The ACLU of Colorado filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seeking records on the government’s plans for expanding its detention capacity in the state.

“Already, our previous requests and subsequent lawsuit have revealed how ICE may spend some of its record $45 billion budget intended for immigration detention,” said Tim Macdonald, ACLU of Colorado legal director, in a statement. 

The complaint follows ICE’s July release of more than 100 pages of records, which came only after the ACLU sued the agency for failing to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The July documents included proposals from private companies — among them The GEO Group, which operates the Aurora Detention Center — seeking a government contract. Those documents were heavily redacted, including portions describing the housing units for detainees.

Last year, the minor children of a Nicaraguan asylum seeker who died in the Aurora Detention Center in 2022 filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the for-profit company and its medical director.

“Current immigration detention sites, including the GEO detention facility in Aurora, are already notorious for their inhumane conditions, including persistent medical negligence, inadequate nutrition, and routine rights violations,” Macdonald has said. “It is unconscionable to go on to expand this cruel, for-profit detention machine.”

The ACLU of Colorado identified at least two other deaths at the facility since 2012 in a 2019 report titled “Cashing in on Cruelty.” The ACLU found multiple incidents reflecting a lack of care or competence.

The GEO Group operates 18 facilities that are under contract to provide services for ICE across the country, including the Cheyenne Mountain Center, a 700-bed facility in Colorado Springs originally designed as a reentry facility for the state until closing in 2020.

Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, the GEO Group operates private for-profit prisons and mental health facilities in seven U.S. states.

In August, the ACLU filed another FOIA request, this time requesting ICE documents that show the agency’s “ramp-up plans for adding detention capacity” in Colorado and Wyoming.

According to the lawsuit filed Tuesday, ICE has not yet responded.

After an inquiry seeking comment on the lawsuit Tuesday, an ICE spokesperson told The Denver Gazette that the agency does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation.

ICE owns five detention facilities, but relies on private prison companies to hold the majority of those in its custody.

The Trump administration told Colorado’s congressional delegation in August that it plans to reopen the shuttered Hudson Correctional Facility as an immigration detention center.

Located about 30 miles northeast of Denver in Weld County, the Hudson Correctional Facility was a medium-security prison built in 2009. The facility had held inmates from Alaska until 2014, when it closed.

Owned by a real estate investment firm, the prison is operated by The GEO Group.

With space for 1,250 inmates, the prison could house about three-quarters of Hudson’s 1,651 residents.

The ACLU has noted that many of the proposed sites — including Hudson — have not been operational for years.

Among the facilities identified:

• Huerfano County Correctional Center in Walsenburg.
• Cheyenne Mountain Center in Colorado Springs.
• The Baptiste Migrant Detention Facility in La Junta.
• The Colorado Springs Migrant Detention Facility in Colorado Springs.

The lawsuit asks the court to order ICE to release the records and stop withholding documents that aren’t exempt from disclosure.