A contagious, airborne disease is the kind of thing public-health investigators are supposed to be able to walk in and examine. At the Aurora ICE Processing Center in Colorado, they cannot. The facility's private operator, GEO Group, has been obstructing a state investigation into active tuberculosis there - denying investigators access to the infected patient, withholding medical records, and refusing to hand over data on where detainees have been moved - despite a June 25 public-health order [1].
How many people are infected is itself contested. Officials have confirmed one active tuberculosis case; a detainee told The Guardian that at least 12 people had tested positive [1][2]. ICE denies there is an outbreak [2]. State health officials set a deadline of July 17 for GEO to grant access - the basic step of letting investigators see the patient and the records, behind a wall the company controls [1].
What makes the standoff more than a local dispute is what happened alongside it. As GEO resisted the health probe, the same company was awarded a five-year, 529-million-dollar federal contract to open a second Colorado detention facility - about 1,188 new beds that would push the state's ICE capacity toward 2,720, nearly double what it is now [2].
Data
| Before (Aurora) | 1,532 ICE detention beds in Colorado |
|---|---|
| After ($529M new facility) | 2,720 ICE detention beds in Colorado |
The record here is the pairing. An operator is stonewalling a government investigation into a communicable disease inside a facility it runs - one holding roughly 1,249 people, plus the staff who work there and the community around it - and is being rewarded, at the same moment, with a contract to run nearly twice as many beds [1][2]. Whether the count is one case or twelve, the thing investigators cannot do is the point: check, behind a wall the company will not open [1].
