Colorado Activists Protest Potential New ICE Detention Center Near Denver

Photo: Demonstrators gather outside the dormant Hudson Correctional Facility on Sept. 13, 2025, protesting reported plans by the Trump administration to turn it into Colorado’s newest immigrant detention facility. (Photo by Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)

This story by Chase Woodruff appear3ed on Colorado Newsline on September 13, 2025.

A crowd of more than 100 people stood outside the gates of an empty prison in Hudson on Saturday, protesting reported plans by the Trump administration to turn it into Colorado’s newest immigrant detention facility.

“I see people from all walks of life here today, and that’s truly, truly beautiful,” said Julian Camera, an organizer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. “We’re going to overcome this. We’re going to keep fighting.”

The dormant Hudson Correctional Facility is owned by a real estate investment trust and was formerly leased to private-prison company The GEO Group, which operated the prison for a span of just five years after its 2009 opening, during which the facility housed inmates from Alaska. The prison has a capacity of about 1,200 beds — only slightly less than the population of the town of Hudson, about 30 miles northeast of Denver on Interstate 76.

The facility is one of six potential new ICE detention centers in Colorado revealed by the ACLU as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit earlier this year. Internal documents obtained by The Washington Post last month again indicated that the facility, along with another dormant prison in Walsenburg, is under consideration by the agency, but no formal announcement has yet been made.

Representatives for ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

Colorado is currently home to only one ICE detention center, an Aurora facility also operated by The GEO Group. The potential expansions, which could triple the state’s immigrant detention capacity, are part of the Trump administration’s plans for a sweeping mass deportation program, bolstered by $45 billion in the Republican federal spending and tax cut law approved in July.

“That money doesn’t just come from Hudson or Walsenburg — that’s everyone’s money,” Camera told the crowd. “That comes from Hudson, that comes from Denver, that comes from the state of Colorado, and the people of Hudson should be concerned. Why? Because now their city becomes dependent on tearing families apart.”

In his second term, Trump has pledged to carry out the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” aiming to remove all of the estimated 12 million immigrants in the country without permanent legal status, regardless of how long they have been in the country, the legal status of their family members or whether they have criminal records.

Protesters at Saturday’s demonstration carried signs that likened ICE detention centers to concentration camps. Speakers especially objected to the opening of a new facility in a remote rural area, where detainees’ families and legal aid groups would find it more difficult to visit.

Hudson Mayor Joe Hammock told Denver7 last month that he would support the facility reopening “like any business that wants to open up in Hudson.” While operational, the facility supported about 200 jobs.

But Gina McAfee, statewide coordinator of Colorado Immigrant Protection Teams, pointed to studies showing that prisons don’t provide the economic benefits that local boosters often promise.

“The bottom line — I would ask, did Hudson’s economy improve when this facility was operational? We think not,” she told the crowd at Saturday’s protest.

“We urge you to push back on any local or state entity who needs to approve of the plan to reopen this facility,” McAfee added. “Let’s all just say no.”