FOR-PROFIT PRISON FIRM FACES SUITS
Filings allege staff didn’t investigate an assault, and a detainee didn’t receive proper medical care.
The GEO Group, the for-profit private prison company that runs Aurora’s ICE detention facility, faces two new federal lawsuits alleging staff failed to investigate an assault on a detainee and did not give adequate medical attention to another.
The lawsuits are the latest against the Florida-based private prison company, which has come under fire in several states for allegations of medical neglect, maltreatment, forced labor and a string of disease outbreaks. Colorado
lawmakers are mapping out a divorce from the private prison industry, while the GEO Group is fighting a new California law phasing out the use of private prisons in that state.
In a statement, the GEO Group said the company has not been served with either of the new lawsuits, but “rejects these types of allegations which are part of a continuous, coordinated effort to undermine federal immigration policies that our company plays no role in setting.”
For one of the plaintiffs, René Lima-Marín, the lawsuit represents the latest chapter in a winding, decades-long odyssey through Colorado’s criminal justice system. In 2008, he was mistakenly released early from a 98year prison sentence, only to be sent back behind bars six years later after building a new life and starting a family. Three years ago, former Gov. John Hickenlooper pardoned Lima-Marín — but instead of walking free, he was sent to the Aurora Detention Facility while his case wound its way through immigration court.
It’s in the ICE facility where Lima-Marín says he slipped and fell in February 2018, striking his face
on the steel edge of a toilet seat in his cell, breaking multiple bones. Doctors told him he would need surgery to avoid permanent facial impairment.
Lima-Marín said he didn’t get that surgery because GEO staff never took him back to the hospital. He said he pleaded with staff on a daily basis to no avail. Days turned to weeks. As Lima-Marín waited in pain, detention facility staff refused to fill his pain medicine prescription, he said.
“They didn’t care about individuals in there,” Lima-Marín told The Denver Post. “They only care about sending people back to their country. That was their goal.”
The Aurora resident eventually won his immigration case and was released in 2018. He went back to the doctor, where he was told the bones already had begun to heal incorrectly and would have to be rebroken in order to do the surgery.
Lima-Marín was ready to do it. The only problem? GEO wouldn’t foot the bill now that he was out of the company’s custody.
“You never expect to be a person in that situation,” LimaMarín said, noting other instances in the facility in which he saw staff ignore people’s pleas for medical attention. “You witness it, you see it, and you feel sorry for them. And you never expect to actually be in those shoes. I ended up in those exact same shoes.”
The other lawsuit, filed last month, involves Lawrence Ritchie, who was violently beaten by a group of men in the Aurora facility two years ago. GEO staff watched him get beaten and did nothing to stop it, the lawsuit alleges.
When Aurora police responded to the assault, GEO officials assured officers that they would handle the incident internally, according to the lawsuit, which also named the city of Aurora as a defendant.
Michael Bryant, a spokesman for Aurora, said Monday that the city attorney’s office hadn’t yet been served with the lawsuit, so he couldn’t comment on the allegations.
A Rocky Mountain PBS News investigation found that Aurora police often leave investigations of sexual abuse or assault at the detention facility to GEO staff, who are not police officers.
“Mr. Ritchie’s case is not unique,” the complaint said. “He was neither the first nor the last person who was assaulted in ADF and then denied the opportunity to press charges against his attackers because of the implicit agreement between Defendant GEO and Defendant City of Aurora that Defendant GEO will handle criminal investigations ‘in house.’ ”
These lawsuits depict a concerted effort by GEO and ICE to keep internal matters from reaching the public, said Olivia Kohrs, a civil rights attorney representing Ritchie and Lima-Marín.
“They’re not letting the outside world see what they’re doing,” she said. “And because of that, there’s a lack of transparency and a lack of accountability.”
The Aurora detention facility has come under intense scrutiny in recent years by local officials and congressional leaders as ICE has increased its activity under President Donald Trump.
After a string of outbreaks at the facility last year, the Aurora City Council passed an ordinance requiring detention facilities to notify the fire department in the event of a contagious disease outbreak.
Rep. Jason Cow, D-Aurora, has called for weekly oversight visits of the facility, and previously sent letters to the Department of Homeland Security expressing concern for the disease outbreaks.