A short-term detention facility and administrative office operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a commercial center in western Glenwood Springs appears to have held multiple detainees for longer than 12 hours last year, in possible violation of its internal policy as well as the terms of its special use permit approved by the city in 2003, according to Aspen Journalism’s analysis of ICE data published by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California Berkeley School of Law in collaboration with UCLA’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy.
Glenwood Springs city officials last week said that the city plans to conduct its own investigation and analysis of ICE data after hearing a range of concerns from local residents involving the holding facility, located in the Midland Center at 100 Midland Ave. near the Glenwood Meadows shopping area, including that people were being detained by ICE over the maximum time allowed last year as the Trump administration carried out its promise to ramp up immigration enforcement.
If the city confirms that ICE violated the 12-hour condition of its special use permit, officials said the city’s planning and zoning commission will probably conduct a hearing to consider revoking the permit, which could force the facility to close.
“We're still trying to confirm the data,” said City Manager Steve Boyd. “But it does look like there have been a number of instances where somebody was held for more than 12 hours, and if that's the case, then that would be a violation of the special use permit.”
This comes as the city recently inspected the holding facility and found other building-compliance issues after records requests and complaints from residents exposed that even though ICE’s special use permit and safety inspections were approved more than two decades ago, the city never issued a final certificate of occupancy before the tenant moved in after the construction of the Midland Center.
“The inspection identified several items to be addressed before a final certificate of occupancy can be issued,” city officials stated in a news release March 5. “At this time, the city has no evidence that the building is unsafe for occupancy.”
Smaller, lesser-known ICE holding facilities in Colorado and across the country — located at the agency’s field offices, in federal buildings and in other locations — are typically used to process and detain people before they are transferred to a larger detention center or released. They often consist of small concrete rooms with no beds and are not designed for overnight use.
But these holding facilities have come under increased scrutiny in the past year for having little oversight amid rising detention lengths and other human rights concerns. According to reporting by the Colorado Times Recorder on March 4, the Glenwood Springs facility is one of at least nine short-term ICE detention facilities across the state. In CTR’s analysis of the same ICE detention data shared by the Deportation Data Project, it found multiple facilities where people were detained longer than 12 hours.
Nationwide, reporting by the Guardian on Oct. 30 found that ICE has used at least 170 holding facilities across the country, including at 25 ICE field offices. Its analysis of ICE detention data also found that the agency had violated its own policy by detaining people at these sites for longer than permitted.
Until last summer, ICE operated under its own 2025 National Detention Standards and the 2011 Performance-Based National Detention Standards for short-term hold rooms, which both state that an individual may not be detained in an ICE facility’s hold room for more than 12 hours. But the agency on June 24 sent an internal memo to its field office directors waiving the 12-hour rule and extending the maximum detainment time for short-term holding facilities to 72 hours, “absent exceptional circumstances.” This exceptional-circumstances exemption was also included in a 2024 holding facility policy document from ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) prior to the June memo, but it does not appear in the 2025 and 2011 National Detention Standards wording.
An enforcement surge
A month before the June waiver was issued, there was a targeted wave of immigration enforcement in the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys by ICE ERO agents, according to an analysis by Aspen Journalism of the most recent release of data published by the Deportation Data Project.
Twenty-four people were arrested in May in Garfield and Pitkin counties, the highest number of ICE ERO arrests recorded in a single month from January 2025 through mid-October. (The data doesn’t go through to the end of 2025.)
Twenty-one of those arrests took place May 19-22, during which time eight people were detained at the Glenwood Springs holding facility for longer than 12 hours — with the longest detention of an individual recorded at 16 hours.
Overall, there were 71 detentions recorded at the local ICE facility last year during Trump’s first nine months in office — between Jan. 20 and Oct. 15 — compared with nine detentions (with the longest detention time being about nine hours) during the same time period under the Biden administration the previous year, although historical data shows that 2024 was a relatively low year for ICE arrests in the region.
Despite repeated claims by the Trump administration that federal immigration agencies are targeting dangerous criminals, about half of the people detained at the facility during the president’s first nine months in office last year had no criminal conviction and only about 18% had violent criminal records.
“Evidence shows that the people going through this facility are not hardened criminals, not the worst of the worst, but largely people who have been living in our communities,” said Sally Boughton, a local resident who spoke during public comment at a City Council meeting March 5.
Under the Biden administration during the same time period in 2024, all of the people held at the facility had a criminal conviction.
These detention numbers do not include immigration arrests made by other federal agencies assisting ICE ERO, such as Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Marshals, and Customs and Border Protection.
Federal response
In response to a request for comment on these findings, ICE and its parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security, did not directly address the concern that the agency had violated its previous 12-hour-hold-limit policy and the conditions of its city-issued special use permit with the May detentions in question.
Instead, an ICE spokesperson said in a March 12 email that the agency could not comment on “unverified data” because it was published by a third party and not confirmed by DHS or ICE.
“The Deportation [Data] Project created by UC Berkeley is an external organization that DHS cannot verify the source of, accuracy, completeness or methodology of the data,” the spokesperson said.
According to the Deportation Data Project’s website, the group is made up of about a dozen academics and lawyers from top universities and law firms around the country. The group uses Freedom of Information Act requests and litigation to gather datasets “directly from the government,” and it also publishes datasets “that the government has posted proactively or in response to others’ requests.”
In the March 12 email, the ICE spokesperson pushed back against other concerns from local residents and findings reported in state and national news outlets alleging a lack of oversight and transparency as well as inadequate conditions at smaller holding facilities and field offices like the one in Glenwood Springs. The spokesperson stated that these facilities “conform to all national detention standards and are inspected regularly.”
Although ICE did not respond to follow-up questions about its specific inspection process for short-term holding facilities like the one in Glenwood Springs, ICE states on its website that it works with DHS to “employ a robust, multilevel oversight and compliance program” and that “ERO monitors detention conditions through daily on-site compliance reviews.”
The spokesperson also stated in the March 12 email that “these locations are not ‘hidden’ or ‘black sites,’ they are ICE suboffices” where some people “may be asked to check in for appointments and where our officers report for work, conduct investigations, process arrests and may temporarily hold detainees before transferring them to a detention center.” The spokesperson described these facilities as “akin to a sheriff’s office or police department suboffice.”
Unlike most sheriff and police offices, however, the local ICE holding facility and office are located in an unmarked section of a commercial building. As of late May, a small laminated sign, which confirmed the site as a “U.S. Immigration Glenwood Springs Office,” was taped to the door but has since been taken down.
On ICE’s website, the property housing the holding facility is listed as a “field office” for Garfield, Eagle, Pitkin and Lake counties, but the page makes no mention of a short-term detention facility at the location and the listed phone number does not have a voicemail answering service. ICE’s official detention facilities page lists only the Denver Contract Detention Facility in Aurora and does not include its short-term holding facilities around the state.
In response to specific inquiries about ICE’s special use permit and certificate of occupancy, the ICE spokesperson deferred to “the landlord for the property” as well as the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which manages commercial leases and real estate for government agencies. The GSA oversaw the city permit application, which, according to a confirmation letter from the city in 2003, was approved to allow “6,751 sq. ft. of the Midland Center commercial building to be used as an office, processing and detention center for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
“GSA remains committed to working with all of our partner agencies,” a GSA spokesperson said in a March 11 statement. “We remain focused on supporting this administration’s goals by providing the best workplaces for federal agencies to meet their mission.”
Aspen Public Radio and Aspen Journalism also sent requests for comment to members of the family that appears in property tax records and state business filings to be associated with JG Housing Solutions — a Florida-based limited liability company that is listed as the current owner of the section of the building that ICE occupies, along with a member of the Midland Center’s Property Owners Association and the Integrated Mountain Property Management group — but did not hear back by publication deadline.
Holding facility history
ICE’s short-term detention facility and field office was approved unanimously for a special use permit at its current location in the Midland Center by the Glenwood Springs Planning and Zoning Commission in a public hearing May 27, 2003.
The property, 100 Midland Ave., was zoned for “general commercial” use by the city and had been approved for a large commercial development, known as the Midland Center, where local organizations such as RFTA and Lift Up now have offices. The center, which encompasses two buildings with at least a dozen tenants, also currently houses businesses such as a fitness center, a tax accountant office, and medical and dental offices, along with a federal Social Security Administration office that occupies a large portion of the lower level of one of the buildings.
In a report prepared by city staff ahead of the planning and zoning meeting in May 2003, city officials acknowledged that the ICE holding facility, office space and garage space proposed for Midland Center’s suites 110 and 210 would require a special use permit in part because of its intended use as a short-term detention center, which was at odds with the property’s commercial zoning requirements.
The hold room area is approximately 438 square feet, according to the report that cites application materials, with other processing and support areas totaling 2,100 square feet, plus a garage space of 1,376 square feet for vehicles that are used for transporting detainees.
“The holding rooms are designed to hold detainees for not more than 12 hours,” the city report stated. “Once the individual is processed, they are transported somewhere else.”
City Attorney Karl Hanlon, who also provides legal counsel to Aspen Public Radio, was present at the meeting when the permit was approved over two decades ago. According to Hanlon as well as the city’s record of the meeting minutes from that day, the planning and zoning commission had no major objections to GSA’s special use permit request on ICE’s behalf.
But several city planning commissioners did ask if the facility would have any increased security needs or operations outside the building. The GSA representative applying for the permit on ICE’s behalf responded by saying that there would be no noticeable activity outside the facility because they want the building to look like others around it. According to the meeting minutes, the representative also shared that ICE operated other similar facilities in towns “where people don’t know what they are.”
Hanlon also noted that there was no public comment given at the meeting despite significant community pushback against a similar detention facility that was eventually denied in Carbondale earlier that same spring.
“Nobody spoke at the hearing in Glenwood, but a lot of people spoke at a board of adjustments hearing in Carbondale just a few weeks ahead of that,” Hanlon said.
According to an article published by The Aspen Times on May 8, 2003, the Carbondale Board of Adjustments overturned town staff’s decision to issue a building permit for an immigration “detention facility” near the intersection of Highway 133 and Main Street after about 200 local residents showed up at the hearing.
The federal immigration agency, however, told the newspaper it wasn’t giving up its search for a space to base its local operations and would probably refocus on Glenwood Springs as its next potential location.
According to city records, many of which were released recently as a result of open-records requests by concerned residents, the special use permit for the ICE facility at the Midland Center required that the site be “governed by any and all conditions imposed by the Planning and Zoning Commission, as well as all other applicable city codes and ordinances” and “all development shall be in accordance with approved plans and application materials.”
In a letter to the GSA on May 28, 2003, the city confirmed the permit approval but stipulated that the applicant meet with the city’s fire protection analyst to produce a plan for emergency evacuation and medical transport as well as submit an exterior-lighting plan in compliance with the city regulations for review before an official special use permit could be signed and issued.
In May 2004, city staff sent an update to the facility’s architect saying it had sent copies of the official special use permit to be shared with the GSA for its final signature, although exterior lighting details for the building had not yet been shared for city approval.
“These should be submitted as soon as possible in order not to delay building permits or certificates of occupancy,” said Jill Peterson, the city planner at the time.
According to city records, a temporary certificate of occupancy was eventually issued once most of the building construction had been completed in December 2004. But over two decades later, after concerned residents requested that the city produce documentation of a final certificate of occupancy, the city announced in the March 5 news release that it could not find any record of one being issued.
“It appears this was an administrative error that the city did not issue a formal certificate of occupancy,” Hanlon said. “[The ICE facility] passed a final inspection, so there were no life-safety issues, but the building still had maybe a little bit of paving or landscaping or something like that to finish.”
In response to recent community concerns, however, city officials conducted a new inspection of the ICE holding facility on Feb. 25 and found several items that needed to be addressed before a formal certificate of occupancy can be issued. Those included replacing nonfunctioning emergency exit lighting in the facility, updating old fire sprinklers for the entire building and providing the city with a current copy of ICE’s emergency evacuation procedures.
“There's a memo from the fire marshal back at the time that he had a copy of the evacuation plan and that he had signed off on it in the spring of 2004. … That was a condition of the special use permit being issued, but we asked for an updated one,” Hanlon said.
Hanlon and Boyd, the city manager, said things such as the emergency-exit lighting and sprinklers also would’ve had to pass inspection when the official special use permit and temporary certificate of occupancy were issued more than two decades ago.
“Some new exit-signage issues were flagged [during the recent inspection], so they're working on that now, and the sprinkler issue is also not a decades-long problem,” Boyd said. “The sprinkler heads are just reaching the end of their useful life, and that triggers a review.”
The city said it now has its own updated copy of the evacuation plan, and it’s working with ICE, the landlord and the building’s Property Owners Association (POA) to resolve the remaining issues by the end of this month.
“It is an issue of incredible importance to the community around what's being done there,” Hanlon said. “The city is, however, obligated to deal with everybody the same way under the code.”
Finalizing an official certificate of occupancy, however, may not matter if the city finds that ICE has violated the 12-hour condition of its special use permit.
Residents urge action
Local residents and immigrant-rights advocates have been staging protests outside the ICE facility in Glenwood Springs since last year, speaking at City Council meetings in recent weeks, and last month, they created a public call-to-action page encouraging their fellow community members to pressure the city, the building’s POA and the facility’s landlord to “evict ICE” from the Midland Center.
“I know the [City] Council's powers are limited in terms of what you can do in the face of the federal government, but you can end the city's cooperation with ICE,” said Dawn Dexter, a local resident who spoke during public comment at the March 5 City Council meeting. “I feel like we all have a duty to throw the sand into the gears of rising authoritarianism.”
In addition to voicing concerns about the city allowing the facility to operate without a final certificate of occupancy and ICE holding people for longer than the maximum time allowed, local residents have also argued that the holding facility does not meet the city’s current development codes and zoning rules, which were expanded in 2018 to include stricter criteria that the city is required to weigh before granting a special use permit — things such as compatibility with surrounding uses, community impact and alignment with the city’s 2023 Comprehensive Plan goals.
On their public call-to-action page, advocates list what they view as the ICE detention facility’s major incompatibilities with current zoning rules, including its location in a commercial business center adjacent to a public trail, its lack of local economic benefit, and its adverse impact on community health and welfare.
“The people being treated so inhumanely are our neighbors, our friends, our family, members of our community,” Boughton said at the March 5 City Council meeting. “This is a blight on our community, and it is one that the public has been largely unaware of.”
Hanlon, the city attorney, said most of the changes to the city’s zoning rules came in 2018 when it passed a new development code: Title 70 of the municipal code. Hanlon agreed that the ICE facility’s permitting is probably no longer consistent with current city policy under Title 70 or the desires of the community. But he said that that alone isn’t grounds for the city to revoke the agency’s special use permit.
“As of today, I do believe that it probably would not be allowed underneath current zoning,” Hanlon said. “However, the U.S. Supreme Court has been very clear about preexisting uses that are permitted, … and so the city or any other governmental entity can't take a property or a property right except in very limited circumstances without just compensation.”
A violation of the special use permit conditions for the ICE facility, however, would qualify as one of those “very limited circumstances,” according to Hanlon.
Despite the ICE spokesperson’s statement that the agency’s short-term holding facilities “conform to all national detention standards and are inspected regularly,” residents have also voiced concerns that the ICE facility in Glenwood Springs is not subject to regular health and safety inspections by the city to ensure that basic human rights needs are being met.
Hanlon acknowledged that regular city inspections were not negotiated as a condition of the special use permit that it approved in 2003.
“We do have a right to inspect buildings on a complaint-driven basis,” Hanlon said. “But we could have — and, in hindsight, probably should have — asked for a condition like that. It looks like any reasonable person would have done that in the context of 2026, and what's happening, right?”
If the city does find that ICE has violated its special use permit and a public hearing is held, Hanlon said the planning and zoning commission will only be able to consider whether to revoke the facility’s permit or not, rather than using it as an opportunity to negotiate new permit terms such as mandatory city inspections or, on ICE’s part, extending its detention limits.
“In this instance, GSA holds the special use permit, so they would be notified that we were holding a hearing and have an opportunity to provide whatever they wanted to provide,” Hanlon said. “The planning commission would then consider that evidence and make a decision on revoking or not revoking the special use permit. They would not be in a position to modify that special use permit.”
Lawmakers demand answers
On March 5, a day after the Colorado Times Recorder reported that ICE had detained people for longer than allowed at its short-term holding facilities across Colorado, 32 state lawmakers — including Rep. Elizabeth Velasco (D-Glenwood Springs) — sent a letter to the leaders of ICE and DHS demanding “immediate transparency and reasonable notice of operations” for all of its immigration and enforcement facilities in the state.
Their list of demands included confirmation of every Colorado site where ICE detains people and the basic services provided at these sites such as food and medical care. Their demands also included “time-limit custody tracking and controls to prevent prolonged confinement beyond accepted policy limits” and reports on any filed incidents involving things such as “use-of-force, grievances, medical emergency logs, substantial bodily injury, and deaths/near-deaths” at ICE facilities.
On March 11, U.S. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., attempted to conduct a congressional oversight inspection at the ICE holding facility in Glenwood Springs. In a video recording and news release shared after his attempted visit, Neguse said he tried to “request entry at the main doors of the facility, but no agency personnel presented themselves or responded via phone.”
“Our attempted inspection today in Garfield County raised far more questions than answers, and we intend to get to the bottom of it,” Neguse said in the video. “We know that the cruel and unconscionable practices of the Trump administration are wreaking havoc each and every day, including in communities like this one — and we’re going to continue to push back.”
That same day, Neguse and his fellow Democratic members of Colorado’s congressional delegation sent a letter to ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, demanding that the agency stop “detaining people for extended periods of time in small, confined rooms that are meant to be a temporary holding space” and requesting answers to a list of questions about ICE’s detainment practices by March 27. Neguse’s office did not confirm whether ICE had responded directly to the letter.
As of Tuesday, Velasco’s office said the state lawmakers had not yet received a response to their March 5 letter, but a spokesperson for ICE provided a statement regarding the letter to KDVR, the Fox31 television station in Denver. The statement contained much of the same information that the federal agency shared with Aspen Public Radio and Aspen Journalism about its detention standards and regular inspections, and suggested that lawmakers concerned about transparency should “make a formal request” to tour ICE facilities and offices “in line with ICE policies.”
In July, Neguse was part of a group of Democratic U.S. House lawmakers who sued the Trump administration over a new DHS policy that limits congressional members’ access to federal immigration detention centers and certain field offices by requiring them to provide notice of a visit at least seven days in advance on the grounds of ensuring safety. In December, a federal judge sided with the lawmakers that the new policy probably violates federal law, temporarily blocking it, but ICE appealed the ruling and the litigation is ongoing.
Leon Rodriguez, an immigration attorney based in Washington, D.C., and former director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said these kinds of actions by state and local governments are increasing across the country as a reaction to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown.
“It's not just detention — it's a mass deployment of ICE agents, it's warrantless encounters with people just kind of going, you know, about their business,” Rodriguez said. “There's just a lot of things going on that are motivating certain state and local governments to look for different ways to resist ICE — so one is the use and occupancy of particular facilities, [which] is a power that belongs to state and local governments.”
It’s not entirely clear what the impact of closing a short-term ICE facility such as the one in Glenwood Springs would be, and Rodriguez acknowledged the possibility that it could result in more overcrowding at larger detention centers or even ICE’s sending in more outside agents from cities such as Denver who are less familiar with the community.
“I think [these concerns] are valid to a point, but they're not the whole equation,” Rodriguez said. “ICE has an obligation to conduct its activities constitutionally. … Facilities should not be overcrowded, facilities should not be unsafe and facilities should deliver adequate health care.”
“The fact that they might run [into] a little stumbling block with a state and local government doesn't mean that they are then licensed to detain people in an unconstitutional manner. … They either need to regulate the number of people that they detain or … they need to figure out a different way,” Rodriguez said.
For its part, the city of Glenwood Springs plans to make headway with its own questions for ICE and its permit holder, the GSA, as it investigates whether ICE violated the conditions of the city’s special use permit, which could trigger a revocation hearing.
“We're asking them to cure deficiencies by the end of this month,” Boyd said. “And if there turns out to be a hearing that's needed, that would probably happen in the planning and zoning committee meeting in April.”
Boyd confirmed that he and Hanlon will be giving a public update to the City Council on the ICE holding facility at Thursday night’s meeting.
In the meantime, local residents such as Erin Anderson who have spoken out at recent City Council meetings are likely to continue pushing the city to act swiftly to resolve community concerns about the ICE detention facility.
“I don't believe that anyone here is OK with this being the legacy that we leave behind on Glenwood,” Anderson said at the March 5 City Council meeting. “I have never experienced and sat with more fear from moms and children in our community.”
Editor’s Note: Aspen Public Radio News Director Halle Zander contributed reporting for this story.
