado law, guidelines, and policies on the same.”

What advocacy groups say

Andrea Loya, the executive director of Casa de Paz, which works with detainees, said her organization first heard about a tuberculosis case on June 24; the information was relayed from someone who had just visited a detainee in the facility. Based on reports from other detainees, she said, Casa de Paz believes there was an outbreak in a housing unit in the facility’s southern annex.

She said one detainee told the group that a person tested positive for TB on July 6 and was removed from their housing unit. That matched another report, made on July 9 to the group, that a person had been removed from the same unit. That person said the entire unit was tested for TB, and they still had evidence of a skin test.

Shira Hereld, an attorney for the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network who works with detainees, said they were aware of two people who were placed in “precautionary” quarantine. Hereld said one sick patient was also moved from the facility, though it was unclear if that person had tuberculosis.

The 1,530-bed facility is run by the private prison company Geo Group, which on Monday announced it had signed a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to open another detention center in Hudson in a shuttered former prison.

Gabi Johnston, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Health and Environment, referred requests for comment to Adams County.

The investigation is at least the second public health probe into the Aurora facility this year, after Adams County officials sought more information about an alleged respiratory or gastrointestinal outbreak in January. That investigation didn’t identify an outbreak — though it, too, was frustrated by delays and resistance from officials at the facility.

Detainees in the facility have been tested for TB, Hereld said, and were kept “locked down” for several days with no recreation time.

Reports of AC problems

Loya said some staff members at the facility, but not all, were wearing masks recently, and that the group began handing out masks to people going to visit loved ones in the detention center.

What’s more, Loya and other advocates said, air conditioning in parts of the detention center has not been working in recent weeks — a recurring problem that also plagued the facility last summer. She said her group, which is based near the detention center, has seen air conditioning repair vehicles come and go in recent days. Detainees have also been moved around because of the air conditioning issue, which Loya said may have complicated infection control efforts.

Not all detainees have been tested: The Rev. Edward Nalwamba, a Ugandan priest who’s been in the facility for nearly a year, has not been tested for any illnesses, his attorney, Joy Athanasiou, said Tuesday. Nalwamba has been ill with a respiratory illness for weeks, his lawyers have said, and Athanasiou said a new detainee, who also appears to be sick, was placed in Nalwamba’s cell Sunday. Katherine Soo, a nurse practitioner who reviewed Nalwamba’s medical records for his legal team, said he was tested when he entered the facility.

It’s unclear how regularly detainees had been tested for TB prior to the recent investigation. require that new arrivals be tested for the disease. Loya said detainees were typically tested upon arrival.

Detainees clean most of the facility themselves, said Jenn Piper of the American Friends Service Committee. They have not been given cleaning supplies and often use small bottles of shampoo to disinfect their living areas, she said.

“The federal government is allowing this corporation to neglect public health and the people in their custody for profit,” Piper said. “That is what����ap happening. ”

The facility expanded its capacity last year to its maximum 1,530-bed level. In April, there, though advocates and attorneys have repeatedly said it is often at near-capacity levels.

Correction, July 14: Due to a source’s error, this story has been updated to reflect Edward Nalwamba’s medical record. He was tested for tuberculosis when he entered the Geo facility.

The long-expected 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 is a small town roughly 30 miles northeast of Denver, and it has been a target for ICE’s expanded detention efforts for more than a year. Those rumored plans have prompted repeat protests outside the facility’s closed gates, and they’ve also sparked criticism from elected officials in the state and discussions by lawmakers about how to stop ICE from reactivating the long-dormant facility.

Shortly after Geo’s announcement Monday, a community group said it would organize a protest at the prison early Wednesday evening.

Hudson town manager Bryce Lange referred The Denver Post to a statement released by the town Monday morning. The statement said the town “has not received detailed operational information directly from federal agencies” and that the town didn’t know when the facility would open; how many detainees it would house; or what impacts it would have on local utilities, transportation volumes and emergency services.

Lange said that Highlands REIT had informed the town about the signed contracts, but he said municipal officials had not heard from Geo or ICE.

“Town leadership recognizes that residents have strong and deeply personal views about immigration detention facilities,” the town’s statement reads. “The Town’s role is not to determine federal immigration policy.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not return messages seeking comment.

Geo spokesman Christopher Ferreira referred The 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.”

, Hudson officials repeatedly said they had no power to stop the facility from reopening. State officials have similarly said they could do little to block Geo, Highlands and ICE from reaching an agreement regarding privately owned property.

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 signed contracts finalize the long-expected reopening of the prison. Members of Colorado’s congressional delegation were told last year that the facility would be reopened as a detention center, and indicated that ICE signed a six-month letter contract for the facility in December.

In a statement Monday, the ACLU’s legal director, Tim Macdonald, criticized the secrecy under which the facility was contracted.

“We have fought tooth and nail over the last year through public records litigation to get basic information about ICE’s expansion plan,” he said, referring to an ACLU lawsuit that prompted the release of the letter contract, “but ICE has tried to hide those plans behind heavily redacted documents at every turn.”

Andrea Loya, the executive director of Casa de Paz, which works with ICE detainees in Aurora, said advocates had seen trucks ferrying supplies to the Hudson facility starting in February.

She and other immigrant-rights advocates, who’ve previously raised concerns about the conditions in the Aurora facility, were alarmed that Geo was opening another detention center in the state. Alex Sánchez, of the Voces Unidas immigrant advocacy group, criticized the company’s “undignified treatment and horrible conditions.”

“It����ap just a shame,” Loya said Monday. “We already know that the Geo facility does not have the capacity to correctly manage the folks that it detains here in Aurora, and so honestly, it����ap really concerning that we’re going to have a facility that far out, with the number of emergency calls per week, per day, that we witness every day (in Aurora).”

The facility will be used exclusively by ICE, which had been looking for an additional detention center in Colorado for more than a year. Amid speculation that the Hudson facility might be reopened, Democratic state legislators passed a new law requiring more oversight of immigrant detention facilities in the state.

Last month, Geo filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s authority to impose new requirements — which include improved medical care and outside inspections — on the company, given its role as a federal contractor. Karen Orona, spokeswoman for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said in a statement that “Geo has a documented record of neglecting health and safety and cannot be trusted with human lives.”

“Unfortunately, expanding ICE facilities in Colorado will have serious consequences for our communities, which are already shell-shocked from the Trump administration’s ruthless and chaotic ICE raids,” Sánchez, of Voces Unidas, said.

Last year, the Aurora facility expanded its bed capacity to 1,530, and it has routinely been full or nearly at capacity, advocates have previously said. ICE’s search for additional bed space quickly honed in on the Hudson facility, a onetime private prison run by Geo. It has been shuttered for more than a decade.

The Trump administration’s mass-deportation efforts have been a boon to Geo Group. , Zoley said the company signed contracts worth $520 million in incremental annual revenue last year, the most in its history. As of that call, Geo had 26,000 beds under contract with ICE.

Once the Hudson facility opens, roughly 10% of them will be in Colorado.

In December, the Geo subsidiary BI Incorporated, which is based in Boulder, to provide “skip-tracing” services. The company provides ankle monitors and supervision to ICE detainees who are on supervised release, and skip-tracing involves tracking down a detainee’s location.

That is roughly how much was spent on all of Colorado’s competitive primaries for statewide and federal office — and almost all of it went to influence Democrat-vs.-Democrat contests as voters picked who would represent the party in November’s election, according to an analysis by The Denver Post. Millions more went to down-ballot races, such as local legislative races.

The rain from the proverbial storm of cash poured down in the form of candidate mailers, door knockers, and TV and digital ads, and in less apparent campaign infrastructure and polls. The vast majority of the money went directly to campaigns and supported direct messaging, staffing and other expenses of running for office.

But more than a third — almost $25 million — flooded the races through super PACs and other outside groups that approach politics with different levels of opacity.

The money also didn’t do much to predict eventual winners. Four of the most-monied candidates seeking statewide or federal offices won their primaries. Four others lost.

Paul Teske, a political scientist at the University of Colorado Denver, said it can be tough to tease out how much of a difference money can make in a campaign, especially if spending between candidates is in the same ballpark. But the amount this time also seems striking, even if there isn’t an immediate apples-to-apples comparison to prior election years.

“People realize this is a way to influence policy that can be effective — if it’s the right place, at the right time, in the right way,” Teske said.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appears to have been the single largest player in Colorado politics in the June 30 primaries. The billionaire pumped $5 million in cash into a state super PAC backing U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet����ap failed bid for governor against Attorney General Phil Weiser. Weiser ended up winning the race by more than 13 percentage points.

The race for the Democratic nomination for governor by far outstripped every other race in the primaries, with more than $24.5 million spent by either the super PACs backing the candidates or by the campaigns themselves.

That money was almost evenly split between the super PACs and the campaigns, though that number is skewed by the super PAC backing Bennet, Rocky Mountain Way. That political action committee spent nearly $11 million, almost twice as much as Bennet����ap official campaign spent.

The Republican side of the governor’s race saw a relatively paltry $4.1 million spent through June 29, the cutoff for the most recent batch of campaign data. Nonprofit leader Victor Marx, who had more than $3.2 million of that money backing him either directly or through a state super PAC, narrowly secured the nomination Thursday over state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer and third-place state Rep. Scott Bottoms.

On the federal side of the ledger, the money becomes even more opaque — though there was less of it. Campaigns’ federal reports cover fundraising and spending through June 10, though outside groups had to file more frequent spending reports in the lead-up to the election.

State Rep. Manny Rutinel benefited from the most outside money, $5.5 million, in his successful campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 8th Congressional District. By comparison, Shannon Bird, the former state representative who lost to Rutinel, saw $1.7 million spent to buoy her.

More than $3 million of outside help for Rutinel came from the Latino Victory Fund and the associated Latino Victory Project. Those groups have received money from Opportunity Forward Alliance, a dark-money group that describes itself as backing business-friendly policies, and 5000 Broadway Productions, the production company founded by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

He also benefited from almost $1 million spent by You Can Push Back, a super PAC supported by . And $1.2 million backing Rutinel’s campaign came from the SOMOS PAC, a super PAC that was backed by the nonprofit Advocacy Action Fund. That nonprofit has been linked and has a history of giving to self-styled progressive and abortion-rights advocacy groups.

That 8th District race — expected to be one of the most competitive in the nation, again — will almost certainly draw a gob-smacking amount of money and attention as the November general election nears. In 2024, the candidates and outside groups spent more than $40 million on the election that saw U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, a Republican, win the seat. It was among in the country and is seen this time as key to whichever party will hold the House majority next year.

Now Evans is running for reelection in the 8th District, which stretches from the north Denver suburbs to Greeley.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who was on the wrong side of the primary night’s biggest upset in Colorado, was the second-largest beneficiary of outside money, largely as part of a last-minute surge to preserve her office. More than $2.3 million flew into that race to defend DeGette, whose 1st Congressional District mostly covers Denver.

Of that, more than $1.5 million came from the Pro-Choice Majority Action PAC, which in turn receives money from the EDW Action Fund, a pro-Democratic women’s group that is , or AIPAC.

By comparison, now-Democratic nominee Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist who beat DeGette by 13.4 percentage points, had just over $500,000 in outside spending support her campaign against the 30-year incumbent. Kiros’ campaign also spent less than $600,000 directly, or less than half of DeGette’s total campaign spending.

Colorado Republicans have spoken: First-time political candidate Victor Marx will lead the ticket as the party’s gubernatorial nominee in November.

The Associated Press called the race for Marx on Thursday, more than a week after the June 30 primary election. His closest opponent, state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, took an initial lead and then stayed close to Marx’s heels for more than a week. The religious nonprofit leader finally sealed his narrow win in the three-way race after final vote totals came in.

While Marx, 61, steadily gained ground and seemed to be the frontrunner in the final weeks of the race, the result was still remarkable for a party whose institutional leaders had coalesced around Kirkmeyer. His once-unlikely victory, powered by his direct outreach to voters and disinterest in traditional campaign tactics, laid bare the party’s still-unresolved internal struggle between more traditional and insurgent, conservative candidates.

Part of Marx’s appeal has been that he is not a politician. But in the coming months, he may have to act like one as he tries to unite his party — and appeal to voters beyond it in what’s become a firmly blue state. He’ll face Democrat Phil Weiser, the state’s attorney general, as his chief rival in November.

Colorado election results for the 2026 primary

And Marx will also almost certainly face more questions about his extensive and eye-popping personal history, which includes stories of hunting demons, high-risk humanitarian missions and a backwoods forced killing when he was a child.

Here's what to know about those claims and about the Republicans' gubernatorial nominee.

What is Marx's backstory?

The most scrutinized, questioned and difficult-to-verify part of Marx's candidacy is his extensive personal history. A Louisiana native, Marx has said he was the victim of profound abuse as a child. He has said he beheaded a cat as part of a voodoo ritual at age 3 and that he killed a man at age 7, both at the behest of his then-stepfather. (The sheriff in the Mississippi county where Marx says the killing took place has not returned messages seeking comment.)

Marx later joined the Marines, and toward the end of his time in the military, he reconnected with his birth father, Karl Marx. That, in turn, inspired him to embrace Christianity, which would later animate his campaign. He has said he is a black belt in "Cajun karate," a form of martial arts invented by his dad, and the younger Marx taught martial arts at schools in Hawaii.

He moved to Colorado Springs to work for Focus on the Family, a conservative ministry, and in 2003, he founded All Things Possible Ministries with his wife, Eileen, and supporters in Texas.

Marx is deeply religious and has said that he has freed people from demonic forces, which he's said can be brought on by pornography and unmarried couples living together.

What has his ministry done?

When it was founded, All Things Possible Ministries' goal was "to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ through outreaches and crusades primarily to youth." Marx visited prisons and held speaking engagements elsewhere, where he sometimes demonstrated his claim to being . His group has provided trauma support to people, including through the distribution of stuffed animals loaded with prayers and songs.

After traveling to work with a former Special Forces soldier in Myanmar, Marx branched into what he's called "high-risk humanitarianism." He says he traveled to Iraq and Syria during conflicts with the Islamic State militant group, and he funded medical teams working with the Burma group to come and treat civilians caught in the crossfire.

Marx primarily played a support role there, though he was present at least twice when medics came under direct fire. His nonprofit's tax forms indicate the groups has spent more than $4.3 million in overseas efforts in recent years, though those records also indicate the group has no offices or staff in those countries.

Map: Where did the votes come from in the Colorado primary races for governor?

He has said his nonprofit, the annual revenues for which recently topped $7.5 million, now focuses on training law enforcement, and a police official in Colorado Springs said the group provides trauma support for officials investigating crimes against children. Marx said during the campaign that he and his wife had stepped down from the nonprofit.

What are some of his unsubstantiated claims?

Marx faced scrutiny during the primary campaign for several claims connected to him and the organization he co-founded. In an interview with 9News, he for a website claim that he'd rescued more than 45,000 women and children. Another humanitarian, with whom Marx worked in Burma and in the Middle East, confirmed to The Denver Post that Marx had traveled and worked in those countries, and the humanitarian said Marx played mostly support, funding and training roles.

Marx has said he called in an airstrike on Islamic State militants and that he entered Israel and Gaza shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas. The U.S. military, the Kurdish government in northern Iraq, and the Israeli military did not respond to messages from The Post seeking to verify Marx's claims. The humanitarian with whom Marx worked in Iraq was unfamiliar with his claims about an airstrike.

He also attracted attention for his refusal to answer when asked by journalists how many people he'd killed as an adult. "Does it matter?" he replied in the 9News interview.

Marx's political history and role in the GOP

Marx has never run for office before this race. He previewed his candidacy at a Charlie Kirk memorial last September and announced his run shortly after. Prior to his entry into the race, he hadn't donated money to any political causes in Colorado, according to state campaign finance records.

During the primary, he received few endorsements from institutional Republican voices, other than U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert and a handful of county sheriffs. Indeed, he was largely eschewed by the state's old-guard Republican officials. Both Kirkmeyer and state Rep. Scott Bottoms, who came in third in the primary, said they would not support his candidacy should he win. Dick Wadhams, a political consultant and former chair of the Colorado GOP, has sharply criticized Marx.

Marx, meanwhile, has embraced the opposition from what he's described as the political establishment, and he ran his campaign as a political outsider. He raised more money than Kirkmeyer and Bottoms combined.

His policy positions

Though he has shrugged off policy discussions, Marx has largely adopted policy positions familiar to Republican voters.

He has called for a reduction in the income tax, for audits of state agencies and for Medicaid work requirements that are stricter than those already passed by Congress. He said he would require state officials to cooperate with federal immigration authorities (which would require a change to state law), and he has generally called for supporting law enforcement and strengthening criminal penalties.

He has said he would issue a full pardon to Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk and election denier whose prison sentence was commuted by Gov. Jared Polis. Marx later softened that position in comments to the Colorado Sun. He has said he supports reducing "red tape" to make it easier to build housing, and he indicated to the Sun that he thought the state should provide support for pregnant women who are immigrants without permanent legal status.