Glenwood Springs officials are recommending that the city’s planning and zoning commission uphold a special use permit approved in 2003 for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s short-term holding facility and administrative office near the Glenwood Meadows shopping area, despite data that shows ICE detained people for over 12 hours at the site, in violation of the conditions of its permit.
According to city officials, a change in federal policy in December allows ICE to operate the facility — located in the Midland Center at 100 Midland Ave., Suites 110 and 210 — without meeting local municipal codes and requirements for building leases. But city staffers hope that by keeping the detention facility’s permit in place, ICE will agree to provide quarterly reporting on its detentions and comply with the maximum 12-hour hold time.
The city released its recommendation in a staff report released Thursday before the commission’s hearing Tuesday to consider whether to revoke the facility’s permit or take other measures “to address the violation.”
“Staff recommends the applicant be required to take corrective measures to ensure compliance with the conditions of the approved special use permit,” city staff stated in the report, which was overseen by Trent L. Hyatt, director of Economic and Community Development.
Tuesday’s permit hearing comes after public records requests and complaints from residents as well as reporting by news organizations prompted the city to review data showing eight people had been detained for longer than 12 hours during a wave of immigration enforcement in late May last year, in possible violation of ICE’s own internal policy as well as the terms of its city-issued permit.
Aspen Journalism has since analyzed about 15 years of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) 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 — and found additional instances of ICE detaining people more than 12 hours at the Glenwood Springs facility.
Between Jan. 1, 2011, and March 10, ICE appears to have exceeded the detainment time limit 17 times, with about half of those detainments occurring over the past year amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Three people were also detained for more than 12 hours during Donald Trump’s first presidency, one person during Joe Biden’s presidency and at least four people during Barack Obama’s two terms as president.
According to Aspen Journalism’s analysis of the data, the longest amount of time that ICE detained someone at its temporary holding facility during the 15-year time period was 24 hours in 2013 during the Obama administration, followed by almost 22.5 hours on March 5.
The data also shows that a higher proportion of those detained at the Glenwood Springs facility during the first year of Trump’s second term do not have a criminal conviction, compared with the previous year under the Biden administration.
Smaller ICE holding facilities — located at the agency’s field offices, federal buildings and other locations — are used to process and temporarily detain people before they’re transferred to larger detention centers or released. They are basic spaces often without beds that are not designed for overnight stays, and have faced growing scrutiny in Colorado and across the country over limited oversight and rising detention lengths.
Previously, ICE's own standards capped hold-room detainment at 12 hours. That changed June 24 when an internal memo waived the 12-hour rule and extended the maximum to 72 hours, "absent exceptional circumstances." This exemption had already appeared in a 2024 ICE policy document but is absent from both the 2025 and 2011 federal detention standards.
Notice of violation
In response to data showing that people have been held over the 12-hour limit at the facility in Glenwood Springs, city officials issued a notice of violation March 25 to the property owner and tenants including ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), ICE’s main investigative arm. The city’s notice of violation was also sent to the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which manages commercial leases for government agencies and oversaw the city permit application for the ICE facility in 2003.
According to the staff report released Thursday, city officials had not received a response regarding ICE’s documented violations of the city permit — or confirmation that any of the interested parties would be attending the April 28 hearing.
The city has, however, seen cooperation from ICE and the GSA when it comes to recent safety and building-compliance issues. After records requests and resident complaints revealed the city never issued a final certificate of occupancy for the ICE facility before the agency moved in about two decades ago, the city conducted an inspection in February and found several issues that needed to be addressed before a final certificate could be issued.
According to the staff report, the property passed the city’s follow-up inspection April 9 and has since been issued an official certificate of occupancy.
“Improvements related to safety concerns have been completed to date,” the April 23 report stated. “However, neither the property owner nor tenants have responded to the City inquiries regarding exceedance of the 12-hour hold maximum outlined by the [special use permit].”
ICE and the GSA did not reply to Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio’s request for comment by deadline for this story, but in a previous March 12 email, an ICE spokesperson said the agency could not comment on the alleged violation of its previous 12-hour-hold-limit policy and the conditions of its city-issued permit, claiming the data was “unverified” and published by a third party.
According to the Deportation Data Project’s website, the group uses public records 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 agency spokesperson also denied 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 such as the one in Glenwood Springs.
Aspen Public Radio and Aspen Journalism also sent a request for comment to the building’s owners association, along with 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.
JG Housing Solutions did not respond by publication deadline, but Catherine Lee, president of the Midland Center Lot 1 Owners Association, shared a statement confirming that a final certificate of occupancy had been issued earlier this month and that the building has “no outstanding issues with either the state or the city of Glenwood Springs.”
Lee also expressed concern over local protesters who have been encouraging residents to pressure the owners association and tenants in the Midland Center to take action to evict ICE from the building — and clarified that the owners association “exists solely to maintain and manage the common areas — such as the parking lot and exterior building walls — and to enforce the covenants regarding permitted uses of the units.”
“The HOA has neither the authority nor the responsibility to enforce federal immigration law, nor can it dictate who occupies individually owned units,” Lee said. “ICE’s occupancy is consistent with the allowed uses under our covenants, and there have been no conflicts with other tenants since they moved in alongside a gymnastics academy, dance academy, and preschool in 2004.”
City recommendation
In its staff report to the Glenwood Springs Planning and Zoning Commission — composed of local residents appointed by the city — officials outlined the process and potential outcomes that the commission is required to follow under city rules for the ICE facility’s permit hearing April 28.
According to city officials, the criteria that the commission is required to consider include whether “there is a departure from” the city-approved plans or conditions of the ICE facility, whether its special use permit was “established by false representation” or “issued in error,” and whether there was “any other violation” of the permit the city approved in 2003.
Depending on its findings, the commission can then decide to revoke or uphold the ICE facility’s permit. If the commission upholds the permit, it can also “require the applicant to take corrective measures” to address any violations or “direct employees or agents of the City to enter onto the premises and to take the corrective measures.”
Although the city found that ICE had violated the conditions of its permit by detaining people for longer than the 12-hour limit, which could be grounds to revoke its permit, city officials Thursday recommended that the commission uphold the permit.
Instead, they suggested requiring ICE and the GSA to provide “quarterly reporting of the number of detainees that have been processed at the facility and the amount of time that each detainee is held in order to determine compliance.”
The staff wrote in the report that they believe ICE’s violation of the 12-hour limit is “not the intention of local agency staff” and is “related to delays with the federal government contractor that provides transportation from the property to the regional long-term hold facility in Aurora, Colorado” — although they did not say where this information came from.
According to the city’s staff report, a federal regulation requiring that “leased buildings” that house government facilities follow local municipal code rules and inspections was repealed in December, which could mean ICE and the GSA may ignore the city’s potential quarterly reporting and compliance requirements, even if the permit is upheld next week.
The change in regulation could also mean that ICE and the GSA might file a lawsuit against the city if it revokes the special use permit or continue to operate the facility without a permit in the future. The city staff memo anticipates that “judicial enforcement may be challenged under the Supremacy Clause [of the U.S. Constitution]” granting the federal government the advantage when there is a conflict with state law.
“Nevertheless, following through with the local land use process that would apply to this [special use permit], or any validly issued SUP, is appropriate regardless of any potential federal challenge,” the city staff report stated.
Community pushback
Some local residents and immigrant-rights advocates have been protesting the ICE facility in Glenwood Springs for months, pressuring the city, the building's condo owners association and the facility's landlord to remove ICE from the Midland Center.
In addition to their concerns about the previously missing certificate of occupancy and increasingly extended detention times, residents argue that the facility is incompatible with the city's current zoning rules, which were updated in 2018 to include stricter criteria regarding community impact, compatibility with surrounding uses and alignment with the city's 2023 Comprehensive Plan. Advocates point to the ICE detention facility's location in a commercial center next to a public trail as well as what they view as its adverse impact on community health and its lack of local economic benefit as evidence of that incompatibility.
In a March 10 interview for a previous story on the ICE holding facility, City Attorney Karl Hanlon, who also provides legal counsel to Aspen Public Radio, acknowledged that the facility's permitting is probably inconsistent with current zoning policy, but he said that that alone is not grounds to revoke ICE's special use permit — and that only a permit violation would meet that legal threshold. Hanlon also acknowledged that regular city inspections were not made a condition of the 2003 special use permit, although they could have been.
In a community report shared with Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio on Friday, unnamed authors also expressed their concern that the ICE facility should be classified and inspected by the city as a “Group I-3” detention center rather than a “Group B” business office under the International Building Code (IBC), which was developed by the International Code Council and is the predominant building code in the country.
Under IBC regulations, Group I-3 classification includes buildings such as detention centers and jails where more than five people “are under restraint or security” and requires stricter safety and evacuation standards.
According to Aspen Journalism’s analysis of ICE data published by the Deportation Data Project between Oct. 1, 2022, and March 10, there were three days when there were five or more people held at a time in the ICE detention facility in Glenwood Springs during the same wave of immigration enforcement in late May when eight people were held over the 12-hour limit.
Glenwood Springs city officials did not respond to a request for comment by deadline Friday regarding whether this finding could impact the special use permit, safety requirements or the continued operation of the ICE facility.
Architect weighs in
Local resident Dean Moffatt was the original planner and architect for the Midland Center, including the ICE facility. He and his firm were hired to design a commercial facility that was powered by geo-exchange, a renewable-energy source from the ground.
Moffatt said it wasn’t until after the Midland Center had gone through its approval and permitting process that he was asked by his client — the local owner of the building at the time — to design an interior space for the GSA, which would be leasing two suites in the building.
Although Moffatt said he was not told directly what the federal government would use the space for, it didn’t take long to understand that it included an ICE holding facility.
“It started out quite innocuous, and then when we [got] into the details, it [became] a detention facility, for instance, cells and a sally port, where you drive a truck into — it's big enough to drive a small bus in,” Moffatt said.
As the person who designed the detainment facility, Moffatt said the two holding cells — one for men and one for women — were not built to hold large numbers of people nor were they equipped with beds for overnight stays or detaining people for longer than 12 hours.
“I never saw the place in action, but they were bedless, an open toilet in each and not very comfortable,” Moffatt said. “And then there were some little rooms for interrogation, but it was basically processing people and then sending them on their way.”
According to Aspen Journalism’s analysis of ICE data between Jan. 1, 2011, and March, 2026 there were 23 instances of a detainee being held overnight at the Glenwood Springs facility — defined as booking out on a date after their book-in date.
Although overnight stays were not a specific condition of the special use permit issued by the city in 2003, the planning and zoning commission will consider similar violations of the 12-hour limit in its decision next week.
The planning and zoning hearing will take place Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Glenwood Springs City Hall. The public meeting will also be streamed online.
