On Friday, August 15, dozens of residents of the Colorado city of Walsenburg, as well as Colorado-based activists, held a protest against plans to reopen a for-profit prison as an ICE detention center. The Huerfano County Correctional Facility in Walsenburg is one of three sites in Colorado that ICE has identified to help meet the Trump administration’s mass deportation goals.
The protest was organized by the Friday Protest Group of Walsenburg and Grassroots Pueblo, with additional support from a caravan of organizers and community members traveling from Denver and across Colorado. Numerous groups joined, including Colorado Springs 50501, Fremont Indivisible, San Luis Valley Indivisible, Denver Freedom Warriors, and Colorado Indivisible.
“The town folks don’t want this concentration camp here, they are resistant to Walsenburg being known as a place that has a concentration camp, and the things that concentration camps are associated with,” said Dee Maes-Sandoval, an organizer with Walsenburg Friday Protest Group, denouncing the plans for an ICE facility at the Huerfano County Correctional Center
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” allocates billions for immigration enforcement, including USD 45 billion for immigrant detention centers. Records obtained through an ACLU Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit show that the Trump administration is preparing to expand ICE detention in six potential Colorado sites, including several facilities that have been shuttered for years. One of the facilities included in the six potential ICE detention center locations was Huerfano County Correctional Center in Walsenburg.
“When we found out about the incredible local effort to oppose the detention center in Walsenberg, we immediately wanted to offer support. At the end of the day, all of our tax dollars are going toward funding ICE’s expansion of detention centers and that’s not what the majority of people want. We want a real path to citizenship for immigrants, full due process rights for all people, and real economic revitalization for small towns that doesn’t come in the form of a detention center,” said Elle Taylor, a Colorado resident and organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Jason Valdez, a longtime Huerfano County resident and a member of Speak Up Southern Colorado, said that, “the mayor [of Walsenburg] in his interview said that the jail reopening as an ICE detention center would be a godsend.” However, according to Valdez, the privately run detention center would not provide any additional jobs to the community, only outside of it.
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