The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a document with more than 115 pages that contains plans by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to expand its network of detention centers in the state.

Thus, the ACLU and the ACLU of Colorado filed a lawsuit against the ICE to obtain records on the agency's potential plans to expand immigration detention in Colorado and Wyoming.

Furthermore, the disclosure comes shortly after Congress passed a budget package providing $45 billion to ICE, with the goal of expanding its national immigration detention base.

The release states that this amount exceeds the budget of the entire federal prison system and could allow for the detention of more than 100,000 people daily.

“ICE has taken aggressive action to expand immigration detention at an unprecedented rate, fulfilling President Trump's promise campaign to separate families and deport immigrants who contribute to our communities and our economy,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's National Prison Project.

“We are already seeing the consequences of the administration's immigration policies, and the public has a right to know how their taxpayer dollars are being misused to further this dystopian agenda,” he continued.

The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, demands that ICE comply with the Freedom of Information Act and immediately turn over the requested records to the ACLU.

The charges that in the wake of the 2024 presidential organization election, private prison companies like GEO Group, Inc. and Core Civic have seen their profits skyrocket and are projected to raise billions more in public funds.

Even the president of GEO Group, it said, previously boasted that the Trump administration's mass detention and deportation agenda presented an “unprecedented opportunity.”

As a result, both congressional and immigrant rights advocates have repeatedly expressed concern about the potential expansion of the immigration detention system, urging the Department of Homeland Security and ICE to reject contracts with for-profit prison companies for detention.

The litigation follows a series of lawsuits filed by the ACLU and its affiliates seeking details about ICE's plans to expand detention capacity nationwide to support the Trump administration's goal of deporting 11 million immigrants from the United States.

“We refuse to allow ICE and other federal agencies to hide their work from the public,” said Tim Macdonald, Legal Director of the ACLU of Colorado. “ICE can no longer hide basic information about its operations and plans to expand immigration detention from journalists, advocacy organizations, and our communities.”