Immigration and detention: Aurora ICE facility under scrutiny

For years, an immigration detention center in an industrial Aurora neighborhood has operated without much attention or scrutiny from the community.

But in 2019, the privately-operated detention center’s population exploded due to what President Trump calls a crisis at the border. The facility’s capacity nearly doubled to accommodate a rush of people who have turned up at the United States-Mexico border. Many are seeking asylum, saying their home countries are too dangerous.

As conditions on the border dominated the headlines, people in Colorado began to focus their emotions about the intense immigration policy debate on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center on Aurora’s Oakland Street. Complaints about medical care and mistreatment began to grow louder after Rocky Mountain PBS published a long-secret internal review into the death of a man from Iran who died in ICE custody in 2017.

The RMPBS Insight with John Ferrugia team spent months investigating complaints and chronicling intensifying criticism of the detention center, marked by protests, counter-protests, lawsuits and critical government reports about how people are treated while they are held there awaiting the resolution of their immigration cases.