The Aurora City Council on Monday rejected a memorandum of understanding that outlined guidelines for Aurora police officers responding to the GEO Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.

Six councilmembers voted against passing the MOU after more than an hour of public comment and discussion, killing the proposed agreement.

Aurora Police Department officials have said the MOU was written simply to clarify the role of APD in responding to emergencies at the ICE facility in Aurora.

More than a dozen members of the public attended Monday night’s meeting to object to the MOU, saying it does not help with public safety and rather supports ICE in its poor treatment of detainees.

A report released in early March by a coalition of nonprofit organizations around the metro Denver area claimed a variety of concerns about living and health conditions at the facility.

The APD and ICE facility have a current MOU outlining how officers respond to emergencies at the facility, but the new one was intended to lay out more “clear, lawful, organized” guidelines, Police Chief Todd Chamberlain said.

Reasons for police response to the facility could include things like calls about a rape in the facility, escapes, civil disturbances and bomb threats, Deputy Chief Mark Hildebrand said at a previous meeting.

The MOU is not about immigration, but about public safety, Chamberlain said Monday. The ICE director told Chamberlain on Monday morning that there are 1,000 people in the GEO facility and about 700 have “criminal issues related to them” aside from immigration, he said.

Those statistics are “general,” he added, and numbers are not available from the facility’s website.

According to TRAC Reports, 30% of 60,311 ICE detainees in the United States have criminal convictions.

According to a March report on the facility done by a group of nonprofit organizations, there are almost 1,400 people detained in the facility.

Public speaker Marcella Schieffelin, who called herself a “disability, human and civil rights activist and policy specialist,” spoke against the MOU on Monday.

“Aurora is being asked to sign a 10-year agreement during the most aggressive federal immigration enforcement period in a generation, with a corporation whose revenue depends on keeping people detained in response to ICE blaming the department for an escape,” she said. “This is not governance; that is municipality being leveraged into a political position it did not choose and cannot easily exit.”

Councilmembers Alison Coombs and Gianina Horton both expressed their disagreement with the MOU, saying they worry about conditions inside the facility and the actual danger escapees would pose for the public.

According to Chamberlain, police officials decided they wanted to update the MOU after two detainees escaped the facility last March during a power outage and the department was accused of not responding immediately.

When the incident happened, ICE officials claimed they provided prompt notice and police refused to assist.

“Local authorities were notified immediately and declined to assist with the search,” an ICE spokesperson told Denver Gazette news partner 9News at the time.

Aurora police officials, however, say they did not receive a 911 call from the facility until 2:30 a.m., four to five hours after the men escaped.

“There was a lot of conversation about Aurora police dropping the ball,” Chamberlain said at a study session, referring to the incident one year ago. “Well, we didn’t drop the ball. The call came out hours after they left the facility and it deviated completely from what was in the original MOU.”

The new MOU would have ensured there is a clear command structure, communication protocol and legal framework for police responses to situations like the one last March, Chamberlain said.

He added that the MOU would not change the authority of the GEO facility or give Aurora police officers any immigration enforcement power.

The MOU failed with six ‘no’ votes from Councilmembers Horton, Coombs, Amy Wiles, Ruben Medina, Alli Jackson and Rob Andrews.