HUDSON, Colo. — The legal nonprofit Towards Justice, representing Hudson residents and the nonprofit Together Colorado, has amended a lawsuit filed over the summer to block a proposed ICE detention center set to operate out of a defunct correctional facility in the small Weld County town located about 30 miles northeast of Denver.
"This detention center is not in compliance and can't move forward with operations at least until the people of Hudson and the Town Council have an opportunity for their voices to be heard," said David Seligman, Executive Director of Towards Justice.
The lawsuit was recently updated to include new claims, including a long-standing public statement from Town of Hudson officials that, "The Town does not have approval authority over federal immigration detention operations."
New documents obtained by the plaintiffs, dated 10 days after that memo, show the opposite, according to Seligman.
The document from Hudson Planning Director Jennifer Woods identifies the current property as a "correctional facility." A Conditional Use Permit was approved for that former correctional facility back in 2008. The document also reads "a liberal construction of this definition, which the [Land Development Code] allows, falls in favor of considering the ICE facility a correctional facility."
The document goes on to say correctional facilities are not "a listed use" in the Code. Woods cited the Code saying, "When a proposed principal or accessory land use is not specifically identified as allowed in a zoning district in the permitted use table, the use is not permitted."
The only way for that type of land use to be approved, would be after a thorough review by the planning director who would need to consider scale, traffic impacts, stormwater impacts, utility demands etc.
Seligman describes what happened next as "wrong and absurd."
In the town document, Woods concludes that a "correctional facility" is so similar to a "government building" or a "safety service facility" that it should be treated as the same and therefore allowed by right. The current property is zoned to allow government buildings and safety service facilities.
"GEO is an out-of-state, multi-billion-dollar private prison company, seeking to operate a private immigration detention center for the federal government, for ICE. So, this is not a correctional center, which in any case wouldn't be permissible under zoning laws. Additionally, even if it were a correctional facility, it is nothing like a government building," said Seligman.
The town document reports that the Conditional Use Permit that allowed the former correctional facility to operate, is still in effect.
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Nonprofit says it's filed lawsuit to block ICE detention center in Hudson
Seligman disagrees.
"The facility has not been used that way in more than a decade. Local law is abundantly clear, that Use has been abandoned. That Conditional Use Permit that was applied to allow the Alaska Department of Corrections to operate a private prison in the early 2000s, that no longer operates here," he said.
Denver7 reached out to the Town of Hudson for a response to these claims.
"The town objectively and lawfully applies it's land use code in all land use cases," Town Manager Bryce Lange said in a statement.
Seligman is hopeful the lawsuit ends with a public process about this project,
"The efforts to bend the law in service of the will of of GEO appear to do nothing more than to deny the people of Hudson an opportunity for their voices to be heard," he said.
Previously, the GEO Group has told Denver7 they hope the facility, "will play an important role in helping meet the need for increased federal immigration processing center bedspace."
The detention facility is expected to add about 1,200 beds to the more than 1,500 beds already in operation at Colorado's only currently operating ICE detention facility in Aurora.
Hudson residents and some members of Colorado’s Democratic Congressional delegation have been outspoken about bringing an ICE facility to Hudson since plans were announced last year.
Back in February, U.S. Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, along with Rep. Brittany Petersen, sent a joint letter to former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, asking her to abandon those plans, citing concerns with lack of oversight and reduced access to legal representation for detained individuals.
Read the entire amended complaint and newly obtained town documents here and in the embed below:
