ICE signs contract to open new immigration detention center northeast of Denver

Seth Klamann, The Denver Post on Jul 13, 2026

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DENVER — The private prison giant Geo Group has signed a multiyear contract with the Trump administration to reopen a shuttered prison in Hudson, Colorado, and turn it into an immigration detention center.

The long-expected agreement will nearly double U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s immigrant detention capacity in Colorado. The new “Big Horn Contract Detention Center” will hold up to 1,188 detainees, Geo said in a news release Monday morning, on top of the 1,530 beds available at the state’s only other immigrant holding facility in Aurora, also operated by Geo.

The five-year contract between ICE and the company was signed Thursday and is worth up to $528.6 million, according to federal contracting records. Geo, in turn, will begin paying $250,000 in monthly rent to the company that owns the prison, the Chicago-based Highlands REIT, a real estate investment trust, later this year.

Once the prison opens and begins housing detainees, Highlands will receive more than $958,000 per month, according to federal securities filings. That will increase by 3% each year.

Hudson officials have not responded to a request for comment sent early Friday evening, nor have officials with ICE. Geo spokesman Christopher Ferreira referred The Denver Post to the company’s news release. In that announcement, CEO George C. Zoley said the new Hudson facility would “play an important role in helping meet the need for increased federal immigration processing center bedspace.”

In a community update posted in March, Hudson officials repeatedly said they had no power to stop the facility from reopening. State officials have similarly said they could do little to block Geo, Highlands and ICE from reaching a private agreement.

The company expects to make roughly $85 million from the facility in its first full year of operation, “excluding transportation revenue.”

Geo’s press release did not say when the facility would open. The lease between Geo and Highlands REIT begins Aug. 1 and will last for 88 months, according to securities filings.

The facility will be used exclusively by ICE, which had been looking for an additional detention center in Colorado for more than a year. The announcement ends speculation that the Hudson facility would be reopened, with the rumors helping prompt Democratic state legislators to pass a new law requiring more oversight of immigrant detention facilities in the state.

Last month, Geo filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s ability to impose new requirements — which include improved medical care and outside inspections — on the company, given its role as a federal contractor.

The signed contract comes more than a year after ICE said it was looking for additional detention bed space in Colorado, a search that quickly honed in on the Hudson facility. The onetime private prison, which was run by GEO, has been shuttered for more than a decade.

Members of Colorado’s congressional delegation were told last year that the facility would be reopened as a detention center, and records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado indicate that ICE signed a six-month letter contract for the facility in December.

The Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts have been a boon to Geo Group. In a May earnings call, Zoley said the company signed contracts worth $520 million in incremental annual revenue last year, the most in its history. Geo now has 26,000 beds under contract with ICE. Once the Hudson facility opens, roughly 10% of them will be in Colorado.

In December, the Geo subsidiary BI Incorporated, which is based in Boulder, signed a two-year, $121 million contract with ICE to provide “skip-tracing” services. The company provides ankle monitors and supervision to ICE detainees, and skip-tracing involves tracking down a detainee’s location.

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