An officer wears the logo of the GEO Group private prison company.Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty
An ICE detention center employee shot a woman on Thursday night after a protest outside an ICE facility in Aurora, Colorado, according to an Aurora Police Department statement released Friday afternoon. The center is operated by the private prison firm GEO Group, the largest recipient of private contracts with ICE to run immigration detention centers.
A GEO Group employee, Brandon Booth, was arrested on suspicion of attempted second-degree murder and other charges. The woman, who investigators said was part of the protest, was injured and taken to the hospital but is expected to survive. Another woman who was with her was not hurt.
According to the Aurora Police Department, Booth and other GEO Group staff were unable to enter the facility due to the protest. The two women argued with the employees and began walking away after taking photos of their cars. Booth then took out a personal firearm and fired one shot at the two women, hitting one of them in her lower body, before getting back into his car and driving away.
“We are aware that an off-duty Aurora ICE Processing Center employee was involved in a shooting incident,” a GEO Group spokesperson wrote in a statement. “This individual has been placed on unpaid administrative leave, and we will fully cooperate with law enforcement.”
“We remain committed to ensuring an ethical, thorough, objective, and comprehensive review of this case,” Aurora Chief of Police Todd Chamberlain said. “Violence of any kind will not be tolerated in Aurora. Constitutional rights are a pivotal part of a just society—violence is not.”
Allegations of violence against protesters have dogged GEO Group. An employee at Delaney Hall, an immigration detention center operated by GEO Group in Newark, New Jersey, allegedly struck a protester with his car last month. Court records show that the employee at the center of those allegations, Thomas K. Brown, claimed protesters caused him to drive his red Dodge Challenger into the woman who was struck by hitting the driver’s side of his car.
Delaney Hall staff were also alleged to have beaten and punished detainees for speaking out and organizing to protest conditions within the facility. The employees, along with federal immigration agents, allegedly denied medical care, turned off ventilation, and deployed pepper spray. Advocates say conditions in the facility have not improved even after detainees held labor and hunger strikes and attention from media and lawmakers in June.
Earlier this month, the Adams County Health Department said that GEO Group was preventing it from conducting a health investigation required by state law of the same ICE detention center in Aurora, after a possible spread of tuberculosis in the facility. On Tuesday, the Guardian reported that at least 12 detainees tested positive. One detainee told the paper that those impacted by the outbreak are being isolated in areas without air conditioning. On Tuesday, ICE denied any active tuberculosis cases, but the next day, officials said that one person who had tested positive was “treated, cleared, and removed from the country.”