, a nonprofit collection of faith leaders fighting for humane immigration policies, and a Weld County resident sued the town of Hudson and its Town Council, arguing the municipality must enforce its land development code as the federal government moves toward reopening a shuttered private prison for use as a 1,188-bed detention center.

The property, which the Alaska Department of Corrections used as a prison until it closed in 2013, is not zoned for use as a detention facility, the complaint states.

For it to be used in that capacity, the property owner must obtain approval through public processes outlined in Hudson’s code, Together Colorado alleges in the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Weld County District Court.

“This case is about a basic proposition: Colorado and its cities and towns are not powerless. Hudson is not a bystander. The town has the authority and the obligation to act,” said David Seligman, executive director of the nonprofit law firm , and an attorney litigating the case. “The town is being told to hand over the keys and ask no questions. But Hudson’s obligation runs to the people, not to a billion-dollar prison company and its out-of-state landlord.”

The lawsuit comes 10 days after the private prison giant Geo Group announced it had signed a five-year contract with the Trump administration to reopen the shuttered prison as part of the president’s mass-deportation agenda.

The agreement — worth more than — will nearly double U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention capacity in Colorado. Geo operates ICE’s other Colorado immigration facility in Aurora, which can hold more than 1,500 detainees.

Geo has not said when the Hudson facility — to be called the Big Horn Contract Detention Center — would open, though its lease begins Aug. 1 and will last for 88 months, according to securities filings.

Hudson, a small town roughly 30 miles northeast of Denver, has been the site of repeated protests from community members opposing the government’s plans.

Bryce Lange, the town manager, told The Post on Thursday that the U.S. Constitution supersedes local zoning. Hudson, he said, will focus on what it can do — which is maintain roads, public safety and water for the area.

“The town zoning code cannot stop immigration enforcement,” Lange said.

But Together Colorado alleges Hudson has both a legal and moral obligation to follow its code.

The facility is located in an industrial zoning district, the lawsuit states, which does not include correctional facilities.

Before its prior period of operation as a prison, Hudson voters approved a conditional use permit for the property by ballot measure, the complaint says.

“GEO and ICE are not above the law,” Seligman said at a news conference Thursday outside Hudson’s town hall. “The town cannot put its head in the sand.”

He was joined by faith leaders from across Colorado, who spoke of this as a “moment of moral crisis for our country.” They held signs reading “no concentration camps in Colorado,” sang songs of freedom and bowed their heads in prayer.

“The foreigners who reside among us are not our enemies,” said Pastor Ben Konecny, a reverend at the First Congregational Church in Greeley. “These are our future doctors, future lawyers and future schoolteachers.”

Re: “Tuberculosis inquiry remains stuck as officials press for access,” July 21 news story.

I was appalled but not surprised to read that the Geo Group at the ICE processing facility in Aurora is stalling or refusing to provide necessary information about a tuberculosis case or cases to state and county health officials so that a proper communicable disease investigation can be completed and additional cases averted. A case of a potentially fatal illness in a 1,530-bed facility is a major cause for concern. The Geo Group’s assertion that the case in question was treated and cleared is no substitute for a public health investigation, and Geo’s refusal to cooperate with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment����ap directive to allow the inspectors into the facility is unacceptable and dangerous. Geo seems to be operating a rogue operation in Aurora, following its own rules and resisting state laws. Why it is being allowed to skirt the law, risking the health of inmates and workers, is a profound mystery.

Nancy Vaughan, Denver

Trump’s priorities are askew

Re: “Trump renews election attacks,” July 17 news story.

This past week, President Donald Trump spoke to the nation. He did not discuss the war in Iran, the inflation that comes with it or the billions of dollars required to replenish our military stocks. He did not address the most recent killings by ICE agents. He did not talk about the kitchen table economics or the disaster relief funds that he has held up. He did not talk about the fact that the U.S. debt is greater than the gross domestic product. No, all he talked about was his obsession with the lost 2020 election and the problems with our election process. A process that got him elected twice. And in his speech, he threatened to pull the licenses for NBC and CBS for not broadcasting his speech even though it was available on their streaming apps.

Does our president or his sycophants care about human life? Does he or his sycophants care about free speech? Does he or his sycophants care about the nation’s debt? Does he or his sycophants care about how you’re going to survive until your next paycheck?

I think not.

John Okada, Loveland

Not carrying Trump’s speech was a cover-up

Tonight, NBC and ABC refused to carry President Trump’s speech. Why? If even 50% of what he said is correct, I am sure the whole thing will be investigated by all the political pundits since he (Trump) claims it will be put out for all to see. It seems to me there has been a huge cover-up pulled on the American people. NBC gave a 20-second statement trying to cover their butt on the 9 O’clock news, but it said nothing.

I don’t want to revisit the 2020 election; we have heard that story way too often. The real question is, why are major networks trying to censor news? Are they controlled by parties that don’t want certain things to get out? Or, instead of being neutral, are they only willing to publish negative news on some and positive news on others? I know this much; I won’t be watching NBC or ABC. They can forget about me seeing ads for any companies spending money, trying to get me to buy anything.

Duane Ross, Aurora

Huckins’ art inspires climate action

Re: “Watching heaven burn,” July 19 features story.

Thanks to Ray Mark Rinaldi for describing the work of painter Shawn Huckins in the Sunday Post. Viewing wildfire through a partly drawn curtain serves up a powerful metaphor of our collective reaction to a warming planet. Our instinct is to turn away from the ongoing consequences of climate change, to close the curtains. The artist shows us that the “burn” cannot now be avoided — even a sliver of a view exposes us to the reality of an overheating planet. The next step is increasingly compelling: to step out of the room and take action to deal with the burning world.

 Phil Nelson, Golden

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agents arrested 27-year-old Chantal Alejandra Morales Rojas, who is from Ecuador, on Monday, the confirmed to The Denver Post. The agency said she entered the U.S. on Oct. 20, 2024, and overstayed her visa, which allowed her to remain in the country until Jan. 4, 2025.

She remains in ICE custody “pending removal proceedings,” an unidentified DHS spokesperson said in an email to The Post on Wednesday.

Woman is abducted by ICE at the Denver airport when trying to return home to Oakland. She’s detained by ICE at the Denver airport (Southwest Airlines), taken from the jetway and hustled into an unmarked van on the tarmac

— Sigurdur Nordal (@essenviews)

A created to pay for Morales Rojas’ legal fees said she lives in Oakland, California, and has a work permit. The crowdfunding campaign had raised more than $99,000 by Wednesday evening.

Alicia Dantzker, who lives in California and started the GoFundMe campaign, told The Post that she has known Morales Rojas since 2023. Dantzker is close friends with the family who hosted Morales Rojas as an au pair.

Dantzker was in Colorado with ultimate Frisbee players from across the country for the in Aurora. Morales Rojas was an au pair for a family in the ultimate community, and came to Aurora to be with the kids and family she used to live with, Dantzker said.

Dantzker and Morales Rojas were booked on the same flight back to Oakland on Monday. Dantzker said she went to fill her water bottle at the Southwest gate and came back to find Morales Rojas terrified. A man had approached her and asked her to discuss her visa status, Dantzker said.

“We did not realize they were there targeting her specifically,” Dantzker said Wednesday. “We thought they were just asking her about her visa because she is a Latina woman. We thought she would be safe on the plane.”

More men showed up at the airport gate, staring at Morales Rojas but standing a short distance away, Dantzker said. When it was time to board, Dantzker said an alarm sounded when Morales Rojas scanned her boarding pass.

“Two men rushed up to us and corralled us into the jetway, and someone behind us started pushing us into the door to trap us inside,” Dantzker said.

Dantzker said she told the men to show their arrest warrant to a lawyer who was outside the door at the gate, but they did not. She began filming the incident and decided she should make as much noise as she could.

“I was thinking about how to make the most difference,” Dantzker said.

The video begins with Morales Rojas and Dantzker in the Southwest jetway being confronted by federal agents in plain clothes. Dantzker tells the agents that Morales Rojas’ lawyer is outside and advises Morales Rojas not to speak to ICE.

“We’re going to be very nice to you,” the agent says to Morales Rojas in the video before threatening to charge Dantzker with interfering with their proceedings.

that the Trump administration is increasingly using a once-obscure statute, , to charge people with impeding or assaulting federal officers. The ICE agent cites that statute in the Denver airport video. Punishments for the federal crime range from a fine to 20 years in prison.

In the video, Morales Rojas is led through a door out to the tarmac while Dantzker shouts, “Help us! ICE is here!”

Other people waiting at the Southwest gate begin crowding around, pulling out their phones to film and looking out the windows onto the tarmac while Morales Rojas was placed into a van and taken to the ICE detention facility in Aurora.

The federal agent says, “We’re being very nice. We’re being very respectful.”

Dantzker says: “(Expletive) you. This is (expletive) evil. You should be ashamed of yourself. Who gives a (expletive) if you’re being polite? (Expletive) you.”

A Southwest gate agent steps in and tells Dantzker, “If you are on this flight and you speak to them like that, you will not board this flight.”

“I don’t understand why Southwest needed to get involved with my involvement with ICE — to defend them,” Dantzker said.

Southwest Airlines told The Post on Wednesday that the company cannot comment on the details of law enforcement activities, but that DHS and the have access to all passenger information as part of their responsibilities to clear travelers at airport security checkpoints.

The airline may deny boarding to customers it deems disruptive or who otherwise display behavior that could threaten the safety of others, the airline said.

“Southwest complies with applicable state and federal law when asked to share information about customers,” Lynn Lunsford, a Southwest Airlines spokesperson, said in a statement. “The airline has provided guidance to employees to help ensure appropriate legal documentation is presented by law enforcement agencies prior to interactions in the gate areas. Southwest is committed to providing a safe travel experience for all customers and employees.”

The airline told The Post that Dantzker got to her destination that evening on a later flight. Dantzker said Southwest offered her another flight later that day, but that she did not feel comfortable flying that airline and took a different flight the next day.

“When I went back to the airport the next day to go to a different terminal, I could feel my heart racing,” Dantzker said. “It was scary, but I’m free and not in an ICE facility, so it’s nothing compared to what Chantal is going through.”

Dantzker said the Oakland nanny community was horrified after hearing about Chantal’s detention.

“No one took their kids to the park today because they’re just so afraid,” Dantzker said.

Dantzker described Morales Rojas as kind, helpful and gentle.

“She loves the outdoors, she’s incredibly smart and so wise,” Dantzker said. “She’s a magical caretaker and just a really wonderful, thoughtful, incredibly calm person.”

When asked whether Morales Rojas had a work permit and a pending immigration case, the unnamed ICE representative responded that work permits or pending legal cases do not confer “any type of legal status in the United States or prevent ICE from arresting or deporting an illegal alien from the country. … Each illegal alien receives due process.”

The GoFundMe page said Morales Rojas was taken to an ICE detention facility. It was not immediately clear whether Morales Rojas was being held at the run by .

Andrea Loya, executive director for local immigrant rights organization , said the group is worried about reported ICE activity at the airport as people wait for domestic flights.

“We have confirmed that this has been taking place since at least Wednesday night with a different woman being abducted outside of a Frontier flight,” Loya said. “ICE is showing that they will meet their number quotas by any means necessary.”

Denver airport officials, in an unsigned statement, acknowledged that “a number of federal agencies lawfully operate and have jurisdiction” at DIA and “are not required to inform the airport of their activity.”

Dantzker said it was clear the government has known where Morales Rojas has been at every moment.

“There is no secrecy to how she’s living, and the idea they had to wait to trap her in a jetway in a Denver airport just reeks of cruelty and trying to terrorize people,” she said.

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.

Jennifer Lucero-Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the Adams County Health Department, told The Denver Post in a statement that as of Monday, the private prison company Geo Group “has not provided all the information or access necessary for (the department) and Denver Health Tuberculosis Clinic to complete the public health investigation.”

That, despite the state’s top public health official issuing a directive last week that facility leaders allow inspectors to review medical records for the detainee who contracted the potentially fatal respiratory illness. Health officials also have said they want to look into unconfirmed reports of more TB cases in recent weeks.

Jill Hunsaker Ryan, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, gave Geo until last Friday to let inspectors in.

But the deadline has come and gone. It did not spur the release of new information from the Geo Group or ICE, said Hope Shuler, a spokeswoman for the state agency’s . The company operates the 1,530-bed facility on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Gov. Jared Polis, she said, had requested a discussion with Geo officials but had not heard back.

“Our priority remains obtaining the cooperation needed to do a communicable disease investigation,” Shuler said. “CDPHE has also reassured the facility and federal officials that the information being requested is standard for this type of public health investigation.”

Meanwhile, that ICE said in a statement that a case of tuberculosis had been detected in the facility on June 25 and that the person who had contracted it was “treated, cleared, and removed from the country.” Neither ICE nor Geo Group responded to The Post’s request for comment Monday.

Tuberculosis, a potentially fatal illness, spreads through the air and typically affects a patient����ap lungs, according to the .

The Adams County Health Department had issued a public health order on June 25 requiring GEO to “comply with Colorado public health laws governing tuberculosis investigations,” which includes allowing health officials to interview the case patient and others, look at medical records and get access to exposed individuals.

“We do not have direct communication from the facility to understand the situation inside,” Lucero-Alvarez said. “We remain concerned about individuals in the facility, including those who are detained and staff who might have been exposed.”

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement Monday that his office “stands ready to work with the governor’s office and state health officials to bring Geo into compliance with the law.”

“As a private company, Geo Group is required to comply with state health and safety regulations,” Weiser said. “The reported tuberculosis case at the ICE detention camp in Aurora is a serious public health issue and Geo must work with the state to investigate any potential outbreak or exposure to others.”

But what any enforcement action might look like — and when it might occur — wasn’t clear.

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.

Andrea Loya, executive director of Casa de Paz, said the people detained at ICE’s — run by private prison company — are having their mail opened and scanned, and they are given copies instead of the original material.

For example, Loya said someone who received a birthday card was presented with a black-and-white print-out of the front of the card. People are being mailed drawings from their loved ones, but given photocopied versions instead of the actual illustrations.

Additionally, Loya said a large amount of mail is being returned to senders without explanation. People used to be able to include self-addressed, stamped envelopes in their mail so the recipients could respond without having to buy marked-up stamps at the detention center’s commissary, but Loya said the stamped envelopes are now considered contraband and are being returned.

“There is a claim (that) if people don’t have the means, the facility will provide the stamps, but we know people have reported they are denied stamps,” Loya said. “The way the system tries to continually make money off people is not fair.”

Immigration advocacy organizations say they noticed the change beginning in April. ICE representatives did not answer an emailed question from The Denver Post about when these changes were introduced.

The practice of opening and scanning mail and delivering the scanned copies to detainees is common within prison settings, and is designed to prevent liquid drugs or other chemicals from being smuggled in.

In Colorado, depending on location and the offender’s status, some inmates receive scanned copies of their mail while others get original copies, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections handbook.

“This is not supposed to be like prison,” Loya said. “Geo claims these are housing facilities and not prisons. Most of the people in these facilities don’t have a criminal record. Quite frankly, it����ap just an excuse for people to not get their mail. When that����ap the one thing they have access to, that is unfortunate.”

Loya also said immigrants within the facility allege that staffers are opening their legal mail without them present, which goes against ICE protocol.

When reached for comment about the mail operations, Geo Group spokesman Christopher V. Ferreira referred The Post to ICE. An ICE representative did not answer specific questions about their mail policies, including whether staff members were improperly opening immigrants’ legal mail.

Natalie Petrucci, detention program deputy managing attorney at the , said their organization has also seen a change in immigrants’ mail services, including long delays in sending and receiving mail.

As people make their way through immigration court, oftentimes the only way they can present evidence to help obtain asylum or bond is via documents sent through the mail, like letters confirming they have housing or documented proof that they’ve paid taxes, Petrucci said. With mail held up in sometimes months-long backlogs, Petrucci said immigrants within the detention center have to attend court hearings without the evidence they need to advocate for themselves.

“People are having to move forward on their cases without their critical case evidence,” Petrucci said. “We know of examples where their mail didn’t make it in time for their court cases.”

In response to questions about why ICE switched its mail policies, what was now considered contraband and whether the facility was improperly opening immigrants’ legal mail, an unidentified ICE representative said via email that the answers could be found in a

The policy states: “This detention standard ensures that detainees shall be able to correspond with their families, the community, legal representatives, government offices and consular officials consistent with the safe and orderly operation of the facility.”

The policy also said the amount and content of correspondence detainees send at their own expense shall not be limited, except to protect public safety and that correspondence “shall be read or rejected only to protect the safe, secure and orderly operation of the facility, and detainees shall be notified in writing when correspondence is withheld in part or in full.”

The rules state legal mail will only be opened in the presence of detainees — a rule Loya said ICE was breaking.

One of ICE’s rules says incoming and outgoing mail shall be held no longer than 24 or 48 hours before distribution, excluding weekends, holidays or “exceptional circumstances.”

Loya showed The Post letters that were postmarked as having been sent to the Aurora detention facility in April and not returned to sender until late June, according to postal markings on the envelopes.

“It’s very clear they don’t know what they’re doing,” Loya said. “When you get mail in this facility, it gives you strength. When you take that away, it does affect that morale piece, and there’s really nothing else to do in detention.”

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.”

Re: “Trump: ICE stops should resume,” July 16 news story

In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court in Tennessee v. Garner recognized constitutional authority for the use of deadly force to prevent escape and provided a two-prong test to guide the exercise of that authority.

First, an officer must have probable cause to believe that the fleeing suspect is dangerous, and second, the use of deadly force must be necessary to effect the seizure. The Court concluded that in order for an officer under the Fourth Amendment to use deadly force against a fleeing suspect, the officer had to determine that the suspect had committed a felony and that if allowed to escape, presented an imminent danger to the public. As a police officer and later a police chief, this guidance was reinforced at initial academy training and subsequent annual training through bulletins provided by the FBI, DOJ, and local state authorities.

It was embedded in the consciousness of every law enforcement officer. Further, the court provided guidance that law enforcement could further restrict this guidance: “In other words, just because you may think you have the authority to use deadly force, you do not need to apply this authority.” There is a reasonableness factor as well. “Can the suspect be apprehended at a later date without endangering the public?”

Police departments have policies that constrain firing at moving vehicles given the ensuing risk involved.

I am shocked at the seemingly quick application to the use of deadly force by ICE and question the training that the officers receive, if at all.

Where is the accountability?

Philip Arreola, Denver

A plea to Dems: Socialism is going to be so much worse than Trump

The “Democratic Socialists” Democrat primary winners have said the only way to compensate for “racism” is with reparations (taxpayer money); police should be defunded and prisons emptied (“not necessary when all have enough money”); ICE should be abolished and the border opened (we’re already having problems paying for 5 million asylum seekers’ housing, food, etc.); and it����ap fine to put “transgender women” (fully functioning males) in girls/women’s restrooms/locker rooms, sports, and prisons.

They espouse diversity (jobs for even unqualified applicants), equity (not equality), and inclusion (but not for everyone), identity politics, and anti-semitic policies. They want to weaken — even overthrow — our country. They don’t realize that socialism only benefits its leaders. Immigrants who ran from socialist countries know what happens when socialists who promised “free stuff” take over.

Today’s Democrat Party is nothing like Clinton’s Democrat Party. You have a chance to change this now. You may not have a chance later.

You may despise Trump, but I think you would despise the poverty and tyranny of socialism more. Don’t let one man — who will be gone in 2 years — tempt you to vote for leftists. Your hate doesn’t hurt Trump. (But it can cause actual destructive changes in your brain.) Democrats need to disempower the Democratic Socialists of America.

Angie Many, Eckert

Why is Congress ignoring prevention screening for Alzheimer’s?

For the first time, there is an FDA-approved test to screen for Alzheimer’s! Sadly, without congressional approval, Medicaid and Medicare cannot pay for the test.

My wife, Eve, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2020 at the young age of 60, and by last year, the disease had progressed to late-stage Alzheimer’s. Had this screening tool existed in 2014 when my wife turned 55, because of Alzheimer’s long lead time, she would have tested positive. We would have had at least six more years to turn our bucket list of dreams into memories.

More than 7 million Americans have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Currently, an Alzheimer’s diagnosis comes only after the person has mild cognitive impairment. The Alzheimer’s screening test will enable a diagnosis and treatment before the person has cognitive impairment, pushing longevity and enabling dreams to become memories. The Alzheimer’s Screening and Prevention Act (ASAP) authorizes Medicaid and Medicare to pay for the blood test.

As of today, only three of Colorado’s 10 federal representatives are co-sponsors for the ASAP Act. Thank you, Congressman Neguse, Congressman Crow and Congresswoman Pettersen.

These federal representatives are not signed on as Co-Sponsors for the ASAP Act: Senator Bennet, Senator Hickenlooper, Congresswoman DeGette, Congresswoman Boebert, Congressman Crank, Congressman Evans and Congressman Hurd.

These federal representatives are ignoring the health and well-being of Coloradans. Please push your representatives to co-sponsor the ASAP Act.

Daniel Brown, Wheat Ridge

Crack down on license plate violations

Re: “More speed cameras, enforcement coming to metro Denver,” April 1 news story

The post should have a reporter find out how many speeders get away because of hidden or nonexistent license plates. It’s a sure way to get away with bad driving.

Donald L. Sloan, Denver

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An employee at shot a woman in the foot Thursday night as she walked away from him after a “verbal confrontation” that followed a weekly protest outside the facility, police said.

Brandon Booth, 42, is facing an attempted-murder charge in connection with the shooting, which left the victim with injuries that police said were not life-threatening.

Booth is employed by private-prison operator , which is contracted by to run the 1,500-bed detention center. He told Aurora police he had worked there for three years, according to his arrest affidavit.

Geo Group issued a statement saying Booth was off-duty at the time of the shooting, which took place just before 7:30 p.m. “This individual has been placed on unpaid administrative leave, and we will fully cooperate with law enforcement.”

Officers with the arrested Booth on suspicion of attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault, attempted first-degree assault, felony menacing and unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon after he fled the shooting in the 3100 block of North Nome Street. He is being held on $500,000 bail.

Before the shooting, Booth was waiting outside of his vehicle along Nome Street, along with other Geo Group employees, because the demonstration had stopped them from getting into the detention facility to go to work, according to the affidavit.

Two women walked by the group and started yelling at them, calling them “race traitors, Nazis and other derogatory terms commonly used against employees at the Geo facility,” Aurora police wrote in the affidavit.

The women shouted that they would run the employees’ license plates to find out where they lived and where their children attended school, according to the affidavit. Booth told police the women said they would “have people at (his) kids’ school.”

“Booth stated this threat regarding his children caused his anger level to reach ‘a 15 out of 10,'” Aurora detectives wrote in the affidavit.

Booth told investigators that he did not think the threats were viable or that his children were in immediate danger, and that he acted impulsively.

Police said Booth withdrew a “personally owned” pistol he was carrying in a cross-body bag. He walked into the middle of the street and shot at the women because he wanted to scare them, not injure them, and he tried to aim between them, Booth told police.

“Booth stated he is ‘a better shot’ than demonstrated and that if he had intended to hit someone, he would have,” Aurora detectives wrote.

After he fired, Booth told police, he realized “he had done some dumb (expletive),” and got into his Chevrolet Tahoe and drove away.

Multiple Aurora police and SWAT officers were on scene to monitor the protest and saw the shooting. Officers tied a tourniquet around the victim’s leg and pursued Booth as he fled. Police pulled Booth over and detained him near East 37th Avenue and Havana Street, less than two miles from the detention facility.

He was later arrested and booked into the Adams County jail.

The bullet hit the woman in the back of her foot, according to the arrest affidavit. On Thursday night, Aurora police spokeswoman Gabby Easterwood had described the injury as not life-threatening. The second woman was not injured.

‘Not a good person at all’

In a statement Friday, Aurora police Chief Todd Chamberlain called the shooting “a tragedy on all fronts” and pledged to investigate the case with the same transparency and integrity as all other shootings.

“Violence of any kind will not be tolerated in Aurora. Constitutional rights are a pivotal part of a just society — violence is not,” Chamberlain said.

Destiny Winter, Booth’s former sister-in-law, said in an interview Friday that Booth has long been a bully. She filed for a protection order against him in 2015 after she said he slammed her into a wall during an argument, giving her a concussion that temporarily erased three days of her memories, court records show.

“This is not a good person at all,” she said. “This is not a person who does the right thing or respects boundaries, especially of women and kids. This is not a person who is willing to hold himself accountable for mistakes. This is, ‘I am going to get you back.’ Retaliation, invoking fear so people don’t speak up.”

There is no record that Booth was charged with a crime in connection with the 2015 incident. He has a limited criminal history in Colorado, court records show. Booth pleaded guilty to driving while ability impaired, a misdemeanor, in 2010 and again in 2012. He was charged with careless driving in 2023 and pleaded guilty to lesser traffic offenses.

Winter said she has long fought to keep the man away from herself and her children.

“Very disrespectful, especially to women,” she said.  “He’ll make threats about, ‘I’ll crush you like a chip.’ …Belittling, high and mighty, high ego is the personality and characteristics that I see.”

‘Out there protesting the system’

The attack took place shortly after a weekly protest ended outside the facility, said Andrea Loya, the executive director of , a nonprofit near the ICE detention facility that works with detainees.

Loya was not at the protest but said she had spoken with people who were present. She provided a photo and brief video of the scene after the shooting, showing law enforcement cordoning off a street outside the building.

Loya said one of her staff members learned of the shooting at around 7:40 p.m. while on a call with other advocates. The staff member then heard screams, Loya said.

Protesters regularly gather outside the detention center. The facility has been a lightning rod for protests, and it drew additional scrutiny this week amid a standoff with state and local health officials seeking to investigate a tuberculosis infection identified in a detainee last month.

Thursday was the first time an act of violence marred the vigils outside the detention center, said Jennifer Piper, program director for the .

The protesters generally aren’t hostile toward the guards — who are working long hours and without adequate protective equipment during a possible tuberculosis outbreak — but want to hold Geo Group accountable for harm caused by understaffing, she said.

“We’re not out there to protest the guards themselves,” she said. “We’re out there protesting the system.”

On Friday, following Booth’s arrest, Casa de Paz’s Loya said the shooting raises further concerns about ICE’s new contract with Geo Group to reopen a former prison in Hudson, northeast of Denver, for use as a second major immigrant detention center in Colorado.

“We are deeply concerned that people who clearly don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with potential conflict are handling human lives, and they will expand to Hudson,” she said. “Human life is not valued by this corporation or its employees.”

Aurora police said that anyone with information about the shooting should call Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867.

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.